It’s been a while since I bought my roaster. Great work, have been having good times & roasting plenty of coffee. I have even had it reviewed by the crew at Royal NY, who loved what I sent them.
Hey Shane!
Tomorrow is the big day! Grand opening at our 1st farmer's market - final health inspection at 8:30 AM and we will be completely licensed through the city and state as roasters! Deb and I have been working around the clock getting everything ready, Thank you again for all of your help and advice along the way! We will be taking a bunch of pics tomorrow as we will be roasting on site, but am attaching a pic of the roasting setup for you to see. We will touch base with you after the next couple days of markets and let you know how it went. Still have another 30 lbs to roast...and about a million minor last minute things! Thanks Again for helping us get here!
Hank and Deb
Las Vegas Coffee and Roasting Co.
Shane, got the roaster up and running this past weekend, did a burn in and
two batches on Sunday (1 pound and 2 pound) and then had to hurry off to
other things. Last night i put the the roaster to work and roasted 15
pounds in about 2.5 hours! however i had to take about 20 minutes to make
some adjustments to the rotisserie rod, it must have been off center because
it was clicking pretty loudly. the largest batch i did was 3 pounds, wow i
am loving this thing already, and once i bump it up to 4 pounds things will
move much quicker. give me a few weeks of using this and i will write a
complete review you can share with others, i went to bed last night feeling
great that i had roasted a weeks worth of orders in a little over 2 hours,
and the coffee was packaged, labeled and ready to go to the store, and i
don't have to think about it until next week. Thanks for a great product
and excellent support.
March 2004
This is an unsloicited E-Mail from Jim Easley on his RK Drum
Thanks Jim.
RK, I just did the first roast in the drum roaster. I used 2 pounds of
Guatemala Huehuetenanga. An outstandingly even roast first time out.a
But there is a couple of hitches in my gameplan. Seems I didn't account for
being at 6,000 feet which speeds up the crack process, SSSOOOOO what I
thought was the first crack was actually the second crack. I was all set to
see a beautiful full city roast and boy was I surprised. Fortunately this
particular Guat. holds up damn well when stressed to the max. It makes an
interesting Italian bordering on charcoal profile but I can still
taste some fruitiness in all that blackness.
Oh well, such is life. The drum worked beautifully and I will get the
times down. Thanks again for a great product.
I threw all the timings out the window and did the next round of roasts
using the old school method of roasting by sight-color of smoke;
sound-cracks and pops; and by smell-the changing aromas of the roast. Didn't
look at the stop watch at all but did use your tip about decreasing the
temp and letting the roast cruise through the cracking stages. Worked
beautifully.
Worked so well in fact half the neighborhood just signed on as clients.
They were the ones that live down wind of the roasting area.
Only problem I have encountered in the past 10 roasts (yes, I have been
busy) is trying to get the door open using a pair of pliers while wearing
gloves.
It looks like I will be buying the 18 inch model before long as well as a
couple of motors.
Thanks again for such a KISS device and technique.
It's been a week since I received and put together my new 6Lb DIY combo and in short, I'm thrilled! I had a few small challenges with the installation but engineering the solutions was part of the fun.
With this 10 year old Weber grill, the square tubes were about 3/4 inch too low for the base plate-motor mount combo at the highest position so I cut a pair of 1x2 shims to sit between the base plate and the tubes and got some 3-inch bolts for the muffler clamps--just right! The rotisserie cutouts in this grill were tiny and wanting to avoid using the Charbroil mounting brackets, I used my Dremel to cut those slots in the grill deep enough to accomodate some extra bearing-bushings that I bought at a grill parts supplier. Now the rotisserie spit is strongly supported on each side of the grill and I think it makes the motor's job easier since the spit and drum aren't hanging on the coupler. By the way, the motor , motor mount and baseplate is very well made and I especially appreciate the holes being pre-threaded for the electrical boxes. I chose to mount an unswitched duplex outlet on the back position to give me a place to conveniently plug in a fan to blow on the motor when I start doing big long roast sessions. To make the grill more efficient on gas, I blocked off about 70% of the rear vent with a piece of carpet threshold that fit perfectly and already had a slight bend which makes it press against the grill base nicely when the hood is closed.
Enough tech-stuff--forgive me, I'm an engineer--the drum is a work of art and the motor and mounts are terrific and the whole kit is well thought-out and it makes GREAT COFFEE! I've done several roasts using your
suggested profile for 1lb batches and I'm getting the hang of it! I will graduate to larger batches when I decide what kind of beans I want to order in quantity. The only bad thing about this setup is that I want to roast all the time and you need lots of beans in your inventory to have all that fun! The picture attached is Guatemala--Villa Herminia at a very even roast...delicious.
Thanks for your great products, and even more for your superb customer service! Keep up the good work!
