In recent years, there have come a number of other Aluminum, or mixed Aluminum and Stainless Steel drums onto the market. The reason these drums have arrived is because these drums are very inexpensive in terms of purchasing of the aluminum metal and very easy to work with from a labor standpoint.  These drums may appear to look nice, and carry a nice price by comparison to Stainless Steel drums.  Make no mistake however, these drums are very poor investments in the long term because they are very likely to fall apart within a short time, and have been shown to cause health issues in food grade machines.

Strength, Durability and Conduction.

While Aluminum does indeed enjoy better heat conductivity than Stainless Steel, which means the drum itself will heat up faster, it does not however have the strength of Stainless Steel.  As the Aluminum drum is heated above 400F, the metal begins to harden and age and become brittle, which weakens the metal and subjects it to cracking.  We believe this makes Aluminum unsuitable as a coffee roaster.  The weak structure of the Aluminum additionally will cause the drum to dent or crush.

Aluminum and Alzheimer's and other Diseases in Food Grade products.

Aluminum has been shown in many studies to cause Alzheimer's and other kidney related diseases, as a result, we have taken the optimum approach to Health and Safety by utilizing only Food Grade Stainless Steel in all of our coffee drums.  A study on Aluminum intake and its effect can be found here for those that have interest.

Lifetime Warranty with the RK Drum.

We have considered making Aluminum drums in recent years to try and offer reduced prices, however, we have decided against this as RK has an undeniable and longstanding  reputation for producing quality drums.  We believe that you should be able to buy a drum once and own it for life.  If we were to make drums out of aluminum, then you would see weakening of that Aluminum at temperatures above 400F.  Eventually, this means that the drum will begin to get sloppy and eventually fall apart and you will be frustrated and wishing you had bought a better drum to start with.  If you take into consideration the linked health complications, we feel that the risk isn't worth it.  We only want to make the best products for your roasting projects and as a result, we will only use full welded, heavy gauge, food grade stainless steel!

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!

Please do not underestimate the necessity of a good thermometer.  In so many cases that I have seen, even on $400-$700 grills, the thermometer is horribly inaccurate.  Maybe fine for chicken, but not fine for coffee roasting as we need good temperature control.  These thermometers cannot  even be depended upon to be accurately inaccurate.  On many cases I have seen, people will roast thinking that they are at, say, 500 degrees F only to finish their roast late, and realize that they were not hot enough. Except then on Roast #2, after bumping up the temp to say 525 to compensate, find that they are even longer on their roast time.

It just makes no sense.  What in reality happened here, was that on roast #1, the temperature indicated 500 but was really at 450.  On roast #2, even though our roaster bumps the temperature to 525 to compensate for the late roast, in reality the temperature this time wasn't 50 degrees to low, but now 75 degrees too low, and thus was roasting at 425F.    All this is to say, that if you use the built in thermometer, you have a good chance of chasing a ghost and will end up frustrated in the end.  You won't know how much you are off, or if you are off at all until you get a good one to compare to.  I love the Tel-Tru brands of thermometers, but any quality thermometer will do.  I've seen supposedly high dollar thermocouples be off as well, so just so you know.  Roasting at the wrong temperature can also then be a cause for uneven roasts.

Thanks to all of you RK'ers for your business and your loyalty to RK products.  We strive to only make the best and highest quality products you can buy, and of course, "Made in the USA".

Hope everyone is having a great summer!  There has been some talk lately, (and a few inquiries) as to whether or not we do/should make a small drum.  A 1LB drum or similar. Larry and I talked a bit about it and he seemed to imply that is didn't make much sense as it would cost nearly the same labor as to make the 4LB drum and a bit less material.

I was curious as to what you guys thought about that subject.  Since the 4LB drum can actually do a great job on 1LB roasts, what am I missing?  Why would someone want a drum that was limited to just 1LB?  If we did make a new drum, would you prefer a larger or a smaller?

Email me or comment on the thread if you have input!  Thank

While there are several obvious things that you can do to help your bottom line when you are roasting for your customers such as buying bags and labels at good prices, and of course buying coffee at a great price, there other things that you may not have considered.

Don't underestimate the importance of the sheet metal mods.  These can dramatically reduce the consumption of propane or natural gas by anywhere from 1/2 to 2/3 by doing the mods.   Most grills have quite a bit of open space particularly at the rear of the grill which can be largely sealed off to hold your heat inside of the grill.  The sheet metal mods section of the assembly guide details how to do this.  Keep in mind you won't want to cap it all off in its entirety as your do want to allow some venting of smoke and oils from your roast.  In my personal experience and reports from other RK users, your burner knobs can be reduced to as low as 1/3 during the middle of the roast.  If you have a particularly powerful grill, you may want to seal up less of the rear as it may prevent you from getting down to a low temperature for roasting lower volumes (Say 450F).  When you're doing the mod however, always start with more blockage than less as you can always cut off more sheet metal if you find it is getting too hot.

Now I must say that you do indeed need to be careful as installing the sheet metal mods may allow your grill to retain far more heat than what the manufacturer had originally planned for.  While, I don't believe your grill will melt, it is more likely to have a fire either from the extra heat the grill produces, or from a runaway coffee roast that eventually will ignite.  We did actually have a RK user who's system got away from him recently causing a melting of wiring and other components.  One of the beautiful things about the RK setup, is that it is completely modular and can be replaced component for component if necessary.

Another thing that will help your bottom line is making attempts to keep your roasts between Full City and Full City+.  Even going 20 or 30 seconds into 2nd crack can cause so much more water to be removed from your coffee that it will require 1/4 to 1/3 more physical coffee to make up your 12OZ or your 16OZ quota in every bag.  Going beyond this into French and Vienna will cause even more weight loss via evaporation and thus more green coffee removed from your precious stash to complete your order.  If you have never paid attention, take a look next time at how much coffee you put in one bag of full city vs. one bag of darker roast. If coffee is $3 a pound at it's best price (at the time of this posting) then you can think of that as nearly $1/lb you are keeping in your pocket for every pound you sell.

To summarize, by performing the sheet metal mods, you can get 2/3's more roasts out of every tank of propane, and by keeping your roast times low, you will save that much more green coffee.

I want to put special emphasis on "Keeping your roast times low" as I hear some stories of people roasting 2LB for 20-25 minutes.  This extended roast time will also cause greater water evaporation and more green coffee volume required to complete your orders. You will certainly have that customer who wants darker coffee, or your particular bean might roast better darker, or you might need it darker for your espresso blend.  In those cases, by all means roast it to where you need it.  I think at the end of the day however, wherever possible, when your customer "Only wants great coffee"...  Keep your roasts right at the edge of 2ns crack. and at the end of the year your bottom line could be padded by an additional 1/4 to 1/3 more revenue. -Shane

The following is an article on improving roast consistency on the RK Drum with focus on the 8LB drum.

In some grills you may have difficulty, particularly with the 8LB Drum and very minimally present on the 6LB Drum with uneven roasts.  This is a result of trying to roast coffee evenly over an 18" or 24" span over varying heat sources.  Specifically, your burners may not be distributing heat evenly across the entire length of the drum.  This is particularly present on 8LB Drums and on grills that don't have adequate burner diffusion.

To clarify, off of each burner you have a column of heat rising up off of the burner directly, which is controlled by your burner knob.  It can be difficult to tell exactly how hot that flame is.  Just because your knob on burner 1 is set to 75% and burner 2 is set to 75% and burner 3 is set to 75% does NOT mean that each burner is actually producing the same amount of heat.  The valves in the burner knobs on these grills are just not manufactured with fine tolerances, and may have slightly different gas flows depending on their internal structure.  Furthermore, your burners themselves may have slightly differing hole sizes which translates to more or less gas getting through and thus more or less heat.

The longer a drum gets, the more pronounced this becomes as you are stretching the coffee out over 24" (in the case of the 8LB) and it is quite easy to get the right side feeling hotter then the left, or to have cold spots here or there (relatively speaking).  This is almost invisible in the 4LB 12" drum as the coffee is compacted into such a concise area.

So, to solve this, some experimentation is necessary.  The objective we are trying to achieve here is to even out the heat that the drum "feels" across its entire length.

So how can we even out the heat?  Here are a few approaches. Please apply these points in order as the first suggestions will be the most likely and easiest solutions.

• Leveling the Drum: Keep in mind, that your drum must be level when roasting.  Use a level to see that the drum is completely level to the ground.  This will prevent coffee from piling up more in one end than the other.  If this happens then you will get  a larger bean mass on one side vs. the other and that heavier side will roast slower than the lighter side.  This will cause unevenness.  Try this as a first approach.

• Heat or Rotational Speed: Another reason that could explain uneven roasts is rotational speed.  If you are roasting at less than 6RPM's you will probably get uneven roasts.  The closer your approach to 40-60 RPM's the more even your roasts will be.   Finally you may not be roasting hot enough.  If you have done all these things and still getting uneven roasts, you may not be getting enough heat penetration.  Try increasing your heat by 25 degrees and see how the roast turns out.

• Burner Balancing:  Adjust your burners up or down to achieve equal heating on all burners.  This is a bit tricky and may involve some raw roast time.  You may notice that coffee in one end of the drum is darker than the other.  This should indicate to you that burners on that side are running a hair too high.  They can only be 10 degrees off and that 10 degree difference over a 20 minute roast can cause the coffee on one side to be predominantly darker to give an example.  So backing that burner down to a lower setting for the entire roast may be a solution.  I have heard of some people getting to know their grill so well, they know what each burner needs to be set at to  get an even roast.  An infrared thermometer may help here.  You can take the laser pointer of the infrared thermometer and hold it on the bottom of the drum to see what areas of the drum are hotter than others and then adjust it accordingly.

• Burner Diffusion: Another approach and possibly a better approach in my opinion is simply to diffuse or blend the heat coming from all the burners into one heat source.  The basic way to do this is to install a piece of metal over the burners.  It is true that most grills do indeed come with a heat diffuser over the burners.  However, if you look at some of these diffusers (particularly in grills whose burners run front to back) you will see that the diffuser only covers the burner tube itself in a sort of upside down "V" profile and then allows the heat to boil straight up.  You can see that this really does very little to break up that heat column coming up off of the burner.  The idea here is to keep the drum from feeling the direct heat off the burner and blend all the heat together.  Some grills have a great diffuser plate which rather covers the majority of the bottom of the grill thereby blending the heat very well.  Some of the new infrared grills are better at this as they use an entire plate to actually separate the heat column from the coffee.  (Be careful to watch BTU requirements on the infrared grills).    So what you need to do is look at your diffuser and decide if the diffuser is doing a good job of breaking up and blending the heat rising off the burners.  If not, throw out the diffuser you have and install a piece of aluminum or steel.  Usually 1/16" steel works well.  The piece should be big enough to fit in the entire bottom of the grill leaving only 1 and 1/2" of clearance between the edge of the plate and the wall of the grill on all sides.  So what we want is for the burners to heat the plate, and then for the plate to radiate heat towards your coffee and secondly for the heat to collect under the plate and then boil up around the edges of the plate to fill the space in the grill where the drum sits.  (So you should have heat rising up around the edges of your square plate on all four sides of the rectangular plate).  Some people have drilled holes in this plate to allow for more heat to trickle up through the holes.  Lastly, please understand that your heat up and cool down timeframes will be extended as the majority of your heat will go towards heating the plate initially extending your heat up time, but conversely the plate will hold heat between roasts reducing your heat up time for roast #2.  Remember steel retains heat longer than aluminum so keep that in mind.  It doesn't matter either way however.  See the two images for further clarification

We now have replacement cooling fans available for those of you that have damaged yours.  Click HERE or on Products in the Menu.

We are pleased to announce the launching of the new RK Drums website.  This hopefully is a platform that will be more user friendly and help contribute to our community of roasters.  We have all the core information in place and will be improving things in the days and weeks to come.  Please feel free to participate or ask questions anywhere on the website and we will be happy to help.  Thanks -Shane

Thought I would send you an update along with some pics of the new roaster,

After some research on the web I chose this Broil-Mate unit rated at 44,000 btu with a twin H burner and cast aluminum construction for about $220 delivered at ace hardware online

I then sourced a nice 5" dial analog thermometer on ebay with a 12" probe that sits about in the middle of the drum 1/2" above the top, it seems to adjust rapidly to heat changes and the probe only senses heat at the tip so it works out well

I found a heavy duty 12" fan that moves 2200 cfm and fashioned a cooling box that could be mounted to the frame and a removable sleeve lined on the bottom with 1/4" hardware cloth then a window screen mounted in a slot below to catch the chaff, at the bottom the fan blows down to pull air through rather than push the air (and chaff) through

Using your motor I made a box of birch ply with a 1/4" aluminum plate mounted in front, a 2 gang box is mounted with a switch for the motor on the left and one for the cooling fan on the right

On my first and only roast (so far) I decided to go ahead and try 5lbs. of green beans because this is the load I want to learn the profile for.

I fired up the grill and at about 6 min. it hit 600 degrees, I pulled the drum, loaded the beans as quick as I could and the temp was under 500 when I resumed, I got the temp back to 575 by about 5 or 6 min in and by about 15:30 had heard a few snaps of the first crack, at about 16:45 the first crack was rolling hard and the temp was reduced to about 550, 18:20 sees the end of first crack and 19:30 the second starts with about the 20 min. mark seeing a fast rolling second crack and I turned off the heat, dumped the beans as fast as possible into the cooler and started to stir with the wooden spoon, the cooler worked great with the beans at ambient temp in about 2 min., I have to say that even though I went into the second crack a little fast (I will get it right the next time) this has to be the most evenly roasted coffee I have ever done! My Hottop cannot compare! and at 10 times the batch size this thing is AWESOME!  It now gets the coveted spot on the back garage wall NICE!

Next comes the sheet metal mods as my heat is at 60 to 70 percent most of the roast, My only problem now is I have to give away to much coffee because I want to try this thing out again soon!

Hats off to a great product!, Gil Scales

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New Guide on how to get even roasts Available in FAQ.  (Primarily for the 8LB Drum, but potentially applicable to the others as well.

• Work on the new budget cooler, now affectionately dubbed "The Model T" is being finalized.  It will have nearly all of the cooling power and capacity, and will have substantially less bells and whistles, but yet be affordable to nearly everyone.  Standby for details.

• Roast Videos are now going on to Youtube.  They should stream much faster now.  Should have done that long ago.

• Some small price increases are on the way for a number of products.  Seems the cost of fuel and inflation in general are driving up prices for parts that go into our kits.  Get in under the wire,  Prices go up on 2/21/11 by a few dollars here or there.

We are working currently on reworking the cooler to make it more cost effective to build, which should reduce, or hopefully eliminate the waiting period that currently is in effect.  We can however quote you a price for an immediate build/ship if you wish to have one immediately.

We are currently working on a several new projects, all of which will be attractive.  I'll post here as soon as I can!

We also do custom built-to-order drums.  Please email with any questions or specs.

Update 5/26/10

RK Cooler Price Adjustments - Well folks, the numbers are in and it just ain't pretty.  I want to be as transparent with you as possible with all this, so here is the straight deal.  These coolers are really great units, beautiful, functional, and having used one, I never want to go back to any other cooling method.  But the straight and honest truth is these things are incredibly labor intensive and require a very large amount of material to do it right.  In fact, 40.5LB of stainless steel, motors and fans are in this unit.  Frankly, it is everything we dreamed it could be.  The last 4 coolers took 42 labor hours to build.  If you look at one up close, you will see all the brackets, welds and bends that go into these coolers.  It really and truly is a custom work of art.  Larry tells me, however,  they just simply can't be built for what we are charging for them.  Literally, it means coming out of pocket to build them at the prices we initially had them set at.

Adding in the materials and labor, all the stainless steel, motors, wiring, etc...we literally pay cash out of pocket to get them out the door.  If you look at the amount of labor and material in each drum, then compare the amount of labor and material in the cooler, you will see that even the new prices are proportionally acceptable.  So, the question is....  Is it worth it to us to have these nice coolers, at the cost required to build them, when we can rig up a box fan for $50 to do the job?  I think the true question comes down to what you want to do with your coffee business.  If you are in public view, I think these coolers are a mandatory addition to bring as professional an image as possible to the table.  They work extraordinarily well, and are a pleasure and a joy to use, and having been spoiled by one, I will never go back to the old way.  I feel a stroke of pride if someone happens to see me roasting, and they say "That's really a cool machine!"

So with all that, I'm going to have to price these in at $649 and $715 respectively for the basic and deluxe units.  The honest truth is, at those prices, RK makes $0 in profit and is straight cost of build to you.  That's a poor decision from a business standpoint, but I feel it is a great unit that we have put hundreds of hours of work into and I don't want to scrap it just based on price alone.  I realize that this is going to price some of you out of the game.  Some will just say "I'll keep doing it the old way".  I respect that.  However, if things get rolling for you, I would absolutely and seriously consider getting one if you can, you definitely won't look back.  I just don't want to see these units scrapped, and will just offer the unit at pure cost so that RK has a good cooler option to go along with the drums, and because I love them so!

Finally, the only way to do these, is to build a batch of 5 at a time.  The cost of setting all the machines to the right bend and roll radiuses to make these coolers is actually quite expensive.  It may take 45 minutes to setup the machines just to roll the outer shell of the cooler in 5 seconds.  So to only fabricate one cooler at a time, is not practical.  That process is repeated for each bend and roll of the cooler, so you can see how you would take 90% of your time, just setting machines.  Better to set the machines once and roll out 5 in assembly line fashion.  So on this issue, we are going to take pre-orders for 5 coolers.  When we get 5 orders in, we'll go ahead and stamp out 5 coolers all at once.  I'll keep a list of those interested, with a very small deposit, just to keep people serious, and once we get 5, we'll roll and ship all of them at once.  I do realize this is also an unattractive decision.  The reality is that we can't do it any other way, at even this new price.  If you want special consideration, give me a ring and I'm sure we can find a way to make it worth the shops time to roll out one if you are in a hurry.

I truly regret having to do this as this was not quite the vision that any of us had, but the bottom line is that there is too much work and material in these coolers to do it any other way.  Someone once told me,

"If you're going to work for free, why bother working at all...?  Might as well go do something fun."

I think everyone gets that.  Please don't hesitate to call me up and chat about it if you wish, I always welcome your conversations.  The only other alternative is to not make them or price them $200 higher yet.  I will constantly keep my eye open for ways to improve on this, but for now that's where things stand.  To those of you who got in under the wire and already have your cooler, Congrats!  You got one heck of a deal!  -  Shane