Items tagged with RUBBER SPIDERS

Craig Jensen:
(Posted at www.coffeegeek.com)

I have been looking at coffee roasters for well over a year, but have been disappointed by the current options.  Basically, most of the current crop of home-use roasters (with possibly the exception of the Behmor) seem somewhat flaky and poorly constructed.  I looked at more than a few of them, and they just didn't seem likely to last out the year.  It seemed to be stretching things to pay the amount of money that many cost if I wouldn't get that much use out of them.  Also, all of the posts about voltage problems in houses with these roasters had me pretty alarmed.  I read posts about people needing variacs and line voltage problems with the roasters, and that combined with the construction problems I had seen were just too much of a red flag.  So I put off getting any of the roasters.

But then I noticed www.rkdrums.com and it seemed like a very good solution.  The drums looked well built and unlikely to fall apart in a year.  Also, since it used a propane grill, no worries about voltage issues.  My only concern with rkdrums was assembling the thing.  This was solved very easily though when Shane Lewis (see buying experience below for more details) agreed to assemble one for me.

I have done 6 roasts with the unit so far, and that seems to be enough at least to get a review started I think.  Using the unit is very easy:

The coffee roasting is going good and really I've been selling quite a bit. A little tribute to how good a job that roaster can do is that when I had a friend from Ethiopia taste my Ethiopian coffee {he owns about a half acre of Mich Harrar in Ethiopia and currently runs an African cafe here in London, Ontario, were he roasts   a variety of East African coffee every morning with an electric TOPER to serve fresh to  customers} he told me that my coffee was done perfect. He asked me what type of a roaster I was using and when I told him about my drum setup he became pretty excited about the concept. -Jason

Just roasted a pound of that Colombian peaberry you sent with my order  (thanks btw :) ) .....this roaster rocks!!! I am still waiting for my  buddy to get my a 2x1 sheet of 20gage to use as a heat diffuser, but I  had to try her out anyways. Man that was very easy!!! Very impressed  with your product. I'll send you pics of the setup in the next couple  of days.
 
 Cheers,
 
 Ryan

I just wanted to let everyone know that dealing with Ron Kyle was a pleasure. He patiently answered every one of my questions, made some recommendations, told me when it would be shipped and it arrived as he stated. Not only did I enjoy dealing with a man of integrity, Ron's craftsmanship is a work of art.
 
 Thanks, Ron!
 
 Sincerely,
 
 Eddie