H.  Cooling your Roast

THE DRUM IS SUPER HOT, WEAR PROTECTION

As 2nd crack is fully established, lets pull the coffee (You can pull it earlier or later around this point depending on your coffee or preference.)

Lower your burners to the lowest setting.

Open the lid of the grill, watch the door and pin, stop the motor when the motor is moving to the top position, rotate the drum with your hand as necessary.  While the drum is sitting here on the bracket, lets go ahead and pull the pin and hold the door closed with the thumb of your gloved hand.

Use your other 3 or 4 gloved fingers to wrap under the spit rod.  Note that the coffee will be smoking and still cooking in its own heat. 

Lift the drum and coffee off the motor and bearing and close the lid of the grill to hold your heat in if you intend to do another roast, otherwise turn off your burners in the step before.  If it helps, quickly set the handle on the ground and prop the drum up against the grill so you can close the lid.  Sometimes you may find it easier to just leave the lid open as you will likely be short on hands, that's fine, it will just cost you more gas to heat it back up.  Not a big deal though.

Next, pick up the drum, and carry it over to your cooling device.  Using your gloved thumb, open the door and dump your coffee into the cooling tray.  Note that the coffee is still cooking and it is important to cool the coffee as quickly as possible to preserve the quality of the roast.  You may even want to anticipate your intended stop point of the roast by 15 or 20 seconds as this is the time it will take you to stop the roast and get the coffee in the cooler.

After the drum is empty prop it back up against the grill, with the door open to begin your next roast.

You will get some chaff (a sort of paper like material that comes off the roasted coffee) that will blow away.  You may even choose to pour the coffee slowly into your cooler allowing the wind to blow the chaff out of the coffee, or you can use a large spoon, wooden or stainless to stir the coffee, aid chaff removal and cooling.

While the coffee is cooling down, go back to your drum and load your next batch of green beans and repeat the process and get the next roast going.

After about 90 seconds, the coffee should be cool enough to touch.  I usually offload the cooler into a bucket so I can go and bag later for sale.

So, that's the end of the roast tutorial.  I am by no means a roast expert, as compared to some of the great people out there.  I welcome any comments and corrections.  This however, should reliably get you good reproduceable, coffee and plenty of customers that are in love with it.

-Happy Roasting!-

Shane

I.  Quick Roast Profiles

1-2 Pound Profile

3-4 Pound Profile

Les's Profiles

Shane's Profiles