Roast Development in an RK Drum

Roast Development in an RK Drum

We’ve celebrated our third month in business and are staring our fourth right straight square in the face.  During this time, I’ve had to overcome the learning curve of roasting coffee on a five burner gas grill converted into a coffee roaster while nailing down the roast development necessary to make great coffee.

This learning curve has been helped considerably by Shane Lewis at RK Drums who I can’t speak more highly of.  Shane has been instrumental in helping me understand the how to roast coffee on a somewhat less than conventional and often quite finicky device intended for burning burgers and charring chicken breasts.

Nonetheless, I’ve come across some recent discoveries that may assist other RK Drum roasters in creating a more consistent product from batch to batch while eliminating some of the less desirable qualities of that somewhat finicky device.

Time and Temperature

The essential function of all coffee roasting is time and temperature.  Pro roasters will incinerate me (and probably Shane) for saying that internal bean temperatures are not necessary for producing an excellent, quality, and consistent roast.  Nevertheless Shane, along with the company’s creator Ron Kyle, developed a simple time and temperature chart for their drums where under a given temperature and green coffee load a coffee should reach first and second crack at a certain time.

Finished Roast Volume Green Load %Load Temp Est. 1st Crack Est. 2nd Crack
1LB
1LB 3.2 OZ
8.3%
450-470
8 mins
10 mins
2LB
2LB 6.4 OZ
17%
470-480
9 mins
11 mins
3LB
3LB 9.6 OZ
25%
490-500
9 mins
11 mins
4LB
4LB 12.8 OZ
33%
500-525
10 mins
12 mins
A snippet of the 12 pound drum roast profile chart from RK Drums. You can find the full chart as well as the charts for all of the RK Drums here.

However I, along with many other roasters, find that the time and temperature chart is merely a guideline and more often than not does not align in the slightest with what my temperamental roaster wants to do in any given day.  With that said, I did some research and developed a system that seems to work really well for our machine and our coffees.

Roast Development

While I can’t with any confidence express that I’m an expert in roasting, roasting techniques, nor roasting coffee beyond a brown, grindable, drinkable substance we call “coffee”, I’ve sufficiently studied some roasting techniques in order to better understand how professional roasters roast great coffee time and time again.

We’ve celebrated our third month in business and are staring our fourth right straight square in the face.  During this time, I’ve had to overcome the learning curve of roasting coffee on a five burner gas grill converted into a coffee roaster while nailing down the roast development necessary to make great coffee.

This learning curve has been helped considerably by Shane Lewis at RK Drums who I can’t speak more highly of.  Shane has been instrumental in helping me understand the how to roast coffee on a somewhat less than conventional and often quite finicky device intended for burning burgers and charring chicken breasts.

Nonetheless, I’ve come across some recent discoveries that may assist other RK Drum roasters in creating a more consistent product from batch to batch while eliminating some of the less desirable qualities of that somewhat finicky device.

Time and Temperature

The essential function of all coffee roasting is time and temperature.  Pro roasters will incinerate me (and probably Shane) for saying that internal bean temperatures are not necessary for producing an excellent, quality, and consistent roast.  Nevertheless Shane, along with the company’s creator Ron Kyle, developed a simple time and temperature chart for their drums where under a given temperature and green coffee load a coffee should reach first and second crack at a certain time.

Finished Roast Volume Green Load %Load Temp Est. 1st Crack Est. 2nd Crack
1LB
1LB 3.2 OZ
8.3%
450-470
8 mins
10 mins
2LB
2LB 6.4 OZ
17%
470-480
9 mins
11 mins
3LB
3LB 9.6 OZ
25%
490-500
9 mins
11 mins
4LB
4LB 12.8 OZ
33%
500-525
10 mins
12 mins

However I, along with many other roasters, find that the time and temperature chart is merely a guideline and more often than not does not align in the slightest with what my temperamental roaster wants to do in any given day.  With that said, I did some research and developed a system that seems to work really well for our machine and our coffees.

Roast Development

While I can’t with any confidence express that I’m an expert in roasting, roasting techniques, nor roasting coffee beyond a brown, grindable, drinkable substance we call “coffee”, I’ve sufficiently studied some roasting techniques in order to better understand how professional roasters roast great coffee time and time again.

I stumbled across the Cat & Cloud podcast above with the Czar of modern coffee, Scott Rao, which really turned me on to exploring more technical aspects of our roast.  While Rao’s “textbook” on coffee,  The Coffee Roaster’s Companion, is one of the predominant texts for coffee roasters and enthusiasts, his article, Roast Development Time and the Prerequisite for Any Successful Roast, published on the Daily Coffee News really shines a clean albeit simple light onto the process of roast development.

In Rao’s article, he mentions that great, memorable coffee has two consistent characteristics that stand out from roast to roast.  One, Rao says, is that coffee hits first crack at 75-80% of the roast and the coffee develops 20-25% of the total roast time.  In layman’s terms, the time between roast start to first crack should consume 75-80% of the roast while the time after first crack starts should be 20-25% of the roast.

Rao’s Roast Development on an RK Drum

While Shane’s chart is a great starting place, my numbers almost never line up.  Depending on how the roaster decides to heat on any given day and various ambient factors, I’ve had to adjust accordingly on our RK setup.

For roaster’s looking to improve and measure a roast on an RK Drum, the simple way of doing so is recording the time of first crack’s start* and using some simple division to calculate an approximate development time and when to pull a roast to optimize origin character and roastiness.  Using this method will negate any external factors that may be affecting your roast and allows the roaster using an RK Drum to make realtime calculations on their roast.

 
12 lb. Rk Drum
Our 12 lb. RK Drums setup on a 5 burner propane grill.

Let’s use an example from Shane’s chart in the paragraph’s above.

Take a look at the 4 lb. example in Shane’s chart.  According to his chart, we should be hitting first crack at approximately 10 minutes.  Assuming that we are hitting first crack at 10 minutes, using Rao’s methodology, we can divide our first crack time by .80 and .75 respectively to give us a range for when to pull our roast.

Using the formula 10 ÷ .80 and 10 ÷ .75 we get a range of 12:30 and 13:20.  Meaning, our coffee has developed for 20% of the roast at 12:30 and 25% at 13:20.  But if we look at Shane’s chart, a 4 lb. roast should hit 2nd crack at 12:00 which is a little too long for an evenly developed roast and at risk for hitting second crack.  Ipso facto, I generally adjust my constants in my equation to .85 and .80 respectively.

*For the longest time, I marked the start of first crack when first crack started “rolling”.  In other words – when the beans were popping and cracking in rapid succession.  While measuring first crack’s start is somewhat arbitrary, Rao suggests measuring first crack, “the moment [you] hear more than one or two isolated cracks.”  If you measure differently, you may need to adjust your constants accordingly.

Some Notes on Roast Development

While this formula works well for most applications and adapts to your roast for the day, it isn’t the end-all be-all for home roasters.  There is certainly room for variation, but this formula is adaptable to any roast.  If your roaster is running fast, the formula adapts accordingly.  If the roaster is running slow, that is accounted for as well.

Roast development really doesn’t have to be rocket science, but far too often we make it just that.  The problem I’ve always run into is mastering the art of “guesstimation”.  I’ve always played guessing games with the development of our coffee in the roaster and made assumptions as to when and how well it’s developed.  With this method, I’ve seen far more consistent roasts and far more consistency in the cup.

As for Shane and RK, I can’t say enough good about the quality of the equipment, the personal service, and dedication to perfection that Shane displays even months after my initial purchase.  Shane even called me on a Sunday afternoon prior to a family obligation!  Now that’s service of the best kind!

I’m interested to know how others have been able applied this or similar tactics to help predict their roasts on RK equipment, so please leave comments down below.  If needed, I can always publish a followup piece that explores additional methodology.

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