A new way to run an RK drum — and the old way still works.
What RoastPilot is
RoastPilot turns any RK Drum roaster into a temperature-controlled system. It is two pieces: a WiFi rotisserie handle with a thermocouple built into it, and a gas pressure controller that sits between your tank and your burner. The handle reads the bean mass while it turns. The controller opens and closes the gas to hold the grill temperature you asked for. Both talk to an app on your phone.
Why Scott built it
RoastPilot is not our design. It is the work of Scott Carter, a software developer who spent twelve years chasing the perfect roast — from an air popper on the patio, through a run of home-built "Frankenroasters", to a gas grill drum roaster. He loved the capacity and hated the blindness: no precision, no way to monitor or control a profile. As he puts it, he was roasting in the dark. Roast Pilot is what he built to fix that, and it now ships in official partnership with RK Drums.
The point matters because the old answer to "what temperature are my beans?" was that you could not easily know. You watched the grill thermometer, listened for first crack, and learned your own roaster. That method works and this site still teaches it. But it asks you to hold the whole roast in your head, and it does not travel — your notes from March will not reproduce a roast in July if the weather changed.
What a $20,000 commercial machine really sells you is not better physics. The drum is the same. What it sells you is instrumentation — a number for the bean mass, a curve you can look at afterwards, and a profile you can run again. That is the part Roast Pilot adds to a drum you already own.
What you see during a roast
The app graphs three temperatures live: bean temperature, grill temperature, and your target. It also draws a predicted delta on the bean-temp line, so you can see where the roast is heading rather than only where it has been. You tap to mark the beginning and end of first crack and again at second crack, and the app runs a countdown between them.
Smart Preheat runs the grill above your target by an offset you set, so the drop in temperature when you load cold beans does not cost you the front of the roast. If you want to change the target or the offset halfway through, you can — it is not locked once you start.
The part that actually changes things
Every session is saved: the full graph, the rate-of-rise, your crack marks and your pull point. You can name it and run it again. That is the difference between a roast you liked and a roast you can sell twice. Sessions sync to the cloud and to a dashboard at roastpilot.com, and you can export a roast as a PDF. If you already work in Artisan Scope, RoastPilot feeds it.
It does not take the roast away from you
This is worth saying plainly, because people ask. RoastPilot is an addition, not a replacement. Auto-Pilot will hold your target and recover the temperature after a load without you touching the knob — but you can also just watch the numbers and run the burner yourself, which is what a lot of owners do for the first few months. Roasting by sight, smell and sound is a real skill and nothing here retires it. The drum does not change. You are choosing how much of the roast you want to drive.
What is in the kit
- 1× WiFi Rotisserie Handle, thermocouple built in
- 1× Gas Pressure Controller, with hose and regulator
- Drill template and install guide
- One-year warranty — made in the USA
It fits every RK Drum roaster we have made, with adjustable offsets for the differences between grills. One caution: the electronics are not water resistant. Keep them dry and covered while you roast.
The kit is $315. See the RoastPilot Controller Kit, or read more about WiFi roast control. If you are ordering a drum at the same time, the Everything Kits include it.
