We love hearing from our microroasters! This account is from Hank and Debbie Thomas of Las Vegas Coffee & Roasting Co.
Farmer's Market Grand Opening for Las Vegas Coffee & Roasting Co.
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!
Just thought you would like to know we roasted our first 2 roasts at about 11pm PDT last night! I found a 14 gauge piece of stainless scrap at a metal shop late yesterday afternoon and made the modifications for a diffusion plate. (attached pic) We seasoned the roaster at about 10 pm, and went straight into 2- 1lb roasts after that! You have an amazing roaster set up, it works so well! Thank you again for all of your attention and help during this process, you have been invaluable to us! We are enclosing a couple pictures, thought you might like to see the initial set up. We will be doing quite a bit of cosmetic fabrication from this point as we are going to take the roaster with us when we get started, and I will send you pictures of those when we get finished with that portion. The grill has turned out to work very well after the modifications to lid (attached pic), it holds temps like a champ, once it gets to temperature we back all the burners to minimum and at times even turn one of the three burners off or open the lid a little to maintain temp. The thermometer you sent with the package sits about 3/4″ from the drum, and because the diffusion plate is so big we think it is giving us very accurate readings. (Our times are within seconds of your suggested profiles.)
We panicked a little on the first roast, thinking we had heard second crack, and ended up with a city roast that tastes great! Did a second roast of Colombian and can now clearly identify second crack, it’s a full city we will try later today. We still have to get a more efficient temporary cooling set up, but a fan and strainer is working OK for now. Going to experiment with an espresso blend at an Italian roast later today! Once again many thanks, you have far exceeded our expectations!
Hank and Debbie Thomas
Las Vegas Coffee & Roasting Co.
Las Vegas Coffee & Roasting Co.
About RK Drums
RK Drums has been providing roasting advice for coffee aficionados and small business owners for over 15 years. We specialize in making coffee roasting accessible to anyone who wants to roast, and sell complete solutions to roast coffee using a barbecue grill.
