A (Epic?) journey in search of my perfect roaster

[andy]

Re: A (Epic?) journey in search of my perfect roas

ITS AN ESKY MATE !!!

;D

The esky is the stand for the bean bucket cooler


Great looking roasts Java. Seeing the "punchline" here is a little like us all goo-gaaing over baby photos after following the whole journey (so far).

You must be roasting for half the town with sessions that big!
(I guess word had got out)

[poundy]

Re: A (Epic?) journey in search of my perfect roas

Others may worship said Javaphile, but I really thought hanging out with us mob of Aussies would have rubbed off a little on him....

Sitting on top of the cooler on the right side is my BBC (Bean Bucket Cooler).

ITS AN ESKY MATE !!!

:P

And after a roasting session like that, its no wonder your two year bean stockpile has been depleted so quickly !

Brett
(whos still accumulating far quicker than consuming)

[Dimal]

Re: A (Epic?) journey in search of my perfect roas

Java "Squinting near-sightedly from his hill of beans" phile

Now thats a "Hill of Beans" that is definitely worth something, heaps in fact ,

Mal.

[Javaphile]

Re: A (Epic?) journey in search of my perfect roas

I have found a new coffee deity and it is Javaphile.

How may I serve thee oh mighty one?

Thou shall go forth and sin no more, for surely if thou drinketh instant thou shalt be struck down and cast out from the tribe of Snobs! [smiley=evil.gif]


Java "Squinting near-sightedly from his hill of beans" phile

[grendel]

Re: A (Epic?) journey in search of my perfect roas

I have found a new coffee deity and it is Javaphile.

How may I serve thee oh mighty one?

[Javaphile]

Re: A (Epic?) journey in search of my perfect roas

And finally, the result of 1 hour and 45 minutes of roasting. 4kg (pre-roast weight) of wonderful aromas!

Starting from the upper left, the two big bowls are the 2.8kg of the CP blend, 400g of Guatamalan Antigua Los Volcanes Estate, 400g of Rwanda Gatare, and finally 400g of Zimbabwe AAA+ Dandoni Estate.

The 3: 400g batches are for espresso and will be brewed as both SOs and blends.

The roast level varied from the first snaps of 2nd crack up to the beginning of the 2nd crack roll with most being on the lighter side.

Java "Hhhhmmmm......Coffee!!" phile

[Javaphile]

Re: A (Epic?) journey in search of my perfect roas

Heres a close up of 200g of Ethiopian Yirgacheffe freshly dumped prior to being put in the BBC for cooling. Normally the beans would only be in this cooling tray for a couple of seconds before being dumped into the BBC. The BBC cools the beans much faster than the cooling trays on the roaster do.

[Javaphile]

Re: A (Epic?) journey in search of my perfect roas

Heres a pic from further back showing the whole set-up. Sitting on top of the cooler on the right side is my BBC (Bean Bucket Cooler).

[Javaphile]

Re: A (Epic?) journey in search of my perfect roas

This pic shows the roaster in action with both barrels loaded up and the cart on the left with the converter/speed control for the motor (the red and white box) and the laptop for recording/tracking the roasts along with a thermometer for tracking room temp, an IR Thermometer for checking barrel temp, and a few other odds and ends of tools/devices.

In back of the roaster you can see the plywood panel with the exhaust vent in it that I put in the window while roasting.

[Javaphile]

Re: A (Epic?) journey in search of my perfect roas

Somebody in another thread asked for pictures of my roasting set-up in action and I said Id take some during my next roasting session, which I just finished, so here ya go! Seeing as I dont recall which thread they were asked for in Ill post them here.

This pic shows the beans for the Cold Process blend all weighed out and ready to go.

Starting from the upper left the beans are: 400g of Peruvian La Florida, 800g of El Salvador Maxtapulat Estate Organic, and 1600g of Ethiopian Yirgacheffe Grade 1.

These were roasted as SOs in 200g batches and blended post roast. They will rest for a couple of days before being ground and soaked.

[Javaphile]

Re: A (Epic?) journey in search of my perfect roas

A quick update as Ive had several questions about the status of my Gothot.

Im still only roasting in 2 barrels as the Ministry of Finance has not yet approved the outlay needed for the new gears. Hopefully this will happen in a couple of weeks if things work out as planned.

Getting new cooling trays made up has also become a higher priority as the fan on my Bean Bucket Cooler died in the middle of a roasting session here a couple of weeks ago and so all the cooling is now done in the roasters cooling tray. Which with only one of them present makes for some interesting timing issues. Use of the roasters cooling trays is preferred here now as were in the full heat of summer (38C for the next week predicted) and the heat from the cooling beans is vented outside rather than being put into the room as with the BBC.

The MicroDrive has continued to work flawlessly powering the roaster, converting the 120v 60Hz Single Phase too 240v 2 Phase giving what seems to be the appropriate revolutions when set at 40Hz.

A batch size of 200g is working very nicely with all the chaff being cleared from the roasting chamber with only an occassional bean being sucked out.

The roaster has now had almost 200kg of green beans put through it since coming on-line last December and is still performing perfectly.

Propane consumption has been very low and Im still using the original 15lb tank I bought for it with maybe a quarter of it left.

The Powder Coating has stood up perfectly in all areas with the exception of the lower left side of the outter cover over the drums which has peeled off on both drums. This is the side on which the majority of the heat from the burners is drawn up around the drum due to its direction of rotation. This is also the side of the drums that the beans spend the majority of their time on due to the angle of the interior vanes and the drums rotation. The right side of the covers show no sign of peeling. With a 2,000F rating for the Ceramic Coating that was applied Im a bit surprised that its peeling as the drum certainly never comes anywhere close to approaching that kind of a temperature. I suspect that the problem is from the application of the coating and not because the cover is getting too hot.

Ive found that the InfraRed thermometer works very well for measuring the temp of the empty drum giving a very consistant reading both in the heat up and the cool down stage. Using it to read the temp of the roasting beans though is no where near as reliable. Between the motion of the beans, the hot air being circulated through the drum, the presence of chaff, and the smoke produced by the beans the temp shown by the IR varies too much to rely on it as a precise measurement of the bean temp. With the drum empty the reading is rock solid to the tenth of a degree. With beans in the drum however the reading will vary over about 2C early on in the roast, with the varience hitting over 5C in the latter stages and in some cases (usually with the beans that produce large sized chaff) as much as 10C.

The roasting time that seems to work best is in the 10-12 minute range with the draft open to about 3/4s. If I use less draft the chaff has a tendency to get stuck in the outlet of the barrel, especially on the larger chaff beans like the Nicaraguans. On the smaller bean sizes, notably peaberrys and a lot of Ethiopians, I can close the draft down to about 2/3rds. Once the summer is over here and I move back to espressos from my Cold Process I plan on doing more experimentation with roasting times to get a better idea of the difference in the cup between a 10 minute and a 15 minute roast.

As Im still operating on only the two barrels Ive yet to run any experiments on the difference between the middle burner and the two outter ones. I still suspect that the outter barrels gas systems are set up for natural gas while the middle one is designed for propane. Controlling the heat once 1st crack is reached is very problematic. The burners basicly have to be turned down to the point that they are barely staying lit with there being very little adjustability at that point. The flames will go from barely lit to 1cm high with nothing in-between. Above 1cm flame height there is full control, but below 1cm, nothing. If the flame height is turned up at all the beans will go straight from 1st into 2nd crack with no pause in-between. Not good. Once finances permit Im still planning on getting a whole new gas system for it which will allow me to fine tune my roasts better. The roaster is certainly usable as-is but it would be really nice to have more control over the flame height at the lower levels.

So over-all Im very happy with it and still having fun playing with it. It still has things to be done to it but hey, whats life with-out a few projects? Boring! ;D

I think that about covers it. Did I miss anything?

Java "Tries not to lead a boring life" phile

[Javaphile]

Re: A (Epic?) journey in search of my perfect roas

OK Andy, how did you manage to do it, I might have missed something unless there was a PM not specifically mentioned.
But ringing someone accross the globe and in a Coffee House (please dont condemn me if thats an in-appropriate desciption, have never seen or been to a Starbucks, AFAIK there aint any in Tasmania)

Hey Bullitt,

While Starfu*ks may technically qualify as a Coffee House I wouldnt call what they serve coffee. :P But then Im a Coffee Snob so what can I say. ;D

As to how Andy was able to call me, I had just made a post updating the story of the journey (this may have been in the moderators forum and hence not publicly viewable) so he knew I was in Larado in a Starfu*cks. He googled it and discovered that there were only 2 in the whole town, so he chose one at random and called them and asked if there was a guy with a laptop there. 8-) There wasnt anybody there at all. LOL So he called the other one and Bingo! There I was! LOL ;D

When they told me I had a call I assumed it was the garage calling me about the van as who else would be calling me there?!? When I answered the phone I was all set for the strong Mexican accent the owner of the garage had and so for the first few seconds my mind just heard garbage. Hahaha It took a few seconds for the old grey matter to realize what was going on and switch modes from Translate.Mexican too Translate.Aussie and then it finally hit me who it was that was calling! LOL An Oz accent was the *last thing I expected to hear sitting in a small town on the Texas-Mexico border! ROFL

We talked for some minutes and then I started getting lots of dirty looks from the workers (the phone with its short cord was sitting right in their ordering area and the lunch rush was on) so we said our good-byes and I once again thanked Andy for making my day.

As a side note, once I told the workers that the call had come from Australia they got very sheepish about their cutting us off. :-[

OH and when is the rest coming Java.....great story....phile???

As to the rest of the story it will probably happen in bits and pieces as the Ministry of Finance authorizes the expenditure of funds for the gears and machine shop time for removing the broken bolt. Until then Ill just have to limp along on 2 barrels.

Im still experimenting with roasting times and profiles trying to come up with the ideal ones and as yet have really come to no firm conclusions but its looking like a 12 minute roast is working better than an 8-10 minute one. Im also running a few batches out to as long as the 15 minute mark to see if that makes a difference as well.

I will post more stories as people have questions or as things happen here.

Java "Google is your friend!" phile

[Bullitt]

Re: A (Epic?) journey in search of my perfect roas

OK Andy, how did you manage to do it, I might have missed something unless there was a PM not specifically mentioned.
But ringing someone accross the globe and in a Coffee House (please dont condemn me if thats an in-appropriate desciption, have never seen or been to a Starbucks, AFAIK there aint any in Tasmania)

OH and when is the rest coming Java.....great story....phile???

[Javaphile]

Re: A (Epic?) journey in search of my perfect roas

Sounds like a very well-oiled machine, Javaphile. Too bad about that third barrel, but 2 out of three aint bad for a domestic set up, really.

....tending towards light industrial even I think with the quantities Ive been pumping through it, an average of 25kg per month in the 4 months its been running.

It can get pretty hectic at times with just the two barrels going during long runs. With all 3 running I think anything not nailed down would get blown away by the whirlwind of keeping up with them!

At my current roasting quantities 2 barrels works out OK. If these amounts increase then it would be nice to have the third barrel running so-as to cut down on the total roasting time, but for now Im quite happy to have 2 up and running. It could easily have been just a single barrel what with the problems of the badly worn gear and broken bolt/easy-out on one of the two running barrels. Hopefully that barrel will continue to operate properly until such time as the Dept of Finance gives its stamp of approval for new gears.

As an aside and point of interest for others looking at oils for roasters, I ended up using common 3-in-1 household oil for the shafts. I had several high temp oils I had originally planned on using but in the end I went with the 3-in-1 due to the nasty smells of the high temp oils.

While the high temp oils required the usage of less oil for good lubrication, they produced some really nasty smells that I just couldnt stand and the 3-in-1 proved to be able to withstand the temps involved and didnt reek. The 3-in-1 is a thinner oil and is used up faster than the high temp oils requiring more frequent applications. With each application being only a few drops, the larger amounts used and the much lower price of the 3-in-1, cost is not a factor.

With the nasty smells the high temp oils produced I flushed the bearing surfaces with lots and lots of the 3-in-1 to get rid of all of the high temp oils. They smelled so bad and so strong I have little doubt that the smell would have been passed onto the roasting beans.

The 3-in-1 has worked well so far and I see no reason why it wont continue too. At normal roasting temps it produces almost no smell and even while sitting between roasts you have to get with-in a few inches of the area before you can detect the oil. The high temp oils made the whole 2nd floor of the house reek. Yuck!! :P

Java "Just an ordinary common oil kind of guy" phile

[robusto]

Re: A (Epic?) journey in search of my perfect roas

Sounds like a very well-oiled machine, Javaphile. Too bad about that third barrel, but 2 out of three aint bad for a domestic set up, really.

Robusto