Who Got RK?

I just wanted to let you know I did my first roast on my 8lb. drum yesterday. It went really well. I was able to get the universal rottisserie to work with a little modifying. I tried to follow the 6lb. drum roast profile from the roasting guide. I did experiance a uneven roast for my first try, but the coffee was still, delicious! It is very exciting roasting with this system. My cooling tray will blow the beans up in the air if its not on low! Otherwise the fans air swirling motion actually stirs the beans like there was a sweeper arm. I cant wait to give it another go. I can really see a perfect profile that will easily be developed with a few more times. Thanks alot and I'll get you out some photos soon. Jay S.

Mike Simanyi wrote:
 Just had to post. I received my RK drum and 50rpm motor setup last
 week and fired it up for a few small roasts (1 to 1.5 pounds each). I
 slightly over-roasted the first batch while trying to dial-in my
 thermometer readings and reconcile them to the instructions I found at
 Ron's site, but the next batches went like clockwork.
 Three words: Oh. My. Gosh!

 The scent of the roast is amazing. Using the I-roast, 2nd crack was
 always exceptionally subtle. With the drum it's like firecrackers.
 And darn near the most entertaining part is pouring the smoking mass
 of beans into the sifter and holding them over the fan for cooling.
 Within about 75 seconds they were almost to ambient temp... and
 smelled AMAZING! One of my neighbors came

It's been a week since I received and put together my new 6Lb DIY combo and in short, I'm thrilled!  I had a few small challenges with the installation but engineering the solutions was part of the fun.
With this 10 year old Weber grill, the square tubes were about 3/4 inch too low for the base plate-motor mount combo at the highest position so I cut a pair of 1x2 shims to sit between the base plate and the tubes and got some 3-inch bolts for the muffler clamps--just right!  The rotisserie cutouts in this grill were tiny and wanting to avoid using the Charbroil mounting brackets, I used my Dremel to cut those slots in the grill deep enough to accomodate some extra bearing-bushings that I bought at a grill parts supplier.  Now the rotisserie spit is strongly supported on each side of the grill and I think it makes the motor's job easier since the spit and drum aren't hanging on the coupler.  By the way, the motor , motor mount and baseplate is very well made and I especially appreciate the holes being pre-threaded for the electrical boxes.  I chose to mount an unswitched duplex outlet on the back position to give me a place to conveniently plug in a fan to blow on the motor when I start doing big long roast sessions.  To make the grill more efficient on gas, I blocked off about 70% of the rear vent with a piece of carpet threshold that fit perfectly and already had a slight bend which makes it press against the grill base nicely when the hood is closed.

Enough tech-stuff--forgive me, I'm an engineer--the drum is a work of art and the motor and mounts are terrific and the whole kit is well thought-out and it makes GREAT COFFEE!  I've done several roasts using your
suggested profile for 1lb batches and I'm getting the hang of it!  I will graduate to larger batches when I decide what kind of beans I want to order in quantity.  The only bad thing about this setup is that I want to roast all the time and you need lots of beans in your inventory to have all that fun!  The picture attached is Guatemala--Villa Herminia at a very even roast...delicious.

Thanks for your great products, and even more for your superb customer service!  Keep up the good work!

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.

Hey Shane-- just did my 50th roast last night.  I am really excited about the outcome.  The 1 and 2 lb roasts go a little fast, since my grill puts out a lot of heat.  But the 5 pounds are going about 15-17 minutes and the flavor is fantastic.  Great product.