So what turbo oven would make a perfect pairing with this?
It's gotta be comparably cheap.
I'm using an old Sunpentown that doesn't give it up like it used to. The oven part of the lid is just a little smaller than the diameter of the HK popper, so if you have an oven with a broken glass top it could be used as well with a little modification. I would guess that if your oven was full strength, you would want a taller riser than normal. I used a UFO before with a springboard riser RTV'ed (also has a couple of screws drilled in to keep it in place) onto the surface with a trimmed stir bar for smaller samples, but I removed the ring on that one for larger batches before I passed it on. The better agitation that you get when the beans cover the surface is the attraction with this, just dropping 2 ounces of beans into a full size turbocrazy will usually result in tipping. The #5 Lo Mejor Monserrate sample that I got was about 3 ounces (and actually sold out before the sample arrived
) but it roasted up very nicely in this Hello Kitty device. The lower power draw may make it possible to run several of these at one time - I'll probably pick a few more of these up for that reason... It would sure be nice to roast up 30 CoE samples in 2 hours... Or several different roast levels of one sample for cupping in the same time it would normally take to do one.
Why not use an air-popper? Air poppers are a bit more sensitive to batch size than turbocrazy-style roasters. The amount roasted, as well as the bean size and density, can affect the circulation in the popper chamber and significantly alter the roast characteristics. When you only have a 2-3oz sample for cupping, and it is precious/irreplaceable, having a forgiving and versatile sample roaster is very appealing.
