I turned the power on full bore, I wanted to put it through it's paces so yep, it got the whole 10 Kilowatts! I started the time and let it go.
The temperature raised in a nice smooth gradient and the beans went through their usual cycles without a hitch.
I finally started hitting first crack in earnest around 9 minutes or so and it finished in about 11.5 to 12 minutes.
One thing to keep in mind with bigger batches, on a small batch the heat is ... here and gone... woof that quick because the bean mass is only an inch or so thick. On a big batch you got 7 inches of beans or so you are pushing the air mass through. It has longer contact time with the beans so can transfer more of the heat to them, you are actually roasting a bit more efficiently this way.
As you can see the chaff is really starting to fly here! THIS is why you roast outside or with a collector etc, not to mention the smoke.
Ok, roast is done, I hear first crack is done and temp is starting to climb pretty quick so I pulled it. I should probably build an external cooler but what I do in the meantime that has worked pleasantly well is, ill put the colander over the top of the roaster and crank up the loft air to throw the beans around. It will cool them down in about a minute and a half to two minutes. You may be able to get the surface temperature down in 30 seconds with a huge fan and all but you have a lot of internal heat in then that needs to work it's way to the outside to be cooled down too. That takes a little time.
As you can see, they DID expand significantly, now the roast chamber is about 3/4 full!. The chamber comes with a wire like cage that sort of fits on top of it, so the beans bounce off it and back into the roast chamber if they loft too much. I am thinking if you were to build a taller basket around them you could roast more. THIS is the limiting factor here is room, if there is no room to loft you'd end up throwing your beans all over the place.
If you were good with metalworking you probably could build a taller roasting chamber too and that would hold more beans. I truly feel this thing would be able to do close to 10 pounds if you had the physical room in it to do so. I am not trying to say anything bad about the machine just saying it has TONS of spare power to handle pretty much anything you can fit into it, and if you like to tinker, even more!
Finally the finished product. The original colander is full, I filled a half gallon bucket behind it, not to mention the probably 1/4 to 1/2 Lb I spilled on the floor when I banged my arm moving the cooler outside.
In closing, this machine can handle pretty much what you throw into it to roast, this is NOT one of those tall tales that claim to do a pound but you are lucky to get 3/4 Lb thru it properly. This machine is actually the other way around, it has more than enough power to finish a roast instead of barely enough power to roast.
An 8 Pound roaster for $3000. You can't beat that with a stick. Oh and it also does popcorn REALLY well and cocoa beans too.
Aaron
