I Haz A Buckit -- Mark III
The better bucket cooler -- is in the house.
Took two tries to get it right. Both used a repurposed 4-gallon freebie icing bucket cadged from the local bakery. Scrubbed and sun-dried, it lost the icing smell (thank goodness).
For I Haz A Bucket Mark II (counting I Haz A Buckit Mark I as my vacuum cleaner and double-boiler cooler), I cut a hole in the bottom to fit a small sieve or colander I had lying around, and wired the top to the cage of a $6.50 fan from the local Goodwill.
This version didn't work too well -- took about the same time to cool down a roast as I Haz A Buckit Mark I, maybe more. Probably the main problem was that the sieve was too small, so a pound of beanz made a pretty deep layer, but it couldn't have helped too much that the sieve was also a foot or more from the fan blades.
The second try worked
really well. It's too dark for photos (it gets late early these days!) but for anyone who's interested, here's how to make your own brainy and scientific I Haz A Buckit Mark III.
Make a flat-bottom sieve by sawing off the bottom four inches or so of a 4-gallon icing bucket and cutting a hole in the bottom about 9-3/4" in diameter, leaving about a 3/4" rim. (The plastic these buckets are made of cuts pretty easily.) Get a 10"
pizza screen (I bought mine from a cooking supply store) and zip-tie it in place (the plastic drills really easily too).
Zip-tie the upper part of the bucket back onto the fan cage. Fit the sieve into the upper part. This should leave the bottom of the sieve (the pizza screen part) about 6" or so from the fan cage.
And that's that -- ready to cool some beanz.
If you use a different-size bucket you'll want a different-size screen, and you may need to make the sieve a different depth. The reason I made a four-inch deep sieve was that it fits nicely into the remaining part of the bucket. Too much deeper a sieve might leave the remaining part of the bucket wide enough that the sieve would fall in or not fit right. (I'm not sure how to describe this better, but basically I guesstimated from the taper of the bucket where to cut it so that the 10.5" bottom would fit an inch or two into the remaining part. Turned out 4" was about right.)
My first 1#+ roast cooled down to ambient temps in under a minute with the fan on its high speed. This represents a
huge improvement over I Haz A Buckit Mark I and I Haz A Buckit Mark II. Feeling how strongly and rapidly the heat was blown up out of the bean mass was really surprising. I used a wooden spatula to stir for the first 30 seconds or so; after that the beanz were cool enough to move around with my bare hands.
Total cost was about $6.50 for the fan and $3 or $4 for the pizza screen. For a circle-cutter I highly recommend one of those freebie paint-stirrers and a couple of screws ... one to hold it in place in the center of the bucket's base, and one to do the cutting. It doesn't take long to get a deep enough cut that you can finish it off pretty cleanly with a utility knife. The bucket itself was a freebie, the bakery folks were not only willing to give it to me, they asked me if by any chance I wanted more of 'em. Buckets and lids. Various sizes. Bakery people are nice.
That got me thinking ... these are food-grade 4-gallon buckets, and depending on how well the lids fit (they seem to fit pretty well!) they might do for beanz storage. After getting rid of the icing smell, of course.
And ... that's the rest of the story.
