Coffee Discussion boards > Hardware & Equipment
Quest M3 Users
Gene:
I've been using the Quest for about 2 years. Did the same as wattodo except no ceramic blanket instead I painted the drum. I roast 285g to wind up with 8oz batches. I did 10 batches yesterday back to back with just a 1/2 hour break for lunch at batch 5. No problem at all. I cool the beans by blowing air up from the bottom of a 12" flat flour sifter laid on top of a 24" floor fan that rests on a stool horizontally up against the counter. Beans cool to room temp. in 2 minutes and chaff flies all over my kitchen. I lay a 4" dryer hose up against the back of the roaster and up to my range hood where I have it connected to the filter with a simple wire. This gives me more air through the roaster when needed and keeps the smoke out of the house. I plug the roaster into a 'Kill a Watt' to control the heat level. This gives me a more accurate way to control the heat than relying on the amp meter on the roaster. My roaster was manufactured in March 2011.
Gene
djbetterly:
A few questions:
* What is your average roast size?
* Charge temp? (Based on what thermocouple)
* Regarding the fan, what do you find works the best? I recently tried two roasts, one with fan at #2 and one with fan at #4 and noticed a big
difference in body and flavor of the roast..for the worse. I'm curious what you guys do?
rbk:
I'm rocking a quest as well. I have one of the newer ones (thinner drum), EricS probes (BT/MET), and a black drum. I've been using batch sizes of 250g, though I like the idea of adjusting it such that I get 8oz of roasted coffee. Charge temps depend on the coffee, somewhere around 400F (BT) for standard profiles. For naturals and other super-fruity coffee's I've had good results with dragging out drying (subsequently spending less time in development) so I'll charge a bit lower, maybe ~350. I make many fan adjustments as roasts progress, monkey-turning knobs to try and keep BT on track and keep MET at reasonable values, so I don't have any hard advices there.
Been having a lot of fun with it. And fortunately there seems to be no shortage of quest experts scattered about the various coffee fora.
djbetterly:
Good to hear! I purposely had this stickies because of all the forums I'm on, there really isn't a singled out quest forum, so I'm happy this one is stickied.
I've had good luck charging at 300 BT but I keep the fan at one speed until first crack then go full throttle. I added the PID Setup with the arduino/tc4, SSR and Eric S. probes to mine so artisan can control the temperature of the elements. I'm incredibley happy with the accuracy of the software and the PID. The PID also allows for me to repeat a roast quite easily. It's not expensive to do, but it's slightly tricky if you have no wiring experience.
I've attached two photos of my setup as well.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
rbk:
Very cool! What kind of improvements did you notice by adding insulation? From what I read it makes it easier to "coast" at constant METs? I also have to imagine it increases overall efficiency (same temp at lower amps), much like the black drum.
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