One Pound Roaster For under 100

[sea330]

Keep your eyes open on ebay, you can find some good ones. Omega, or even from China, good enough for what we do.

[espressomaker]

cant wait for the shipping need it quick
want to start profiling

[peter]

But get a digital thermometer on ebay anyway, just 'cuz we said so.   

Shoulda listened...  you'da had it by now.   


I've seen similar models in stores w/ good kitchen departments, but be careful because most of them nowadays only go up to 392F.

[mrjay]

you guys are a tough audience 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/6802II-2-Channel-Two-Type-Digital-Thermometer-Thermocouples-Sensor-/190823818292?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2c6dfc6434

I just got one of these on Monday... came with 2 thermocouples rated to 400C and a 9v battery for $19 shipped from New Jersey.  Took 4 biz days to arrive here in So Cal.  I've noticed a few of these in use by home roasters, as I've slowly been wading thru posts on sc/to roasters. 

[mp]

you guys are a tough audience 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/6802II-2-Channel-Two-Type-Digital-Thermometer-Thermocouples-Sensor-/190823818292?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2c6dfc6434

I just got one of these on Monday... came with 2 thermocouples rated to 400C and a 9v battery for $19 shipped from New Jersey.  Took 4 biz days to arrive here in So Cal.  I've noticed a few of these in use by home roasters, as I've slowly been wading thru posts on sc/to roasters.

Yeah ... I got one of these too.

Good thermometer.

 

[sea330]

These are fairly good temp meters the only thing I would do is find good K type TC at least 20 gauge, the ones that come with are kinda flimsy, I bet there 28 or 30 gauge. The TC mini connectors are easy to get and they are cheap. You can make your own thermocouples, just purchase some good K type thermocouple wire and weld the tip, works great. I see 20 gauge TC wire on ebay all the time

[mrjay]

I finally got to try a test roast with the dual thermocouples today.  Until now, I've been roasting my sound, sight and smell.
At the same time, this was also a test of a new stir arm, plagiarized from Peter's design and a test roast with just 1 cup of Kona beans that I wanted to take to city+.  The first time I roasted these beans, I only took them to barely past 1c and they were a bit sour.

I enjoy roasting and hope having both environment temp and bean temp will help me better reproduce results, once I somewhat figure out what the heck I am doing

Ambient temp was 80f and I set the T1 thermocouple low under the spacer ring so it would be in the bean mass, with the T2 over the ring so it would read ET about mid point from the SC plate and the top of the TO glass.
Started with 1 cup of green beans @ 175gm -- roasted weight was 145gm and about 1 3/4 cups -- the just roasted beans smell slightly sweet (brown sugar?) in a glass jar.

Preheated the TO to 300 and when ET thermocouple said 300, dropped beans in and turned TO to 350
At ~4minutes beans were just starting to turn tan, turned TO to 400 
@ ~8 minutes beans were tan, turned TO to 437, BT was increasing past 350
First pop of 1c started at ~12mins, BT was 395-400 and ET was 470 - turned TO down to 415
1c was going strong until ~15 minutes, BT was ~406-410 and ET 462
At 19 minutes I heard first snap of 2c - BT was 426 and ET 462
Pulled beans and immediately cooled                     
By sight and sound (barely 2c) I'd think beans were city+ to full, but bean temp was only 426, wouldn't that be more of a city than city+???  I'd appreciate any advice - finally finished the 37 pages of posts in the SC/TO profiles thread (took several evenings of perusing).  Some stuff I read there is the reason I took the beans more slowly thru drying and tried to keep them at ~350f for 3-4 minutes.

Below should be pics of the roasted beans, the TC placement (1 under the spacer ring and 1 over), and my leaf blower-colander bean cooler that sucks air down thru the beans and cools them to touch in ~15 seconds

[sea330]

Bravo, fine job. Roasting is a never ending journey, so many variables to get it right. I don't let my beans get over 440 deg, it will swing 438 to 445. Fancy looking stir arm, was that Peters idea. I don't like the TCs that come with the meters they have that rubber looking stuff on the end. I would recommend finding some good ones at least 20 gauge, a little stiffer so they would stay in position. You will learn more than most methods of roasting using the SC/TO system. I don't know who thought this up originally but to me it is pure innovation

[peter]

First pop of 1c started at ~12mins, BT was 395-400 and ET was 470 - turned TO down to 415
1c was going strong until ~15 minutes, BT was ~406-410 and ET 462
At 19 minutes I heard first snap of 2c - BT was 426 and ET 462
Pulled beans and immediately cooled                     
By sight and sound (barely 2c) I'd think beans were city+ to full, but bean temp was only 426, wouldn't that be more of a city than city+??? 

Nice job on the stirring arm.  Not easy, is it?

Even tho' your temps seem fairly typical, remember that your numbers are your numbers and they may not directly translate to what others see.

That said, if you heard some outliers of 2C, then 426 for you is a FC or FC+.  Another marker to watch for, if you want to stop just short of that is the noticeable increase in smoke just before 2C starts.

I'd also say that if your 1C is beginning at 395, a 30-degree jump to 425 is much more than a City or C+.  My guess is it might take a 20 degree increase to clear 1C, so a City would be somewhere around 415 on your rig.  If you're aiming for C or C+, look for wrinkles on the bean surface.

[mrjay]

Thanks for the feedback.
Making that stirring arm, like forming a flat aluminum strip into a nice round spacer ring, was deceptively difficult... I think I spent about an hour to get the wire in the basic shape, and then another 20 minutes or so to fine tune it on the SC.  Can't wait to try it again with a full batch of about 350gm of beans.  But in it's debut, I like the way it pushes the beans in from the edge.

I didn't even think about the temp differential from first pop of 1c to when I should pull the beans... thanks for that tip, it will be a big help with my future roasts.   Not sure what you mean by "wrinkles"... will go check out the SM beans photo page now to see if I can figure that out.

As machines go, I love this SC/TO roasting.

[espressomaker]

got my thermometer,
should i remove the heating element from the sc?
also how should i profile the no name o from sweet marias/
thanks everybody

[MMW]

I just love this

[sea330]

I left the Heating element in and installed a dimmer in series to turn the heat down, if you go this way, leave the thermester in the circuit just to be safe. I use a watt meter just as a ref point, I find 320 watt load seems to work fairly good, however I am still experimenting to find that sweet spot.. The beans at the outer rim of the pan seems to run hotter, need to mod the stir arm to throw them back to the middle, other then that you are on the road for some great roasts.

[peter]

should i remove the heating element from the sc?

That's like the third time you've asked that question, with replies every time.  Do you not read the replies that are given to you, or what?   

[espressomaker]

good point
no just wanna be sure