Home Coffee Roasting with an RK Drum, part 3

The more I use my RK Drum & gas grill, the more control I am getting over my roasts. I've managed to reduce the roast times to Ron's suggested time range by increasing the gas significantly during the first few minutes of the roast. I'm not sure this is the right approach, as Ron Kyle tells me that early application of too much heat is a good way to get a melange roast. That's what I got with 9oz of Sweet Maria's Donkey Blend this yesterday. I carried this well into second crack and got a blend of Vienna roast and Full City +. I expect it to be very good.

Ron has made a design change to the internals since I got my drum. He notes that it enables the user to get a more consistent roast at the normal rotisserie speed of 6 RPM. Many folks have upgraded to 57 RPM gear motors to run their rotisserie for coffee roasting. Ron also sold a pre-built 57 RPM motor assembly for the RK Drum at his site.

I've gotten my motor, some aluminum angle bar (1.5"x1.5"x1/8"x4'), mounting screws for the motor, a switch, a mounting box for the switch, strain-relief plugs for the box, the clamps to clamp the assembly to the grill, and power wiring to go to the extension cord. Tomorrow, I hope to put this together into a motor assembly (hope, hope...). The Dremel and electric drill (both battery powered) are charged and ready to go.

[a day passes]

I got the motor assembly all completed. Then, I tried to find some aluminum plate to make the base for the motor. WOW! Ron's price for his motor & base assembly isn't that high, after all. Aluminum in 3/16" or 1/4" sheet is expensive, even at sizes like 12"x24". I ended up buying 12"x30" 1/8" aluminum sheet that had tread marks molded into one side, at a price of $12. The asking price for an 18"x36" piece was $34, which was in line with a 12"x24" 3/16" piece of aluminum plate at one of the big discount hardware stores. Now, I just have to figure out how to build my motor base out of plate and angle pieces. That's a project for tomorrow.

Coffee Roasting |  2 |  Hottop |  2 |  Hottop Tips |  RK Drum |  2 |  3 |  4 |  5

 

 

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