Home Coffee Roasting - Building A Gas BBQ Grill Roaster

[DougGuy]

I have been a home coffee roaster for about 6 years now, I started off with the bottom of a West Bend Stir Crazy popcorn popper which you strip the guts out of and leave only the motor, and you replace the plastic actuator shaft with one made of metal from a 1/4" drive extension. The heating unit is the top of a Galloping Gourmet tabletop convection oven, and it will roast 1lb of coffee in about 17 minutes or so, and for $35 bucks invested? Heh IT ROCKS!!

I could run it in late fall and roast enough coffee to last me until spring so I didn't have to roast in cold temps but it didn't really go fast enough and the beans come out fairly unevenly roasted. This isn't such a bad thing because some of the beans have the flavors of a medium roast, and other darker beans have that baker's chocolate aroma and flavor so it's a complex set of tastes and smells that come from this roast so the inefficiency of the "Turbo Crazy" roaster isn't unliveable.

The new roaster is born of wanting to reduce roasting time by increasing capacity and also to even out the finished roasts. Now... I have been watching fleabay for a couple of years, and the cost of a roaster that will handle even 1kg or 2lbs of beans is ASTRONOMICAL! Even a hobby built, semi-professional roaster built on the Ronco 4000 rotisserie oven can run you into a couple of thousand dollars!

So.. After doing some research and speaking with the very fine craftsman that sells these high quality semi professional home built roasters on ebay, (he himself roasts his own coffee, in a 2lb drum, in a Char Grill gas grill) I decided to abandon plans I had to convert a Craigslisted Ronco rotisserie oven, and move on to a gas grill with a rotating drum.

The spark that started the fire was this Sunbeam Model 340 grill on Craigslist for $45, and when I saw how high the arch in the lid was (makes for a larger drum = more capacity) and then saw the size of the flame around the burner, I knew this one could be made to work so I lit out and got the grill, drew up some plans, ordered the perforated stainless steel sheet for the drum, sourced out some scrap 16ga stainless for the cone and the nozzle was a scrap piece of 3" tubing I took home from a big stainless pipe job in a pharmaceutical plant...

I will update the post as progress is made but if you google BBQ coffee roaster you will find countless hundreds of youtube vids, construction plans, photo essays of home built units, etc.. Here is mine. I can roast and enjoy the best coffees in the world, for about $5/lb on average, Starsucks can KISS my hind side..







Material laid out ready for cutting and fabrication:



After splicing together the perforated sheet metal (VERY tedious work I might add too!) with the TiG welder, it was rolled rather crudely around an oxygen bottle with ratchet straps and eventually bent the rest of the way in a small home brew brake press, which also rolled the cone most of the way and I am able to force it into the final fitment for welding..



TiG welding the pieces of the cone:



Attaching the nozzle to create the "Tin Man's Hat"



Drum fitted together, laying in grill to check placement, ready for welding:





Bottom of drum showing drive connection, a Craftsman 1/2" socket cut off and welded:

[GhostHawk]

I am into roasting my own, if for no other reason when all the preroasted ground coffee is years old and has no flavor I have a stash of green unroasted beans that will be awesome.

This is what I use mainly. Although I have touched up a batch with a simple stainless steel mixing bowl and a Harbor freight heat gun. I loved the control I had, started out with hot beans out of the roaster and swirled the bowl with the left as I held the heat gun with the right. You could really get the shade exactly where you want it. And you could see, smell, hear the crack better.

I do not have a huge stash of green beans. 3 lbs of 2 different beans and 5 lbs of a third. I tend towards the Nicuaruga, Honduras stuff, mellow but with rich flavor.

I also have a fair stash of Tea and working on building it up a bit.

Familiar tastes, smells that remind one of better days can be very calming and enjoyable.

The other side benefit is that coffee roaster makes awesome popcorn. Especially if you get the good flavor mix to go with it. Just takes a little, and a little oil.

More and more when I look at things I might want I look at them with an eye to "can I use this without power? Without natural Gas? Old fashioned hand power kitchen implements, stuff that works when nothing else does. Call me crazy.

https://www.amazon.com/Wabash-Valley...popcorn+popper

[dbarry1]

You guys buying your beans at SweetMarias? They have awesome stuff.

https://www.sweetmarias.com/

[Moonie]

I get my beans from sweetmarias, I have an I-roast2 (I-roar2 as they are not so affectionately referred to as they are very loud). I've been roasting my own coffee for about a dozen years.

I've often thought about doing this with a gas grill, looks like a great project DougGuy.

[dbarry1]

Here is another one my brother sent me. Not as big or awesome as DougGuy's - but one I might do working my way up to DG's!

http://edibleoklahomacity.ediblecomm...coffee-roaster

[square butte]

I've been waiting for this thread for quite a while

[DougGuy]

Here is another one my brother sent me. Not as big or awesome as DougGuy's - but one I might do working my way up to DG's!

http://edibleoklahomacity.ediblecomm...coffee-roaster

I have been using one of these ^^^^ for 6yrs. They do 1lb roasts okay, not real evenly roasted but hey I didn't complain and none of the folks that came by here did either! Strip the heating coil out of the popcorn popper, replace the plastic shaft with a metal one, make a 1 1/2" spacer with an opening in it, stick the top of a Galloping Gourmet on top of it, dump the coffee in and turn it on! Mine cost about $35 all together.

[Shiloh]

Post pics of the results.

Shiloh

[Wayne Smith]

Doug, I don't see a rotisserie motor. How are you planning to keep it rotating?

[DougGuy]

Doug, I don't see a rotisserie motor. How are you planning to keep it rotating?

Confucius say: Man who put cart before horse confuse hell out of horse..

Rotisserie motor turns too slow, was going to use the motor out of the Ronco rotisserie but I am told by a more experienced builder that it may be too weak to turn the stainless drum + 5lbs of coffee beans so I went by my buddy's place and found a 120vac gear reduction motor that spins 43rpm and I will mount and try this one to start with.

Some of the more "equipped" roasters that are using the mega-expensive professional Probat roasters are dialing the drum speed down to a single rpm, they are running them at 47 and 48 and 49rpm, saying that even a 1 rpm variation creates a different roast. Coffee in these big roasters is heated both by convection and conduction, they claim that the 48rpm drum speed keeps the coffee falling through the middle of the drum from being lifted by the blades, and spending less time in contact with the surface of the drum, and the coffee tastes different. They also rave about the fact that the factory refurbished Probat roasters come with a cast iron drum instead of a steel drum, and I'm like "Well, if the coffee spends more time in midair being agitated and less time touching the drum, what the hell is the difference?"

43rpm may be good, I may have to use one of my buddy's variable speed DC treadmill motors to dial in drum speed. And we thought casting boolits was a rabbit hole with no bottom? PUH-LEEZ don't let me get sucked into this thing to the degree of spending more time looking at graphs on a laptop than roasting and drinking and enjoying my coffee...

[MaryB]

Start brewing beer if you want a rabbit hole LOL

[DougGuy]

More progress made, I got a motor from a buddy that said 43rpm on it, but after testing it was way slower so I can't use it. Bit the bullet and ordered a new one from fleabay, 45rpm, with a coupler that will fit both the motor shaft and the drive shaft that I have machined to 10mm diameter. A guy on ebay had some 10mm shaft but he wanted to be greedy so I machined my own from some 1/2" cold rolled stock I had on hand. I cut a 3/8" drive extension and welded that onto the 10mm rod to make my driveshaft. Brackets were made to mount pillar block bearings on the drive side, and ball bearings on the neck side, I used a piece of 1/4" cold rolled stock as a layout tool to establish centerline and align the brackets and bearings all on the same center.

[chuckbuster]

Guess we will bump this one.

I am running (doing my best to wear out) a BEHMOR 1600+
Check out BURMAN COFFEE TRADERS for beans
Kevin

[frankenfab]

Awesome engineering and fab work, Doug.

[DougGuy]

Well, I have to admit to an error on my part, I ordered the stainless with 3/16" holes. It seemed about right, but a bunch of the green coffee beans made their way through the holes and I was forced to drop back and punt, I had to order another sheet of stainless with 5/32" holes and I couldn't get it in the thickness I wanted so this is thinner but I hope it will be thick enough to do the job. It will be lighter which will make it easier on the motor. and easier to handle the drum as well.

More pics as work progresses. Have gotten some other welding work coming in so might have to set the roaster aside for a week or two.

[MaryB]

Save the original for roasting chili's!

[DougGuy]

Save the original for roasting chili's!

Or peanuts! I have some green Virginia jumbos stashed here somewhere!

[leftiye]

YER gonna love this. Coffee is best freshly roasted, freshly brewed. This means a few hours to a few days after roasting on the beans, and an hour on the brew for best flavor. If you make a pound to a ton of roasted beans, you aren't doing much better than the store does. And try Ethiopian Sidamo, and Yergacheffe, Kenya AA, and Karogoto, Panama geisha varietals for good stuff! I brew it with a french press, but strain it through 50 mesh (no pressing) into my 1 quart cup. Viva the roasters.

[DougGuy]

Well I have FINALLY gotten the Sunbeam 340 Gas Coffee Roaster done and it is roasting coffee fast, and good!

I set the drum on fire with the first batch of beans but hey, if you don't set a batch of beans on fire you ain't hittin' on diddlysquat right?? Got that out of the way right off the bat, boy this thing ramps up QUICK if you got the burner turned up too far! The rest of the roasts I did today went great.



Here is a youtube looking into the drum while it is running, this is about 8 minutes into a roast, the beans are just starting to turn color, and I have some photos of beans it roasted I will post after this video, I have a couple other vids to post but waiting on youtube to finish editing them so they aren't up sideways. Dontcha hate that? Makes my neck hurt!

[DougGuy]

I think we have some Ethiopia Dry Process Wollega Lega Wato (say THAT 3 times real fast! )



Guatema Huehuetenango Xinabgajul Peaberry: