So when the doctor told me that I should not be drinking gallons of coffee each day, I decided to replace quantity with quality.  Fortunately I discovered at about the same time what true coffee should taste like when I was introduced to Transcend Coffee in Edmonton.  Unfortunately I live  500 kilometres away in the cold frozen north.  It was then that I realized that I needed to roast my own.

The Begining:

[singlepic=47,320,240,,left] I started with a rather conventional rig: an air popper, a bag a green beans, and a glass of wine. I had found from prior projects that the wine was a welcome addition to the DIY instructions.  I also added the thermometer but that is all.  It did not take long to melt down the original plastic cover but it worked well enough to give me encouragement to keep roasting.

At this stage I was trying to toss the hot beans (450° F) back in forth in a colander to cool them after roasting

[singlepic=46,320,240,,right]Cooling them down quickly after the roast was the next hurdle and solved with a industrial fan and some furnace ducting.

The biggest problem turned out to be the mess as the chaff blows off the beans as they roast.  Roasting outside worked as long as the weather was fine but winter would soon be upon us and I wasn’t sure my addiction or interest in my new hobby would survive the coming cold. It was time to move inside and build a collection system for the mess.

[singlepic=48,320,240,,right]If an industrial fan could be used to cool the beans my first thought was that a shop vac could become a fume hood to collect the chaff. This is clearly not a final solution but it did work. The shop vac hose is connected to a plumbing elbow connected to a tin can.  Remember that the plastic melted.

Things were improving but I did not want to sacrifice my work bench to the cause so the next step was to move the entire rig to what I hoped would be a more permanent solution. At this stage I salvaged on old bathroom vanity on is way to the landfill and shifted my operation there.

[singlepic=51,320,240,,left] Okay, it worked.
The fan is inside the vanity and blows up through the hole in the counter top (still a piece of plywood)
But…
The shop-vac is way so noisy it is impossible to hear the second crack and I was constantly over roasting -even with the thermometer.  Plastic pipe still melts after a couple of consecutive roasts. Duc tape is functional but ugly. The fan had a tendency to blow the beans all over the garage.  The entire house smelled of coffee (not all bad) but also smoke to often (bad). The shop-vac and the roaster on the same circuit kept blowing a breaker.  But the coffee was good! Time to get serious.

New design

[singlepic=50,320,240,,left]The inspiration came from an old furnace that a friend had given me years ago and I could not bring myself to throw it out.
Furnaces suck in air from one place, heat it up and blow it out. Why couldn’t the blower suck the chaff through the furnace filter and then blow out to cool my beans.

By putting a carbon filter from a stove fume hood on the exhaust I could cut done on the smoke and aroma.

The mods:

I won’t bore you with the text.  The pictures tell the story

[singlepic=59,320,240,,left]Winter arrived in the night and we woke to fresh snow and cold. In fact it was so cold the poor little popper could not get up to temperature and I ended up baking the first roast.  I then moved the entire contraption into the sunroom and turned up the heat.

Snuffy (my new fume hood made from a dryer vent hose) purred quietly and quivered with excitement as he sucked up all the chaff.  The roast was a nice full city +. (Cup Excellence – Guatemalan)

This is the best part that makes it all worth while:

Freshly roasted good coffee 🙂