Rotisserie Roaster

Arnold J Rimmer

Member
2017 Sabbatical Fail
Artisan Producer
Joined
Apr 10, 2015
Location
NSW Central Coast
I just thought I would share my cunning plan with everyone, as I think it is a good one. If it turns out not to be, then it will only have cost about 30 coffees...

This morning Oct 7, Aldi has a small portable oven for sale for $59.99, with a rotisserie function built in. The rotisserie shaft itself is a measly 6mm square... but this is where it all falls into place.

I'm not sure how long this link will last:

https://www.aldi.com.au/en/special-.../p/25l-toaster-oven-with-rotisserie-function/

And then..... on eBay, you can buy a cylindrical rotisserie cage, which suits a 6mm square rotisserie shaft:

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/NEW-2lb-...r-Drum-Oven-/131621060623?hash=item1ea53a000f

As you can see, it fits right, and holds an easy 400-500g, if you are greedy, and want to roast a lot at once.

The cage comes from China, so that will take a while to arrive, and I have already purchased the oven.

For $120 or thereabouts, I think I can do worse, and it would surely have to be better than spooning 1/3 of a cup of green beans into a popcorn blaster at a time.

I think with a little experimenting with the temperature settings, I should be able to hit the 12-14 minute roast, depending on the depth of roast.

Fingers crossed. Updates as they happen.
 
Great minds obviously think alike as when I saw that lil oven in the Aldi catalogue with that rotisserie aspect I instantly thought of a DIY-poor man's Behmor roaster. That said I think you're going to run into a number of issues:
- With no where for the chaff to go whilst you're roasting possible chaff fires could occur
- The biggest issue being that when you're done roasting you need to remove the beans &/or roasting drum to get the beans out to quickly cool them. I'm sure a reasonable way could be found but it'd be somewhat problematic given that it's surrounded by hot metal etc etc

Those are just off the top of my head - but am sure both could be worked around without major hassle IF a Behmor copy is what you want.

Personally though if you're really wanting to have a home roaster you really can't go past a KKTO (which I just happen to be in the process of building now myself). I won't rehash their pro's & cons as there's loads out there on them but it'd be a similar overall cost and will give a vastly superior result on multiple levels (size of roast, auto-chaff removal, replaceability of parts etc). There's a massive number of folks who've built them (or bought from the designer/inventor, Koffee Kosmo) and I've never seen a bad word written. It's just a very good design and it works exceptionally well....not saying this one won't work but folks have flocked to the KKTO for good reason.

Anyway see what suits you best, I used to have a breadmaker+heatgun coretto but tired of it's flaws and am around 75% through my KKTO build, which I've done on a very low budget & taken my time with. If you do go ahead with the build look forward to hearing how it goes. :)
 
Thanks for the thoughts. I have considered your 2 main points.

1. For the chaff, I'm planning on screening the fan port. I'm also going to try to shield the bulk of the chaff from the heat elements, probably with some sort of foil catchment. We will see, once the drum arrives.

I think I also have an option to only run the upper heat elements, so I can avoid some flame hazard that way, possibly.

2. The rotisserie axle removes quickly, with a handle that can pluck it from the oven in a second or so. The handle comes with the oven.

Interested to see how your KKTO shapes up as well, once completed.
 
@Arnold J Rimmer , sounds logical - the chaff shouldn't be too much of a hassle - just make sure you do it outside etc as you'll get a LOT of smoke and mess. If you use the right cooling method (highly recommend making an exhaust fan in bucket cooler) you'll be able to get rid of most of the chaff pretty easily. But I could imagine that the chaff will just fall to the bottom of the oven and hopefully not get into troubles etc.

It's definitely a good idea and should work pretty well.

PS. @gthomas04 could be an idea for your bean roasting aspirations.

PPS. You're definitely light years ahead using this than a popcorn roaster - I'd imagine you'll find that the best results will come from varying the amount of beans in it RATHER than the temp (which you'd prolly want to keep set at say 225C - possibly opening the door to drop the temp at 1C (which is a technique used by many roasters and should also help with chaff).
 
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Absolutely! The amount of chaff from small amounts in the popcorn popper is bad enough. The oven comes with a tray that I can use for final cooling, but I also have a large colander that I use to set the chaff free. It is also good for air cooling the beans as they are tossed.

Buy yes, I am aiming to chaff-proof the oven as much as I can, and outside / in the garage is going to be the roasting station.

BTW, If anyone is watching to see how this pans out, places like Dealsdirect also sell a similar oven most days of the week. The Aldi one is more compact, and doesn't have the hotplates on the top - it is strictly an oven.
 
@Arnold J Rimmer , sounds logical - the chaff shouldn't be too much of a hassle - just make sure you do it outside etc as you'll get a LOT of smoke and mess. If you use the right cooling method (highly recommend making an exhaust fan in bucket cooler) you'll be able to get rid of most of the chaff pretty easily. But I could imagine that the chaff will just fall to the bottom of the oven and hopefully not get into troubles etc.

It's definitely a good idea and should work pretty well.

PS. @gthomas04 could be an idea for your bean roasting aspirations.

PPS. You're definitely light years ahead using this than a popcorn roaster - I'd imagine you'll find that the best results will come from varying the amount of beans in it RATHER than the temp (which you'd prolly want to keep set at say 225C - possibly opening the door to drop the temp at 1C (which is a technique used by many roasters and should also help with chaff).

@Nick the Knife - email sent regarding this and other bits and pieces.
 
UPDATE:
The rotisserie drum arrived this afternoon.
If I get the chance tonight, I will burn it - and the oven - in for a spell, to get the powder coat smell out of there, and to ensure that it is ready to go.
The drum also has a fixed agitator inside, which I was hoping, but not expecting. Bonus.

Pics to come.
 
I do hope this goes well for you BUT I flagged this idea over at CoffeeSnobs and it was shot down with extreme prejudice by several senior members there. Their concerns were airflow, chaff build up and smoke management/exhausting.

Like I said I sincerely hope you are atleast able to get it working reasonably well but they seemed to think that a drum roaster in a toaster oven's rotisserie isn't overly new & has always failed.

On a positive segue my KKTO roaster has been fully operational & had it's maiden first roast, which was very good and without any exaggeration probably the most even roast I've ever done in ~5yrs+ of roasting - really very similar to a commercial drum roaster in the quality of the result. :)

Anyway look forward to hearing & seeing how your process goes - make sure you do those first few roasts with a fireblanket or similar nearby & with very good ventilation as I think you're going to get a LOT of smoke. :)
 
I'm glad your system is doing so well. Even roast is what I'm chasing here, too.

Re: Coffee Snobs... No surprises there. I would have been shocked if they hadn't shot it down. I was actually thinking about hooking up a small CPU fan or similar, to tackle airflow issues. We shall see.

I have a few hacks that I can implement, as each roadblock arises.

Count so far is $123. If it works better than the popcorn maker, then I think I'll consider myself in front.

I doubt I'll go above 200g at a time. I don't really see the need.
 
:) Exactly - I even had Starbucks at one time in my travels OS which I believe in some quarters is even referred to as coffee.
 
Would to believe me if I Insisted they even have different types of coffee there?
So you can get your coffee snob on and order something different to everyone else, just like they're doing :)
 
Yes i think some do jokingly refer to what starbucks and macca's serve as "coffee".
Me i like it how the turks do it. If ya can't stand a spoon up in it then watch it slowly disolve in cause it's so strong then why bother :p

i know you said it was going to be in the garage ? why not use an oven fan mounted outside of the door with a hole cut through to extract smoke and keep up a nice air-flow? while a pc fan sounds like it would do the job i'd be worried that the plastic used in it's construction wouldn't like that much heat and it would end up as a molten blob after a while
 
There is a fan that pulls air from the bottom half of the oven and re-introduces it at the top. I was going to put finer mesh over this, to stop any large chaff movement through the fan tunnel.

The PC fan I had in mind was for collecting/extracting the chaff, I was thinking of creating some kind of funnel that can sit outside of the lower half of the drum, and catch the chaff as it falls. Bunnings sells sheets of 1mm aluminium, which would be very easy to manipulate into shape. I do take your point about the plastic not holding up to the heat. I'll look around... I'm sure that there is something out there I can use.

In the meantime, I have a 105cfm fan that I can experiment with. I was going to use it to rapid-cool my telescope, but it runs a risk of introducing moisture into that particular closed system (Schmidt-Cassegrain optics).
 
Looks like I was wrong about this unit having a fan built-in. I'll have to find something that I can hatchet-job onto a side wall, and wire-in somewhere. As @PapaDooks alluded to, I may need to locate an oven fan or similar.

In other news, while it was a relatively slow process, I was able to roast some very presentable and even-coloured beans on Saturday morning. It took 20-25 minutes, which was too long, but having no airflow, or even moving air really would not have helped.

I did up some Costa Rican, honey washed organic beans to a medium (batch 1), and medium dark (batch 2) roast. Next Saturday I will do some Sumatran to a real deep dark, and see how that goes. In the meantime, I will see over the coming days, how the latest batch cups.

The drum is very good in that it holds the bulk of the chaff for the airing process. I only had a small amount land on the foil catcher that I made, so I made it snow afterwards off the balcony. Smoke didn't seem to be a big issue, but it did have a nice honey aroma to it. I did the roasting just outside the front of the garage, so no smoke indoors.

Because of all of the air gaps in the drum mesh, it was fast to cool after removing from the oven, but the beans needed a few minutes of flipping to (a) get rid of the bulk of the chaff, and (b) to air-cool as they were being tossed.

If I get home with enough day light, I will snap a pic and upload the link.
 
for the cooling process if you have a codless drill maybe make up a shaft you can slip the drum onto that fits into the cordless and set it to real slow speed and let it run for a while like that ?
 
How much was the pre-roast weight of the batch you roasted?

20-25mins isn't necessarily too long - well depending on whereabouts in roasting depth you too k the beans. Most folks do tend to dump & cool at the first cracks of 2C. And whist mainstream thinking has long been to aim for 1C@13-14min and then 2C@4-5min after that - a lot of roaster will draw it out a lil more going for 1C@17min and 2C@+6-8min.

I'd definitely look into a better cooling solution, several minutes to cool the beans is far too long. It sounds like you're cooling them in the drum and thats never going to be very effective.

Before you go modding the oven too much or buying extra bits I'd try and project-anticipate if realistically with the extra mods etc it's going to be feasible for this roaster to fulfill your needs. As the only thing worse than a project that ends up being a PITA with loads of mods on top of mods is one thats the same but still doesn't quite scratch that itch.

You know you need to pop some pix up for us or none of this happened. ;-)
 
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