Grill/Drum Roaster Profiles, Questions, Tips, & Tricks

[headchange4u]

I worked started work on my grill/RK drum setup this weekend. I had a couple of questions so I thought it might be a good idea to start a thread for grill/drum roasting.

My cousin ended up giving me a older, but still really nice stainless steel grill with the rotisserie mounts already in place. The grill had also been modified for use with natural gas. I replaced the jets this weekend so it can once again be used with propane. I now have to replace the burner. Will a standard quality burner suffice or should I go ahead and get something of a little better quality. Since this burner won't have hot grease drippings to contend with, I am assuming a standard burner will be fine.

This grill has seen a lot use and I want to thoroughly clean it so my coffee does not taste like grilled meat. Any suggestion of what to use to get the grill as clean as possible?

Heat tiles. Do you use them in you grill/drum setup? Best source for heat tiles?

Do you insulate the lid of the grill? I've read that having a smaller area to heat leads to better performance. Makes sense.

I think the hardest thing that I am going to have to get used to is temp monitoring. I am used to using a thermal probe inserted directly into the bean mass in my SC/TO setup. With the grill/drum combo I am going to be monitoring the air temp inside the grill. It there any way to correlate air temp to the temp of the bean?

Being a total grill/drum newbie, I would appreciate any other tips or words of wisdom that you veteran grill/drum roasters would offer me.

[J.Jirehs Roaster]

I worked started work on my grill/RK drum setup this weekend. I had a couple of questions so I thought it might be a good idea to start a thread for grill/drum roasting.

My cousin ended up giving me a older, but still really nice stainless steel grill with the rotisserie mounts already in place. The grill had also been modified for use with natural gas. I replaced the jets this weekend so it can once again be used with propane. I now have to replace the burner. Will a standard quality burner suffice or should I go ahead and get something of a little better quality. Since this burner won't have hot grease drippings to contend with, I am assuming a standard burner will be fine.

I bean looking at my own grill project so I am a relative newbie as well but I will share what I have learned... get a stainless burner and then forget about it.... the propane has water vapor issues and that will rot  non stainless burner faster..

This grill has seen a lot use and I want to thoroughly clean it so my coffee does not taste like grilled meat. Any suggestion of what to use to get the grill as clean as possible?

I'm not sure the best method but I plan on dragging mine across the ally to the car wash and start on the engine cleaning setting with the high pressure hose..  but it is an old cast sunbeam and its pretty bad...

Heat tiles. Do you use them in you grill/drum setup? Best source for heat tiles?

Do you insulate the lid of the grill? I've read that having a smaller area to heat leads to better performance. Makes sense.

I think I will get the flat ceramic defuser plates (if anything) the kind that is full of holes... my experience with a portable gas grill and a Behmor fine mesh drum showed me that the amount of empty space around your drum is the biggest heat thief.. if the grill is too big (or the drum too small) than you will have to use more gas to get the temp up

I think the hardest thing that I am going to have to get used to is temp monitoring. I am used to using a thermal probe inserted directly into the bean mass in my SC/TO setup. With the grill/drum combo I am going to be monitoring the air temp inside the grill. It there any way to correlate air temp to the temp of the bean?

Being a total grill/drum newbie, I would appreciate any other tips or words of wisdom that you veteran grill/drum roasters would offer me.

I know their are some BBQ drums that have a probe in the bean mass but I decided to learn to feel the roast (smell, sound, gut) and I was amazed at how fast I adapted... I use the temp to see that I am on a profile of temp rise that matches my expected time goals for the roast...  on my SC/TO I can expect 1st crack at ? 390 to 410 degrees depending on bean origin in the BBQ I can expect 1st crack at a higher ambient grill air temp but it is fairly consistent temp (assuming my assent is not to fast and the beans are not still drying out)...   its fun... print out lots of roast logs take very good notes buy some cheaper beans and make lots of friends happy with your learner beans...

[Hoodie2]

Good luck with your setup, sounds like you're on the right track.  You also might want to consider a faster motor (50-60rpm), as you get a more even roast than with a standard motor (6-8rpm).  Another thing you will want to consider is a cooling pan.  With up to 4 pounds of beans, they will need to be cooled quickly or else you will end up with a darker roast than planned.   If you can come up with a cooler/de-chaffer that would be even better, especially if you roast any dry processed beans.

Gary

[headchange4u]

I'm not sure the best method but I plan on dragging mine across the ally to the car wash and start on the engine cleaning setting with the high pressure hose..  but it is an old cast sunbeam and its pretty bad...

I like the car wash idea. I was thinking Eazy Off oven cleaner. I bet that the oven cleaner coupled with a pressure bath would make things squeaky clean.

Good luck with your setup, sounds like you're on the right track.  You also might want to consider a faster motor (50-60rpm), as you get a more even roast than with a standard motor (6-8rpm).  Another thing you will want to consider is a cooling pan.  With up to 4 pounds of beans, they will need to be cooled quickly or else you will end up with a darker roast than planned.   If you can come up with a cooler/de-chaffer that would be even better, especially if you roast any dry processed beans.

Gary

I got the complete RK setup with the professional motor,wiring, mounting hardware, and 4lb drum. All I have to do is get the grill up and running and mount everything.

Cooling pan is something I gotta make but I know how I am going to do it. I've been using this modified cat litter bucket, aluminum screen, and a small 8" fan with my SC/TO setup. I stir with a wooden spoon. Cools bean quick and blows off most of the chaff:





That setup will cool about 1+lbs of beans in under 2 minutes. For the drum setup I'll be doing about the same thing only on a larger scale.. I'll build a frame just large enough to sit atop a normal sized box fan. I hope I can find a plastic storage bin that's about the same size as a box fan. Then I can cut it up just like the cat litter bucket. I'll also use the same aluminum screen.

[nimbus]

Hey man, good to hear you're close to getting it rolling. Yeah, for my cooling I used a commercial sized collander (?) kind of a big round sifter type thing with a flat screen bottom, then just put it on a propped up box fan (propped up off the ground to allow air flow).

I'm not sure on the grill question. I just got mine from the store and used it stock. No tiles or anything. But I hear tiles are recommended. I think there are some RK drum posts here if you search...

Nimbus

[J.Jirehs Roaster]

I think the tiles or insulation in the lid is good because it regulates the heat... in a larger roaster you are heating up a big heavy drum and more importantly a big mass of greens.. if the burners are turned up and the air temp rises rapidly the bean mass responds slowly... in a smaller roaster the bean mass responds quicker so raising the temp more evenly means the bean temp is more evenly raised...

That is my theory and I am sticking too it (till some engineer blows holes in it 

[ButtWhiskers]

I use ceramic insulation from McMaster-Carr www.mcmaster.com for inside the lid.  This stuff is good to 2000?+, and will allow you to not only get your heat up higher, you will use less propane.

If you can find some, honeycomb infrared ceramic block is da shizzle for a focusing your heat on the drum.  You can occasionally find these on eBay.  I have a slab that came out of a broken propane ventless heater.   I'm not sure if the ones that are sold as soldering blocks are any good - I've been meaning to pick some up and give it a try.

Another tip is to run your rotisserie axis as low as you easily can.   Some of the stock mounting brackets will have the drum too far away from the heat source.

For cooling, I use a 20 qt stainless stockpot with the bottom cut out and a stainless spatter screen inserted.  This is mounted on the lid from a 5 gallon bucket with the center cut out, and fits over the bucket, which is fitted with a kitchen vent fan inside.  This sucker cools 24 oz of beans in about 30 seconds, and 5# pre-roast weight in about 3 minutes (the flow rate is slower when there this many beans in there).  My first attempt at a chaff cyclone for this failed, but I'm pretty sure that the next mod will work - I have a squirrel cage blower that I haven't got around to mounting inline... 

[headchange4u]

If you can find some, honeycomb infrared ceramic block is da shizzle for a focusing your heat on the drum.  You can occasionally find these on eBay.  I have a slab that came out of a broken propane ventless heater.   I'm not sure if the ones that are sold as soldering blocks are any good - I've been meaning to pick some up and give it a try.

Is this what you are talking about?

[J.Jirehs Roaster]

I think that is what BW is talking about.. I notices a similar item at Menard's that is made for the grill and has bigger holes... I don't know if one is better than the other or how much better vs price difference

I'm considering making a drum that I can dump like a sample roaster or even a fixed drum with a door like the big roasters...

that ceramic fiber insulation that BW mentioned is really good ...  the more efficiently you can get heat into the bean mass the easier it will be to control the profile

at some point its too expensive then I am done 

[ButtWhiskers]

Is this what you are talking about?

That is precisely what I am talking about. 

The little holes give it a lot of surface area, and massive directed heat radiance.  The ones that they sell for grills with the big holes don't work nearly as well - mine wound up in my food BBQ.

[nimbus]

I'm curious as to the physics of it. Is it that you're getting EM radiation (blackbody radiation) in addition to the ambient air temp inside the grill??? So, in effect, you're getting an extra heat source?

And Greg, you mentioned "directed at" do you mean you aim the tiles towards the drum? I doubt that would matter much, though it would fall off as one over distance squared, so the closer the better...

Cheers

Hey Greg...if you're reading this, You still up for doing a part two on that page you wrote on Chem reactions after roasting? I'd be super thrilled!!!

p.s. Leone is still loving his coins and I still have his thank you picture and note to send off to ya' one of these days....

-Nimbus

[J.Jirehs Roaster]

I'm curious as to the physics of it. Is it that you're getting EM radiation (blackbody radiation) in addition to the ambient air temp inside the grill??? So, in effect, you're getting an extra heat source?

And Greg, you mentioned "directed at" do you mean you aim the tiles towards the drum? I doubt that would matter much, though it would fall off as one over distance squared, so the closer the better...

Cheers

Hey Greg...if you're reading this, You still up for doing a part two on that page you wrote on Chem reactions after roasting? I'd be super thrilled!!!

p.s. Leone is still loving his coins and I still have his thank you picture and note to send off to ya' one of these days....

-Nimbus

I have a couple of LP heaters that use these tiles... I believe it is a stable heat because the tiles will hold their heat after the flame is turned down so the profile of temp change is more gradual, I also think the energy the heated tile is radiating will be directed from the small holes (to some degree) so they do have directionality...  I have considered using the burners from heaters when I modify a BBQ that needs a new burner .. If I go that route I will report back... 

[ButtWhiskers]

I'm curious as to the physics of it. Is it that you're getting EM radiation (blackbody radiation) in addition to the ambient air temp inside the grill??? So, in effect, you're getting an extra heat source?

And Greg, you mentioned "directed at" do you mean you aim the tiles towards the drum? I doubt that would matter much, though it would fall off as one over distance squared, so the closer the better...

This acts as a diffuser and conserver of the flame heat, and directs the heat at the drum better than your average gas burners.  You are definitely converting some of the energy to different IR wavelengths as you indicate, but that is not something that I understand well enough to feel confident commenting on.  Basically you get a heat sink that minimizes fluctuations, and directs the heat more evenly, and I would assume does so in less of a reducing manner than straight flames do.  Research shows that you get much different results from air based roasts (fluid bed) than you do from flame based roasts (normal drum roast) - typically with increased aromatics.  There are a couple of good Japanese papers on these IR ceramic elements and how the relative cuppings of product went when comparing fluid bed to drum to IR heated drum roasts - with the drum roast being the baseline, fluid bed received +10% in overall flavor ratings and IR drum received +25%.  You still get the drum roastiness and smokiness that is sometimes lacking in fluid bed, but you get more aromatics than with a straight drum roast, according to most reviews I have seen - which is what led me to go that way.

Hey Greg...if you're reading this, You still up for doing a part two on that page you wrote on Chem reactions after roasting? I'd be super thrilled!!!...

Still looking for the time, buddy.  Between the roaster I am actively constructing/tweaking (with heat from MrsBW due to the investment), getting my greens website rolled out, and getting the ranch prepared for TEOTWAWKI; I have close to zero time outside the lab.   

p.s. Leone is still loving his coins and I still have his thank you picture and note to send off to ya' one of these days....

Did I forget to reply with my address?  I am such a space cadet anymore...

[headchange4u]

There are a couple of good Japanese papers on these IR ceramic elements and how the relative cuppings of product went when comparing fluid bed to drum to IR heated drum roasts - with the drum roast being the baseline, fluid bed received +10% in overall flavor ratings and IR drum received +25%.  You still get the drum roastiness and smokiness that is sometimes lacking in fluid bed, but you get more aromatics than with a straight drum roast, according to most reviews I have seen - which is what led me to go that way.

Do happen to remember if they were using the honeycomb elements or elements that have holes, like you suggested, or solid ceramic elements?

[peter]

That pic that HC4U posted has an inset of a heater, which we had in our plant and you might see around; like the lobby at the supermarket has them.

Anyway, because of how those heaters use the gas to heat the ceramic which then radiates heat, they don't heat the air in front of them- only objects. 

That may have something to do with why they work well in roasters.  The drum gets heated, but doesn't heat the air inside the drum directly.

Just thinking out loud.