Coffee roasting with George Foreman Jr rotisserie

[Travis Mitchell]

Then today I saw something that may work great. I saw a George Foreman
Junior Rotisserie Grill and oven for $80.00US. This comes with a small,
basket that can easily handle over 1Lbs of beans. The basket fits
inside the rotisserie and with the "tabs" inside the basket, you know
that the beans will be shaken quite a bit. So I am wondering, has
anybody ever played with such a thing to try to roast beans. At 1st
look, it seems that it would work great.

The people who replied to the post back then thought it wasn't hot
enough. I've been playing with the roaster for a few days now, and have
found two 'workarounds' which allow it to roast coffee. The expensive
option is to use a 20A variac (~$130) with it. Stepping up the voltage
from 110 Vac to 130 Vac raises the heating power from ~800 W to ~1100 W,
which I find gets 1/2 pound of beans to a rolling 2nd crack in 18
minutes or so. The temperature as measured on the hottest exterior part
rises from 410 F to 490 F when you do this, but the roaster seems to
handle the higher temperatures with no evident problems. In particular,
the plastic seems fine.

The inexpensive option, which shouldn't even void the warranty, is to
tilt the roaster. The heating elements are on the side, and in normal
operation the beans don't rise very high before tumbling down. There
are metal tabs in the back which serve as stops to the door; if you
rotate the roaster backwards it comes to a (slightly precarious) balance
at an angle which lets the beans traverse over the entire region above
the heating elements. This configuration also roasts 1/2 pounds of
beans to second crack in ~18 minutes. The disadvantage here is that the
chaff now falls onto the heating elements and the reflector behind them,
and over time the reflector could get blackened up. I find that you can
easily remove the reflector and wrap it in foil, and doing this would
make the charred chaff less of a problem.

The chaff tends to come off in large flakes. Most of this drifts out of
the drum but some of it stays with the beans since there is no forced
air circulation. Any remaining chaff can be easily blown off after
everything has cooled down.

The vegetable roasting drum which comes with the roaster is good but not
ideal for coffee. The mesh is slightly too large, and beans can get
stuck in it. With reasonably sized beans (I've tried Kenya AA and Costa
Rican Tarrazu so far) you only lose ~10 or so beans to the mesh per
roast, however. There is a chicken spit included which could easily
serve as the spine of a custom fabricated drum. Perhaps a larger radius
would be better for coffee. I suspect that the vanes of the vegetable
roasting drum are larger than one needs for good mixing of coffee beans,
although to give it credit the roasts I get are very uniform, much more
so than I can achieve with my Freshroast Plus even with lots of manual
mixing.

There is no cooling cycle with the roaster, but there is an included
handle for drum removal which allows one to move the hot drum to the top
of a fan. I find that a high velocity fan cools the beans to room
temperature in 30 seconds or so.

With the workarounds described about, I find the roaster less work and
easier to use than my FR+ coffee roaster. If you have been thinking
about transitioning from air to drum roasting, I suggest giving the
Foreman Jr a try.

-Travis
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[Travis Mitchell]

SOunds good, Travis. An inexpensive way tpo mess with drum roasting.
Any beans getting stuck is a problem, and with ten stuck, if they are
showing signs of burning, can taint the entier batch. That leands me
to the next question- is there wa way to evacuate smoke? Smoke
building up can also transfer the flavor from the smoke to the beans.

Hi, thanks for the interest. Your descriptions of your adventures with
the hottop have been an inspiration for me.

The stuck beans are not that much of a problem, smokewise. If I roast
with the roaster level, they do get hotter than the rest of the batch,
but not by a huge amount.

There seems to be a good amount of air flow through the roaster. The
very top of the machine is fairly open - the glass door slides over but
there is no physical contact with the metal body, so there is basically
a 1/4" strip along the roaster top where air flows out.

If you can amke a "liling" drum- one that fits inside the vegetable
roasting drum, you could use a finer mesh and eliminate the beans
sticking. Also, you want toi add some agitators in the drum- some
short (1/2") fins to move the beans about. This will cause more of a
waterfall of the beans instead of a sliding motion.

I tried to line the drum, but concluded it would be easier to build
a custom one due to the geometry - the drum has hinges and splits
into two halves instead of being accessed from the ends. I ordered
some stainless steel mesh, but it was stiff and the test liner I cut
would have ended up trapping a lot of beans along the edges.

I might try building a drum, but won't be able to get to it until August.
In the meantime I will stick to large beans. As far as agitation, the
drum has huge (>1") fins, probably more motion of the beans than needed.

Sounds like you have a good start, though. Lots of good groundwork.
The timing also sounds pretty good- do you have a profile you can
share?

I will e-mail you some profiles tomorrow.

About the interior size and heat capability- can it hold more than
half a pound?

Interior size could probably fit closer to 3 pounds, it is a big machine.
I have 5 pounds of CR Tarrazu on order, when they arrive I will see if I
can roast 1 pound when the roaster is tilted and the line voltage is stepped
up.

-Travis
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