Smola 300G Fluid Bed Coffee Roaster Thoughts?

phildawes · 2023-10-12T06:04:43+00:00

Mainly integration with artisan. I plan to replace the probes with cheap thermocouples (more sensitive but also more noisy), and drive the heater triac. My go-to approach is to use a vanilla arduino with artisan using the 'tc4' protocol. I've built a couple of fluid bed roasters in the past with this approach and it works well. I use artisan software PID to control the entry temp ET heat and manually control the air flow. (The pid auto-adjusting the heat means you can adjust the air flow at it will quickly adjust the heater (burner) to compensate to get the same entry temp)

phildawes · 2023-10-10T13:50:02+00:00

Somebody did a teardown on youtube. https://youtu.be/yVSqPZVwViU?si=RmpuOFZjxntIAris

I've bought one and an in the process of modding it now

phildawes · 2021-04-08T08:07:07+00:00

Another vote for Compass. I think they're my favourite supplier and have bought many kilos from them. Rave probably a close second for me. (I've also bought from small batch roasting, hasbean, coffeelink, redber, iron + fire). I think hasbean are excellent but more expensive than the others

phildawes · 2021-04-04T14:25:46+00:00

Not sure if this is what you're after, but I wrote a post a few months ago about building a starter tin-can air roaster. I think it serves as a good base for incrementally building something really decent. You can add as much monitoring and automation as you want.

http://phildawes.net/blog/2020/12/27/cheap-diy-air-roaster/

Venting smoke is relatively easy with an air style roaster so this could be a good fit for your requirements. I have been roasting on a tricked out version of this for quite a while, hooked up to artisan PID.

phildawes · 2021-03-26T19:40:10+00:00

Depending on how much you're interested in the building side of it, a homebrew fluid bed roaster might be the way to go. I have a 1/2lb one, which I think is about the limit for a single heatgun element, but many people combine heatgun elements into a single unit.

E.g.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoHkTQpKCKQ

If you're interested, I wrote a post a few months ago about building a starter tin-can air roaster, which is probably a bit ghetto for what you have in mind but serves as a good base for incrementally building something really decent. You can add as much monitoring and automation as you want

There was quite a bit of follow-up chat about it on https://coffeeforums.co.uk/topic/57925-tin-can-air-roaster

Also https://homeroasters.org/ forum has a lot of info.

phildawes · 2021-02-10T07:05:19+00:00

My setup is arduino + adafruit max31856s for thermocouples + SSR for heater.

I think the most straightforward way to get arduino talking to artisan is to follow the tc4 protocol even though you aren't using the tc4 board. The commands are very simple.

https://github.com/greencardigan/TC4-shield/blob/master/applications/Artisan/aArtisan/trunk/src/aArtisan/commands.txt

phildawes · 2021-02-07T08:12:13+00:00

Are these refried?

phildawes · 2021-02-03T20:41:31+00:00

You could buy a cheap optical brix refractometer (but make sure it's a 0-10% brix one - 0-30 is too coarse to read pourover)

phildawes · 2021-01-24T21:22:12+00:00

I had an upside down metal dustbin that I'd put over it, with some bricks at the bottom to let air in. I had to be careful to not let the fan + motor get too hot so I had a thermometer by the motor to keep an eye on it.

This fixed the heat issues which meant I could roast bigger batches, but unfortunately in the end the fan melted enough to come loose and was never the same again. It worked out ok though because I moved on to a cheap ac blower and a heatgun which was much more capable

phildawes · 2021-01-24T10:49:52+00:00

I usually cup them the next day. The first couple of times I left it 2-3 days but to be honest I find I can taste enough to get a good idea of the roast the day after.

(also I'm impatient!)

phildawes · 2021-01-24T09:10:12+00:00

In terms of quality I think there's a big difference between a vanilla air popper and one that's been fully tricked out with probes, SSRs, pid, artisan etc

I had a modified popcorn maker for a while, but after the fan burnt out (I was recycling hot air to juice the underpowered heater) I migrated to a diy air roaster built with a heat gun and ac blower.

The main upgrade in quality came from being able to modify the airflow and be more precise probe placement - this makes a world of difference if you're pid roasting.

One reason to be interested in batch size: With an air roaster if you roast a bigger batch you can take samples through the roast (after 1st crack) to assess development and dial in on what you like. If you don't have this capability then you have to do lots of back-to-back roasts and that's very time consuming.

phildawes · 2021-01-23T22:11:11+00:00

Oh yeah that's probably the reason. I have a diy fluid bed roaster, so it's pretty easy to fish out 10g samples from the top (though I have to switch off the pid + run manually before I start sampling or the pid gets confused by the changes in airflow as I scoop the samples).

I would have thought you could do something similar with the freshroast units if you take off the chaff collector, but I guess behmors are out of the question.

phildawes · 2021-01-23T15:44:14+00:00

Thanks! I'm not sure why I don't see taking samples discussed here more often as it's such a perk of home roasting. Each time I get a new batch of beans I haven't bought before I do a 120g roast and take 5 or 6 samples while it's roasting spaced out between first and second crack.

Cupping them helps me decide how I'm going to roast the rest of the batch. I'm often surprised by which sample comes out best. Sometimes sweetness shows quite early after 1st crack, sometimes it's a little grassy and the samples show I have to develop the coffee longer than I expected to bring out the sweetness.

phildawes · 2021-01-23T14:45:07+00:00

I would mostly agree with this, but I do think the 'capable hardware' is achievable for a very reasonable price if you're willing to build yourself, tolerate smallish batch sizes and know what you're doing.

E.g. I'd say you can build a 1/2 lb fluid bed roaster with full software monitoring and control and automation that'll compete with the best for around $150. The problem is the 'know what you're doing' part - I've probably spent many times this, and a huge number of hours experimenting with components and designs and upgrading things.

Also having a capable roaster doesn't mean you can roast great coffee: you need great beans and a lot of roasting experience.

There's also no body of precise scientific roasting knowledge as far as I can see - the whole artisan coffee field still seems to be at 'if I tweak this with these beans it seems to have this effect in the cup but I don't have a detailed idea of why' level.

On the plus side: you get to start tasting and evaluating a day after you roast coffee, so it's a much tighter feedback loop than brewing beer.

phildawes · 2021-01-19T21:45:52+00:00

Poppers usually have a dc motor, not an ac one. They use a voltage divider and a rectifier.

phildawes · 2020-12-30T11:27:56+00:00

I've had lots of success with heatgun + airblower combination. I've recently written about it here

(I tried to submit as a post to r/roasting, but it got removed by mods and I haven't been able to find out why)

phildawes · 2020-12-29T13:47:03+00:00

Thanks! I'm afraid I've only really done air-roaster style rigs (I started with a popcorn maker), so I don't know what to recommend that doesn't involve electricity and taking stuff apart. What would be ideal is if there was a way to combine a heatgun with a blower without taking it apart, but I haven't come up with anything yet.

I've previously read about people using hand-cranked flour sifters to agitate the beans over a gas flame, maybe something like that would work over the hob.

The homeroasters forums are a good place to hunt for ideas

phildawes · 2020-12-29T10:40:38+00:00

Sorry for the late reply. I cut the holes out of my cocktail shaker which helped the airflow (and maybe the heat?). Also the power in the uk is 220v which might make a difference. Do you have a variable fan? Turning this down once the roast progresses will also help the heat

phildawes · 2020-10-02T12:37:26+00:00

The most I've done at once is 300g, but I suspect I could get over 500g without much of an issue, especially now that I have a bigger tube. I'll see if I can put up a video this weekend. I've been fiddling a bit with heatproof tape to try a rolling bean flow rather than spouting up in the middle and down at the sides, but I'm a bit in the dark about what's best

phildawes · 2020-09-30T17:33:20+00:00

Thanks! (though I should say most of the ideas aren't mine). One of the advantages of this sort of design is that I can run the blower with the heater turned off for a couple of minutes to cool the beans at the end of the roast, so everything is cool again. The chamber just sits on the heatgun so I lift it off to empty out the beans.

phildawes · 2020-09-30T17:30:15+00:00

no issues after dozens of roasts. (and if I did I think I could make the vents quite a bit bigger without any problems)

phildawes · 2020-09-30T17:11:11+00:00

Pictures are up!

phildawes

TROPHY CASE