KKTO Home Build

Lacehim

Nice vids Mr K. Give that old one a bash from me. I was going to do while you where here anyway. Re spring mod, happy to help and I think it will make a differance. Best mod I did to my KKTO was to get the twin blade from KK. Less noise and better adjatation. Give it ago. It's 95% done, and not a bad job for what it cost or the time it took to put it all together. Now it's all about the coffee and what's in the cup! :coffee2:

Kelsey

Brett H wrote:

Awesome!!! What weight of greens is in thesecond video?

600 grams

Lacehim wrote:

Nice vids Mr K. Give that old one a bash from me. I was going to do while you where here anyway. Re spring mod, happy to help and I think it will make a differance. Best mod I did to my KKTO was to get the twin blade from KK. Less noise and better adjatation. Give it ago. It's 95% done, and not a bad job for what it cost or the time it took to put it all together. Now it's all about the coffee and what's in the cup! :coffee2:

Yep, that's the plan - I'm going to pop out to Bunnings after dinner and get a fireblanket, finalise my cooler (just gotta cut the holes) and do a roast. I know I should start off small..... but I'm really tempted to just throw 600g in and go for it... 😃

Lacehim

I used zip ties to keep my fireblanket on. Good luck. 600 should be fine, just dont' leave yourself with a small amount if you only have that harrar to roast. PS. Bean Green was next day delivery! ???

Kelsey

I saw that! If it works out tonight, I'll be putting in an order with BeanGreen.

Kelsey

Preheating now.

Kelsey

Aaaaaand we're away!! Already longer than my first popper roast!

Kelsey

First crack came at 11.30mins, with what I thought was SC coming at 15.40mins. Pulled it almost immediately. First crack was relatively easy to hear, SC less so. The final roast looks a little uneven, but not worse than some professional roasts I've had, not sure if that's a characteristic of the harrar or not. Either way, I need to align the driveshaft more precisely (thanks for the tips on that KK) and get the springs on the agitator blade. I'm sure that at least some of the unevenness was down to the blade performance. No matter what, I was going to roast tonight and I'm not unhappy with the results. Thanks for all your help do far KK, Lacehim and AM!

Lacehim

Kelsey. Wow. Nice roast mate. Loved the write up, you really built it up! :laugh: The harrar I roasted looked just like yours, very uneven. If you've placed your BG order you should find that other beans will roast differently and more evenly. SC is quieter from my experience, but is usually accompanied by an increase in smoke too. At that stage it's okay to lift the lid and have a look and listen for a sec. Great job, and it's been a fun experience watching you building it. Great to see the results after all that hard work! 🙂 Your going to be busy over Christmas and New Year roasting to you hearts content! Keep us updated with progress and future roasts won't you.

Kelsey

Thanks Michael! Ideally AM will make it up this week and we'll all catch up and work out the kinks. A couple of little hiccups:

I needed to remove the handles on the inner pot as they stuck up at an angle that prevented the TO from sitting on the top with a nice seal
At the last moment the driveshaft wobble got worse causing a lot of scraping and in desperation to just give it a try I removed the silicone seal between the inner and outer pots and simply tucked in the fire blanket to form a seal. This allowed the pot to sit a little lower and the agitator a little higher
The wobble still caused a bit of 'knocking' in the pot and occasional jumps. I had to hold the pot down lightly to keep it in place

The first I'll fix by either inverting the handles (doesn't seem possible) or by mounting another handle. Everything else will be fixed by sorting out the driveshaft and agitator. All in all, a success!

Brett_H

Looking very promising mate. A bit longer and you be on the money. Nice work!!!

Kelsey

Brett H wrote:

Looking very promising mate. A bit longer and you be on the money. Nice work!!!

You're not wrong! Morning After Report: I have two things to report:

It's pretty under-roasted
The Breville Smart Grinder is not a good companion for the home roaster

I definitely need to get a hold of a Hario, Porlex or other cheap hand-grinder, because the BCG800 just doesn't cut it on under-roasted beans. Brett, it now makes me think the problem it had with the finca wasn't the burnt beans but the under-done ones. It's a shame, because the BCG800 is in all other respects a fine machine. It just clearly doesn't have the motor power behind it necessary to chew through beans that are lightly roasted, at least not on an espresso setting. Back to the roaster tho - I need to make the adjustments spoken of in the previous post and get another roast going before I run out of beans.

Lacehim

Order some beans from BG. The Harar is uneven and was probably not the best for a first roast. Your always welcome up here, we can iron out the issues and roast the two side by side.

Kelsey

Sounds good - I might see if I can get clear to come up tomorrow.

Koffee_Kosmo

It looks like the roast needed a few more minutes Possibly the bright light of the TO through you off a little While learning and getting used to your roaster, don't be afraid to let a roast run longer and finish it by a visual colour check Both crack stages will emit smoke as an indication of its impending start KK

Kelsey

There was very little smoke at all during the process - only a few wafts. I wonder if my previous 30 minute 'de-chaffing run' had something to do with it? But you're right, the light did throw me off - it made it look much darker than it actually was at the time. I'll definitely let it run longer. In our phone call last night you mentioned (I think) a sealant to help keep the drive shaft straight? My little boy was being a wriggler during our conversation, so I was a little distracted and now I'm not certain - can you advise please?

Koffee_Kosmo

Kelsey wrote:

There was very little smoke at all during the process - only a few wafts. I wonder if my previous 30 minute 'de-chaffing run' had something to do with it? But you're right, the light did throw me off - it made it look much darker than it actually was at the time. I'll definitely let it run longer. In our phone call last night you mentioned (I think) a sealant to help keep the drive shaft straight? My little boy was being a wriggler during our conversation, so I was a little distracted and now I'm not certain - can you advise please?

Permatex High Temp silicone red. Also comes in Copper both are good but copper is little better Temperature range -65

Kelsey

Thanks KK

Kelsey

Just got Borat's sprung agitator blade in the mail - he sent it express post which was just awesome! Thanks mate, much appreciated!

Kelsey

Today the missus, my little boy and I headed up to Lacehim's place for homemade woodfired pizza, beer and coffee roasting. (would make an ideal venue for a social, if Lacehim doesn't mind me proposing that option!) I'd already performed some adjustments to help with the drive shaft alignment and although there's a little more to do in that regard it's performing ok. The most important factor was receiving Borat's spring-modded v1 agitator blade and Lacehim similarly modifying one of the others. Worked a charm. Noise is now massively reduced to the point where I can actually hear the beans and there's no more crunching sound as the beans get caught under the blade. Looks a lot cleaner in operation too. We roasted a blend (which has escaped my addled brain - we had an attempted break-in at my place at 3am this morning, so I'm a little tired right now) that progressed almost perfectly, with only a minor hiccup when a misplaced beer bottle disrupted the wiring and caused the motor to grind to a halt. Fortunately this was in the first few minutes of operation and was sorted quickly. Didn't time it, all up it ran for about 20 minutes and was pulled on R2C. I'm extremely happy with the end result: And here's a quick snippet of the roast in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKktsSUJCu8 Thanks again to Lacehim, KK and Borat for their help with this project - it's been invaluable! I've got a couple of minor tweaks to make and then the roasting station will be setup properly in the garage. Once my BeanGreen order arrives I plan to have a crack at the Java Kalistat as a straight SO.

Koffee_Kosmo

That spring mod on the agitator is so smooth Glad its worked for you as well as I designed it to work Nice looking roast result Kelsey :thumb: The beauty of the KKTO roaster design is its highly tweakable, and once set up the way you want it then it will work flawlessly for years KK

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