The previous week has been a little chaotic. I have a drum now, one which we can call "the test drum". Since I am, for the moment, trying to find cheap solutions I must, according to the leeuw, suffer to some extent. On the other hand, so far I am still having fun and learning while making the mistakes.
I finally found some cheap perf metal. Well, actually it is a grid. You know the kind of protection they put in the fireplace so the sparks from the burning wood won´t jump out on the floor? I found one of those, cheap, in one of our warehouses. It was fairly easy to cut it out from its frame - I used a scissors. Yes! Promise. Very easy to bend and also foldable. Still, it is rigid enough to build a drum from... well, with vanes it is, and it can take the heat (so it should, if it is to survive in front of a log fire).
Then for the end caps. What to use? I found a simple steel tin, just about wide enough for my purposes, and used the lid for the openable end cap and the tin bottom (it was a shallow and wide tin, about 15cm dia., 5 cm deep) on the other end. Had some 20*20mm aluminum L-profiles. Drilled holes in them and used them as vanes. I use three vanes right now. Bent the grid to cylinder shape, a little bit smaller than the tin, and screwed the vanes on the inside. The grid wraps over to make the cylinder, of course. I just screwed right through it into the vanes (I threaded the vane holes - a lot easier to fasten them that way), helping the screw through the grid by pushing a reamer through first.
Making a hole in the center of the tin bottom and lid for the "rods" was also easy. Well, they aren´t very roddish, actually. Its just M5 threaded rod. Some of you now will think "this thing won´t stand being used as a roast drum, it´ll snap first time he uses it". But it works! It has to have rods sticking out of both ends though, the tin bottom is not thick enough to support the whole weight of the drum by itself.
This drum thing was comparatively easy and quick to build. Most of all, it was cheap, and will be easy to modify if needed.
Things have been happening on the roaster side too.
I had a BBQ grill of the electric kind standing unused, the one they call "infra-grill" over here. The heaters are on top of it. Yes, on top. But still on the inside
Anyway they are just about useless for roasting as is, so I tried turning the grill upside down. Didn´t help a lot though, after 25 minutes almost nothing had happened. No need for the 10A dimmer there yet...
Will try new heaters this week if possible. I have another cheapo idea there too, promise to write more about it when the time comes. But for now I have been using charcoals on the bottom of the same grill. That works too, and I must say I am surprised how little they affect the roast taste! Thought it would taste really smokey, but there is just this faint smokish scent. I used the "briquette" type, those charcoals that are compressed and shaped like pillows and burn longer and slower.
Main problem so far is that I still can´t roast more than, say, 250grams. Tried 400 tonight and only half of the beans were roasted. But with some more modding, hopefully I will be up at 500-600g next week. This is fun! Images to come, hope I can make this work.
On a side note, I bought an ugly old popper yesterday for the intimidating sum of 1 SEK (approx. 0.11 Euro at current exchange rates) at a local flea market. Couldn´t resist trying it. Gosh, you popper guys roast fast!
This is really getting mental faster than I thought. Oven, heatgun, popper, charcoal drum roast... where will it end?
