The Quest M3

[lukas]

Hi all!

As promised, a little review of my Quest M3.

I've had it a little over three months now and have done somewhere inbetween 75 to 150 roasts with it (I didn't log every roast in the beginning), so I feel quite confident handling it right now. First some pics:



Oh hum, that's Socke, not the Quest. What was it with cat's'n'roasters? Okay, next:



Err, say hi to Lily! But now for real:



As you might have guessed if you saw previous pictures from me, it was not me who took them, but a good friend who's having as much fun taking pictures as I have roasting with the Quest. It's a nifty little machine, consists mainly of stainless steel and weighs about 12kg. It is rated with 1050W at 220V, and with our ~230V in the house it will happily draw 1200W if I'm not cautious with the knob. Specs also say it can handle 100g-300g loads of coffee, I've only tried 150g-250g for the moment and have been very successful with it. The controls are gorgeous:



From top left to bottom right: Amperemeter, main switch (which happens to be a 45-minute kitchen clock), regulator for the power to the heating elements, regulator for the fan.

To make it crystal clear: this roaster has no safety device built in whatsoever besides the main switch, which can be set to 45 minutes max, and a circuit breaker. If you manually prolong the timer (by e.g. giving it another 45 minutes shortly before it runs out), you can easily set your house on fire or something like that. A thing to keep in mind while operating this^Wany roaster.

Even with a 250g load, my Quest seldomly needs more power than 1000W (which would be around the 4.33A mark on the meter). Throughout a 200g roast, the power it draws for me is around the 750-800W mark, so imagine what would happen if you give it the full 1200W and go away during the roast! Remember, no safety device?

The threads on home-barista were a tremendious help for me in quickly learning how to operate this roaster. I've had my share of undrinkable batches, but all in all I threw away less than 2 KG.

Here's a picture mid-roast (near the end):



And dumping the beans:



The result:



And the Quest's ingenious effortless cooling mechanism, which gets the temperature of the beans down to room-temperature within three minutes with 250g batches, even if they were into 2nd crack:



Does this read like an advertisement this far? Sorry, I just like my Quest! Might also have to do with myself having to justify the amount of cash sent over to Taiwan for it. But there are some downsides as well, see the following post.

It is good to be back, by the way! Did I ever mention that without TMC, my understanding of the english language (or dare I say british?) would be nowhere near to where it is now? Also, who else would have teached me british humor?

edit: typo

[lukas]

So to the downsides. You need to clean it. This is how the space around the drum looks like after four roasts with less chaffy beans:



Guess how the burned chaff smells? I once forgot my allen key somewhere (all user-servicable parts are allen screws, and the Quest came delivered with a matching allen key for them) and did 15 roasts without cleaning this space. I'm quite happy that it didn't suddenly explode besides me!

Cleaning 2:


This was how the Quests exhaust looked after my first three months of using it. Maybe I should have cleaned this part earlier! To get to the exhaust, you need a slightly smaller allen key which didn't came with the Quest, so I suspect this is the not-user-serviceable area. You need to clean it every ~100 roasts, anyway, or it will gunk up.

Okay okay, this is probably not a downside at all - I guess you have to do regular maintenance on every other roaster too. I just didn't realize how much gunk would build up everywhere until I opened the case! With my stove-top roaster, the gunk would simply fly around the kitchen, ready for the vacuum cleaner to fetch

Now for the worst part. If you're an electrician, you probably do not want to see this. I am not, so I don't really know, but it looks quite ... not so CE-worthy to me:



The round plates are the backsides of the two knobs.



Though unisolated, the electricts are quite immovable within the case plus it's earthed, so I don't fear immediate death. I'm just quite happy that I didn't know this before the purchase, as it might have put me off! Comments from electronics-savy people (Bruce? would be very much appreciated here.

Enough of the bad. Back to the good in the next post.

[lukas]

This is a Rwandan bean (don't know the specifics, but asides from the occasional potatoy-bag it's very smooth and tasty), roasted just until the end of 1st crack:



Thanks to the thermocouples supplied by the Quests' manufacturer, I can record the profiles (cropped to fit in 500px width):



The upper red line is the temperature measured between the outer casing and the drum, so it should approximate the amount of energy being applied from the heating elements. Minus the airflow - it would be really helpful to automate logging of changes to the airflow and heating power, as airflow changes have a direct impact on the measured temperature outside the drum.
The blue line is the temperature of the bean mass probe, first crack happened during the yellow marked area. I haven't tasted this specific roast before, but I know that the bean tastes very good

We also did a little animation, taking a photo through the sightglass ca. every 30 seconds. Watch the slideshow in full-hd here - It's an OGG Theora video, so it should theoretically work with Firefox and Chrome, but probably not in Safari and IE.

Oh and have you noticed the tryer? It's so cute! Depending on the bean size, it catches 3-7 beans when you pull it out. I'll probably make a new handle for it, as it's a little thick and brings the fingers dangerously near the very hot exhaust in front of the front plate!



That's it for now, any questions I'll happily answer if I can!

Oh and did I mention the best thing of all? Even though it's batch capacity is somewhere around 200-250g for me, you can roast back-to-back. My longest roast session was 10 roasts in a row, took me a little over two and a half hours and left me quite caffeinated/hyperventilating, as I do not have such a nice exhaust hood as Bruce has. Roasting indoors is fun, but with only the windows open it gets cold and smokey after 2-3 roasts

[bruceb]

Lukas,
It's great to have you back with us. You were missed sorely. Thanks for a great introduction to an interesting sounding roaster. I guess I'll have to make the trek up there to see you in Buxtehude...or no, wait, Bielefeld (the place that doesn't really exist). I would like to see the roaster in action and compare it a bit to the Maggio, which also has no safety features, but lacks any controls for heat or ventilation. Looking at your roaster controls make me think I am going to have to add some knobs here and there to the Maggio. Do you know what kind of control is used to adjust the current to the heating element? Thanks again for the great report.

[lukas]

Thank you Bruce!

Actually, Bielefeld-conspiracy-theories don't bother me anymore as I now live 50km north-east of it! Ha!

I have no idea what kind of thing regulates the current to the heating elements. Probably a rheostat, but all I know for sure is when I turn the knob clockwise, my cheap wattmeter and the current meter in the quest both say the heaters consume more power and I have to watch more carefully what happens to the beans
No need to visit me to watch the roaster performing, I was just searching for the right excuse to get back down to your place sometime spring/summer and could just bring it with me!

[lukas]

Here's a short video if the Quest during a roast that another friend recorded last week:

full-hd-clip

It's quite quiet.

[bruceb]

No need to visit me to watch the roaster performing, I was just searching for the right excuse to get back down to your place sometime spring/summer and could just bring it with me!

OK, OK, I won't come. You don't have to worry. I know when I'm not wanted.

[lukas]

There I was just trying to be nice, trying to save the elder from an exhausting trip through half the country - what do I get in return? Pah!

Seriously though, you're very welcome to visit us any time Bruce! Just give us a call so that I can plan ahead a little, as both Jessica and I are away from home much too often!

[orrinoconnor]

No need to visit me to watch the roaster performing, I was just searching for the right excuse to get back down to your place sometime spring/summer and could just bring it with me!

OK, OK, I won't come. You don't have to worry. I know when I'm not wanted.

You can come visit me Bruce, I don't have a coffee Machine yet, I don't have a G5, but at least I live in a place that really exists!

[CakeBoy]

Looks great Lukas. How does the cooling system work?

[icke]

looks really good indeed. might be a good replacement for my hottop once it has decided to pack in one future day...
just one question: does it come with a free cat?

[GreenBean]

Thank you for taking the time to put this together Lukas. It all looks great except, as you point out, for the electronics.

Before I purchased my second Hottop I did consider the M3. It certainly has some advantages and It was a close thing. I would have liked to get the M3 but the lack of certification/approval for the M3 tipped things in favour of the Hottop for me.

I guess the lack of certification means that it will remain a grey import, without local dealers, and may cause difficulties with insurance cover in the case of an incident. Unfortunately, to obtain the certification, they would have to go the way of the other home roaster manufacturers and add the safety features that would detract from it's advantages. This is all such a crazy situation. I can have an open fire at home, without any certification for the fire or myself. If it burns the house down the insurers will pay up. Why is the coffee roaster so different?

[dr.chris]

Maybe because any idiot can have a fire in their house but the type of people who'd have a coffee roaster, well.......

[lukas]

Looks great Lukas. How does the cooling system work?

I cut a little video (sorry for the lack of quality), see here (still uploading). It shows back-to-back roasting with cooling.

To cool the beans, you open the big flap on top of the roaster and put the bean tray in and max the blower. It will then draw ambient air through the bean mass, cooling it down to room temperature within a few minutes.

This also means that while doing back-to-back roasts, the first few minutes of the next roast will not have any forced airflow. That is also the main reason the chaff builds up outside the drum doing back-to-back roasts.

When both flaps are closed, the air is drawn through the small hole you see here:



And sucked through the drum up the funnel here:



That reminds me to take a picture of the chaff collecting 'mechanism' on the next roast - it's dead simple as well

I guess the lack of certification means that it will remain a grey import, without local dealers, and may cause difficulties with insurance cover in the case of an incident.

Absolutly, yes! There's a reason I have bought a little CO2 fire extinguisher ...

Unfortunately, to obtain the certification, they would have to go the way of the other home roaster manufacturers and add the safety features that would detract from it's advantages. This is all such a crazy situation. I can have an open fire at home, without any certification for the fire or myself. If it burns the house down the insurers will pay up. Why is the coffee roaster so different?

I can not really imagine getting a CE approval being so hard - I mean, we have open gas stoves and the like. Wouldn't it be 'simply' a matter of redesigning the electronics to be CE save (no open wires f.e.) and covering the few movable parts you can touch? As long as the manual states "DO NOT LEAVE THE ROASTER WHILE OPERATING AND HAVE A FIRE EXTINGUISHER READY" ...

[lukas]

looks really good indeed. might be a good replacement for my hottop once it has decided to pack in one future day...
just one question: does it come with a free cat?

I'd have to kill you if I answer to that question!