bruceb wrote:Glad you're having a good time with the Huky. What do you mean "less chaff?" The amount of chaff that comes off the beans is only dependent upon the beans, afaik. Or maybe I misunderstood what you meant. Thanks for sharing your experience.
The HotTop/HotProg and the Huky are very different concepts. As you know the Hotty deposits chaff in a tray below the drum which you empty after the roast is completed. The Huky has an external fan on top of which the dump sieve sits during the roast. A double curved pipe leads from the chimney/bean inlet of the roaster to the dump sieve and, during fan operation, chaff is sucked into the sieve where it is trapped under the inverted funnel used initially for loading the beans. All very primitive and 'Heath Robinson' but it works like a charm.
When I roasted with the HotProg there was usually a significant amount of residual chaff in the dump/cooling tray, mixed in with the beans. My method for dealing with this (after cooling) was to dump the beans into a very large (catering size) colander and have a rummage through with my hands and remove some of the excess chaff. After which careful decanting into the bag or grinder hopper would ensure that the minimum of chaff got through.
With the Huky, the strange arrangement of the 'cake tin sieve' bean tray, inverted funnel and 'saxophone pipe' aligned to the powerful fan pulls almost all the chaff out of the roaster. It looks crude, but is very effective. The distaff side is you have to empty the chaff before you dump the beans and the time taken for this has to be factored into the roasting process so you don't over-roast. I've speeded the process up by utilising a second tray/sieve which I ordered from Mr Kuanho Li when I bought the roaster.
The beans ejected from the Huki are entirely chaff free, or as near as makes no difference, no more than half a dozen chaff flakes.