Foreman Rotisserie first roast experience

[josh_robb]

Well,

Santa came through with a George Foreman just before Christmas. (£29.99 at argos - arived the next day - thurs.)

I fired her up on Christmas morning keen to see if she would reach roasting temps. (Reports from the US say they have only been able to get to about 350 without modifications - variac/more thermal insulation). I have an oven thermometer which goes to 500F. After about 25 mins of warming the thermometer was showing 450 on the bottom of the rotisserie. Success!

After seeing that she was hot enough I couldn't stop myself lining the basket that came with it in tin foil and attempting a roast. (Bad idea - but I was over excited.)

I put in about 125g of Bolivian Organic (from hasbean) and waited. and waited. and waited and waited. After about 15 mins without hearing anything other than the cascade of beens and smelling nothing I stooped her and had a look. The beans weren't even yellow. I realised that the tinfoil was acting as a head shield, protecting the beans from the heat of the oven. I make a whole lot of little holes in the foil and waited some more.

After 40 mins (total - including a pause while I made holes). I heard cracks and about 10 mins later a lot of smoke started coming out. I took the beans out and they were charcoal. (I think I might have missed first crack and the cracks I heard thinking they were first were actually second). I considered this a success though because if I can burn beans to a crisp then I should (theoretically) be able to roast them as well.

In the evening I did another 125 of the Bolivian - standing over the thing the whole time. After about 35 mins the beens started to smell distinctly roasted although I had heard no cracks at all. i took them out and they looked pretty good to me so I left them to reast for a few hours before putting them in a jar overnight.

Made some shots with them today and they taste great! I cannot believe how much creama i'm getting out of the shots - it's ridiculous.

When I'm back from holiday in 5 days I'll begin making a drum to go in this puppy - which I expect will make a huge difference. (Better heat transfer to the bean mass etc).

j.

[josh_robb]

Second Roast pic.

[wang]

Looks very promising but the roast times seem to be very long. Maybe you could try using a tin of baked beans or whatever's handy for a drum for the moment? Maybe when you've perfected the process you could market a ready made drum for the rotisserie!

[zix]

Interesting!
I have had experiences not very far from yours with infra-grill roasting (sadly, I haven´t been able to continue on that project for a while, the weather needs to improve first plus I need to build a couple of tube amps too).
The main problem spells W as in Watts, I should think. If you can control the drum rate (can one, on a rotisserie? Sounds logical, but I have never used one) to make it go slower, and the rotation direction to make sure the beans are close to the heaters when rotating, not on the far side, perhaps your roast times will go down?
Perhaps you should bend the heaters close to the drum? I shouldn´t think that it matters whether your beans get roasted mostly by radiation of heat from the heaters, or by heated air, but the roasting times are too long. Try to get it down to 25 minutes or so.
By the way, watt´s the rating? Judging from my own experiments, I would want at least 2000W heaters. Actually, I´d want as much as I could get out of a 10A fuse: 2200-2400W. Maybe another set of 2000W too, with an extra long cable to connect to an outlet on another 10A fuse, but then I want to be able to roast 500-1000g per batch, and have a much larger roast drum.

[Raf]

Interesting experiment.

[matts]

Well,

Santa came through with a George Foreman just before Christmas. (£29.99 at argos - arived the next day - thurs.)

When I'm back from holiday in 5 days I'll begin making a drum to go in this puppy - which I expect will make a huge difference. (Better heat transfer to the bean mass etc).

j.

Oh v.v.v. cool. The penny pinching Hottop begins to take shape.... Foil is funny stuff, with a perforated drum it looks like this will work well (fingers crossed). Keep us updated

Matt