Hello all, a homebrewer with a couple hundred gallons of milk stout and IPA's under my belt, I'm new to the world of roasting, and just received serial number 574.
After a lot of research, I went with the Huky because I liked the idea of a hand-made, steam-punk-ish looking work of art, and in my (inexperienced) opinion, is the closest thing to a mini commercial drum roaster that you could get.
I ordered mine with a solid drum, 72 RPM motor, an extra chaff/cooling tray, and an extra temperature probe, which was installed in the housing, above the motor, I think this is unnecessary, as I'd think drum and bean temperature are the two that matter, but eh, more is better than less.
I ordered one without a burner, sort of second guessing that decision right now, but I'll see if I can manage. As you can see in my pictures, I had to extend the legs by 2 inches just to get the exhaust pipe to mate with the Huky. I am concerned that it will be an issue with the flame now being a full 5" from the drum, but I did a quick dry run, and was able to get the drum temperature to 400 in a short time. I know it needs to be higher but I cut the flame early.
The biggest inconvenience that I am going to run into is that, because f the height differences, I will not be able to dump my beans with the fan running.. I will have to dump the beans and then quickly get them onto the cooling fan.
I would appreciate any tips that ar obvious based on my pictures. I look forward to my first full weekend of playing with my 3 ls of Ethiopian Yirgacheffe, and learning the logging software. I am thinking about moving the analog gauge to the outer drum location so that I can install the probe for the drum reading, thus giving me data logging of both internal drum temperature and bean temperature. But that is yet to be decided... I'd like to dive right in, but I have a lot to learn about drying phase, roasting temperatures, etc...
