List of Current Air Popcorn Poppers for Coffee Roasting

[jfutral]

Please recommend a popper that does not need to be modified to roast coffee and does not roast too fast. The popper should be fairly easy to find.

No popper _needs_ to be modified. As for too fast, that, too, is a matter of taste, ultimately. If you like the way the coffee tastes, then it isn't roasting too fast. And as for easy to find, depends on what you mean by "easy". Any place is within walking distance if you have the time.

There are several good poppers out there, but poppers aren't really made by exacting standards, it seems, so different ones, even the same model from the same maker, will vary in effectiveness.

Joe

[thepeoplesroast.com]

Please recommend a popper that does not need to be modified to roast coffee and does not roast too fast. The popper should be fairly easy to find.

I have roasted with all of the poppers listed here http://www.thepeoplesroast.com/resources and none of them need to be modified. They are all also listed at a reasonable price. "Too fast" as someone else said is a matter of taste. The proof is in the coffee.

[knicks791]

Please recommend a popper that does not need to be modified to roast coffee and does not roast too fast. The popper should be fairly easy to find.

No popper _needs_ to be modified. As for too fast, that, too, is a matter of taste, ultimately. If you like the way the coffee tastes, then it isn't roasting too fast. And as for easy to find, depends on what you mean by "easy". Any place is within walking distance if you have the time.

There are several good poppers out there, but poppers aren't really made by exacting standards, it seems, so different ones, even the same model from the same maker, will vary in effectiveness.

Joe

Easy, as in easy to find in common stores.

Thanks Joe I will try a few more batches with the poplite popper and see if I can get a good roast.

[knicks791]

Please recommend a popper that does not need to be modified to roast coffee and does not roast too fast. The popper should be fairly easy to find.

I have roasted with all of the poppers listed here http://www.thepeoplesroast.com/resources and none of them need to be modified. They are all also listed at a reasonable price. "Too fast" as someone else said is a matter of taste. The proof is in the coffee.

Thanks for the info. I will consider getting one of these poppers.

[jfutral]

Easy, as in easy to find in common stores.

Thanks Joe I will try a few more batches with the poplite popper and see if I can get a good roast.

Keep in mind batch size can affect roasts slopes, in unmodified poppers especially. Larger batch sizes (from my experience) tend to have a slower front end (primarily before 1st crack) and a faster backend (after 1st crack to 2nd crack). I've roasted/experimented with batch sizes from 50g-100g. The only thing to consider is that over about 80g, I usually have to stir the beans until they dry out enough to spin on their own. So that's one way to try to affect your roast.

Also, experimenting with and without the lid/top can affect roasts. Like trying to boil water. My wife always yells at me when I don't use a lid to boil water for pasta. She says I am wasting heat and it takes longer.

Joe

[EricBNC]

Kitchen Gourmet works well with 85g - it does spin slowly at first (but it is definitely spinning) but soon ramps up to a nice fluid motion as the beans dry.

[thepeoplesroast.com]

I've found that the right popcorn poppers come and go in the thrift stores in my city (Minneapolis). Not much of a steady flow. I did pick up a Poppery II and added it to the site.

http://www.thepeoplesroast.com/resources

I did a roast in the original Poppery the other day in a different outlet and it roasted super fast to the point where first crack went straight into second and got dark real fast. It turned well enough but was difficult to control. I didn't have that problem with the same roaster/popper in a different outlet (garage). Maybe it was getting more juice and was heating faster

Has anyone out there used the West Bend 82416 Air Crazy 4 Quart Corn Popper? I was reading the reviews on Amazon and people on there have used it for roasting coffee very succesfully. I haven't had the chance to try one myself. The reviews on Amazon are here:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0036WS1GY/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_til?tag=thepeosroa-20&camp=14573&creative=327641&linkCode=as1&creativeASIN=B0036WS1GY&adid=1EPCTX3QR362BFJWHWD3&

[thepeoplesroast.com]

Kitchen Gourmet works well with 85g - it does spin slowly at first (but it is definitely spinning) but soon ramps up to a nice fluid motion as the beans dry.

Have you roasted with the Poppery II as well? I think that the Kitchen Gourmet is basically as good as the Poppery II. The design looks almost exactly the same and the roast is very similar.

[dyqik]

I've just bought a Sunbeam from Target in Somerville, MA - there are stacks of them on the shelves there, and currently $2 off, so I guess these are available for a significant portion of the year there.

I also got a Kitchen Gourmet from the local Goodwill store (Davis Square) last weekend, which I promptly blew up trying to figure out the circuit and remove the bimetallic switch (it was getting stuck at about 405F). Went back to the Goodwill store today and there's an old J.C. Penney popcorn maker of the right design. So two visits in two weekends have yielded two good poppers for a total of $10. The both even had all the plastic bits from on top...

I've also bought a metal mesh pencil holder from Staples for $5 - it looks like it's just the right size to sit over a soup tin chimney and act as a chaff catcher/director - about twice the diameter of an appropriate can.

I've previously roasted in a 230VAC popper in the UK (£2 new as it was display stock...) which very easily got to the right temperature, but I moved to the US a few months back, so these are my first attempts at finding the right poppers here.

[dyqik]

Hmm, having dismantled all three of my poppers today, I've found a possibly dangerous mistake/design flaw in my Kitchen Gourmet B32-B popper*. This particular popper has an 0808 date code (presumably Aug 2008)

The motor and small element are wired in parallel, and fed power through the main element, thermal fuse and bimetallic thermostat (i.e. in series with these elements), so that when the thermostat overheats and opens, the fan and both heating elements switch off. This was confirmed by prying the switch open and then closing it with a insulated probe while powered up. Once the switch cools, all three components power up again. The thermostat switch is fast enough that the fan speed doesn't drop a lot, and wasn't that noticeable when roasting (I would probably notice it now that I know to expect it).

Although this probably isn't dangerous when popping corn and doesn't stop the popper popping corn, it could potentially be dangerous if the popper could roast coffee to or beyond the 2nd crack point and then have the fan and heating elements cut out, with runaway heating of the beans in the chamber and a possible fire. Fortunately my particular example cut out at around 400F, before 1st crack.

Both the Sunbeam and the JC Penney poppers have the small heating element and motor wired together in series, with the thermostat controlled main element in parallel with them, so that they stay on if the thermostat cuts the main element out, and the air flow will cool the popper. In all cases the thermal fuse will cut all power if it blows. I haven't worked out if there is a simple fix to the Kitchen Gourmet popper wiring or if the mistake is on the riveted heating element section, which isn't easy to modify.

*(I blew up this popper yesterday when fiddling with it while dismantled and powered up trying to understand the circuit - do not try this at home, but I'm used to working with valve amps and materials deposition equipment with >300VDC on contacts. It blew up because I though I could fix the problem with some judicious rewiring, which I got wrong as the small element and motor were still in parallel, so the motor blew when I put 110VAC across its rectifier diodes)