mbrock Junior Member Joined: 26 Feb 2013 Posts: 3 Location: US Expertise: I live coffee
Posted Sun Mar 3, 2013, 12:44pm Subject: smoke and smell concern
hey everyone. i am ready to get into home roasting but i am trying to determine if i am crazy for attempting it. i live in a condo unit with no garage. i know it is probably ideal to roast in a garage because of smoke and smell. do any of you roast indoors with either the behmor 1600 or the freshroast sr500? I am not as concerned about batch size as I am about smoke. also, how bad is the smell? does it linger?
CoffeeLoversMag Senior Member Joined: 10 Jan 2013 Posts: 49 Location: Seattle Expertise: I love coffee
Posted Mon Mar 4, 2013, 6:28am Subject: Re: smoke and smell concern
I absolutely love the smell of roasted beans,but I've never done it. We don't want to risk setting off the smoke alarms, right? BUT You might want to try out roasting a small amount first. Cause some users won't mind of the WONDERFUL smell of roasted beans, while for others...well it's TOO overwhelming.
Try Behmor 1600, as I checked, it has a feature of smoke removal. I think it'd be best to borrow from a friend to check if it would work out in your location.
oldgearhead Senior Member Joined: 25 Jan 2010 Posts: 354 Location: Go Colts! Expertise: I like coffee
Grinder: Virtuoso by Baratza Drip: Chemex,Dilongi DCM900 Roaster: 1/2K Fluid-bed
Posted Mon Mar 4, 2013, 7:31am Subject: Re: smoke and smell concern
Amount of smoke depends on two things; size of load roasted and how long the beans remain in the roaster after first crack. A good home-sized stove vent (one that actually goes outside) will do a good job on roaster loads up to 500 grams. Cat converters scrub the smoke, but leave an unpleasant odor.
If you have a good dryer vent, this might work. But many apartment dryer vent systems are a tangle of plastic that might melt, so check it out:
Posted Mon Mar 4, 2013, 12:46pm Subject: Re: smoke and smell concern
I tried roasting inside with the behmor once, the first time I roasted. I will not try again, as all the carbon monoxide and smoke detectors went crazy, even though the roaster was just under the stove vent. I was only roasting a quarter of pound.
If you do decide to roast inside anyway, make sure to have a carbon monoxide detector, and know the symptoms of a CO intoxication: dizziness is probably the first of them. If it happens, press the cool button, and go outside.
Indeed the behmor has a smoke suppressor. You can barely see any smoke, but it is still there.
I did indeed. It's a long video, but quite an interesting fluid bed system. - Nice to know there's someone out there making a hobbyist level extractor cyclone for the home shop. 5 to 900 cfm sounds just fine - And I can use it for my wood working gear too!
I roast in a very large garage by volume with a 2lb batch size machine that is exhausted outside however when dumping the beans a good amount of smoke enter the room. The problem occurs after two to three hours of roasting, I will get nauseous and dizzy and a break is mandatory. I am looking into large air scrubbers to clean the volume of air in the garage since directly venting the air is a problem for the extreme cold and extreme hot and don't want to draw in outside air during the extreme seasons.
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