[Caffeine] New thread on Popcorn Machines as Coffee Roasters.

[Oren Beck]

The summary intro is- several folks on this list and others in the Hacker
Ecosystem have been exploring the use of Popcorn Machines as Coffee
Roasters due to the various types of Bean agitation in them.

Air popper considerations include a small chamber size for making micro
roasts and the air powered Bean movement.

Stirrer type poppers fall into several groups:

A home kitchen model where the dome lid inverts into a serving bowl- and
that too, has several variants.

The Faux Retro Miniature Theater Popper that comes in sizes from maybe shot
glass popping volume up to maybe one full cup of corn kernel capacity.f
them have a factory thermostat

And then of course- the full size Star and Cretor's real theater models.

Most of them have a factory thermostat set somewhere between 320-420  Deg F
depending on the type of popcorn.  Which by Serendipity falls into the
ranges for some common definitions of roasts:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_roasting

Let's see where we can go with this and consider that sometimes PID et al
is simply nerdcore overkill compared to dumb bimetal thermoswitches...

"Yeah-we can make PID controllers and fabricate alternating blasts of hot
to freezing air assisted by Hilsch Tubes- but sometimes we just might
consider adjusting the thermostat screws of a COTS Corn Popper"



Oren Beck

816.632.3695