JONTILLMAN.COM | part of the problem since 1976

We are inveterate coffee-hounds, spending way too much time drinking, roasting and brewing coffee. As a matter of fact, we have moved on from simple home roasting to bigger things.

Our coffee roasting adventures began several years ago, when a good friend of ours hosted Jon on a visit through Arizona and (accidentally) Mexico. During the visit, Jon was treated to some excellent coffee, and got to see this coffee roasted first-hand.

Prior to this, our experience with coffee, while greater than most peoples, had been limited to already roasted beans. Jon was immediately fascinated by the roasting process, as well as the high quality of the home-roasted beans that resulted.

Some time after this visit, a package arrived from the same good friend, containing a FreshRoast Plus home coffee roaster, and a selection of different coffee beans to try our hand at roasting.

After much trial and error messing around with the FreshRoast, we were finally able to make what we considered an excellent batch of coffee beans. We then began to spread the joy of freshly roasted coffee to our friends and family through gifts of coffee we had roasted ourselves. Some of our friends, particularly Jons coworkers at www.smokingpipes.com were so enamored with the finished product that they began to ask us for coffee on a pretty regular basis.

We soon found ourselves in a situation where, because of the small size of the FreshRoast, we were unable to keep up with the demand for our coffee without spending two hours a week roasting coffee. Roasting was quickly becoming a chore, instead of the fun hobby it had been. Clearly, a solution to this problem was needed.

We spent a good bit of time researching our options as to new coffee roasting equipment, and quickly reached the conclusion that we were going to have to either stick it out with our current roasting equipment, or move up to seriously expensive commercial drum-roasting equipment. Being unable to convince ourselves that there was any justification whatsoever for a commercial drum-roaster, we had all but given up on the project when we stumbled upon the website of one Ron Kyle, a gentleman who had found himself in much the same position we were in, but had the skills to solve the problem himself.

Ron had created and fabricated a roasting drum that would allow the home roaster to achieve commercial quantity and quality roasts without spending thousands and thousands of dollars on commercial roasting equipment. More importantly, he was selling the roasting drums he had created to anyone who wanted one. We definately wanted one, and soon, one was ordered and on its way to us.

Here we hit another snag. Rons drums were designed to work with gas grills, and we only had a very small charcoal fired grill. One trip to Lowe’s Hardware however, and that problem was solved, handily, by the acqusition of a Coleman 5300 gas grill.

With our new grill delivered and set up, and our roasting drum installed by way of an aftermarket 6rpm rotisseire motor, we began learning to roast coffee all over again. Fortunately, some of what we had learned with the FreshRoast transferred to our new set up, and the learning curve was not nearly so steep. Within a couple of tries, we were turning out pretty good batches.

The real joy however, was that these batches were three to five pounds, instead of the 4oz batch the FreshRoast was capable of. All of a sudden, we were able to roast four pounds of coffee in thirty minutes, and have it meet our standards for excellent coffee. In the time it used to take us to get everything set up and arranged for roasting with the FreshRoast, we can now roast as much coffee as we, and the office, will drink in a week. Excellent!