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RK Drums
How-To Guide

Coffee Roasting Training


This guide will focus particularly on coffee. For cacao, please refer to https://chocolatealchemy.com

For other products, please consult an appropriate roasting guide for your product. RK Drums will make every effort to assist with advice with your roasted product, please contact us at customerservice@rkdrums.com for assistance.

Essential Concepts for success in Drum Roasting

Master Roasting Guide for RK Drums

The following resources are strongly suggested for success with the RK Drum roasting system. The Roasting Guide Roast Video Tutorials (Especially Roast Lesson #1)

Roasting Guide

The following resources are strongly suggested for success with the RK Drum roasting system. The roasting guide provides a textual guide to the roast process. The Roasting Guide

Roast Video Tutorials

The following resources are strongly suggested for success with the RK Drum roasting system.

Roast Video Tutorials (Especially Roast Lesson #1)

Essential Concepts to understanding the roast process (Recommended for new Roasters)

The following articles are strongly recommended for new roasters, and will also serve to reinforce some concepts for veteran roasters.

Highly recommended 3 part article.

Part 1: Understanding the roast process….Heat vs. Mass

Part 2: What happens during the coffee roast process…

Part 3: Putting it all together during the roast.

Time & Temperature Related

Roasting Techniques. What every Drum Roaster should know: Roasting to target your time, not temperature.

The relativity of your thermometer

The importance of a good thermometer.

Temperature: Understanding the temperature difference between the RK Drums and other roasters.

Advanced Roasting Concepts

Improving Profitability in Coffee Roasting with a few key steps.

What happens if your grill isn’t powerful enough for roasting, BTU vs. Mass explained

Roast Development in an RK Drum (by Seth Newsome)

Tips to improve roast consistency and uniformity (revisited)

Go to Assembly Guide