Hi there,

I am pretty green when it comes to roasting coffee. I dabbled for quite some time on a air popper and then built a little roaster out of a bread machine. I just got my first drum roaster. The roaster is a 2009 Ambex YM-2. It has the electronic gas control and the upgraded motor.

I was wondering if there was anybody who has this roaster, and would be willing to help me out a little bit as I get familiar with it?

I am not quite sure what the different air baffle positions are allowing through the roaster.

I also was wondering if there was somebody that could help me some charge temps to start with for different batch sizes?

I roasted my first batch last night on the roaster. It turned out alright, but I'm excited to learn this machine. It did not seem like the ET thermometer was very accurate at first. I'm considering adding some data logging capabilities to it.

I would also like to thank SAS for all the initial help he has been!

Thanks.

Post some pictures or pm me. I have a one kilo ambex clone that actually has the 2 kilo blower. I'm curious if my Dayton blower specs similar to you.

The blower motor is a 3450 rpm Baldor motor. Here is a photo of the roaster.

Is there a CFM rating somewhere on the tag?

Try charging at 400°F, minimum air and find a gas setting that gets you to full yellow at 5:00 mins
Add 10-20% air after full yellow
If your gas setting is good, you'll get to 1C at 9:00 mins. That would be perfect gas setting for starting out, till you get a few roasts under your belt..
Drop you gas 10%-20% at one or two minutes before 1C Add more air at/after 1C
From 1c to drop you'll want 2:15 - 3:00 mins for a general guide IMHO..

I think this a general setting for most every gas roaster..

Agree with most of JK's approach. 20% may be too little or too much depending on machine and stored energy in the mass.

Make sure you do full charges, 4.4 lbs, time after time until you learn the machine. Get a cheap bean and drill thru the *same* bean until you understand the machine's personality.

Can't help you with exact damper settings; typiically low/medium/high airflow which correspond somewhat with the 3 phases of roasting. Dryng, caramelization, and development.

You should first verify the position of the actual air door inside the passage. My YM2 I've had since 2009 is identical to yours and the handle/threaded shaft is prone to being out of position. Remove the rear air tube and look down the channel at that door and the relation to the handle position. I used loctite on the threaded shaft under the handle and also an index paint mark to verify the handle to the shaft.

If you're roasting 1.5 to 2 Kilo the 400 drop is fine for WP beans, I typically roast 2 Lb (908 gram) batches and drop @ 375F WP and 360F or less for DP beans.

TomC- It does not say. The motor is separate from the blower.

Danetrainer- Thanks! I will be doing that this weekend. Have you added data logging or made any other modifications. I'm wondering if there Is a way to cut a bigger opening in the tryer? It is tiny.

Thanks Boldjava and JK! Great info. I really appreciate all the help!

I see you're in Washington, how close to Portland are you? I'm nearly positive yours is the other roaster Terry Davis (president of the Roasters Guild then and Ambex USA) brought to the Roasters Guild Retreat on the Columbia River in 2009, along with mine. Mine is serial #20257, I haven't added data logging since there weren't many options back then and I became used to doing it manually for so many years. The Environment gauge is pretty worthless being analog has poor response, you should add a thermocouple there instead. Myself using the roaster without these changes is akin to operating a vintage lever, repetition has made them generally unnecessary at this point.

The tryer is quite poor, both location and size hinder it. One thing in using it as-is...rather than having the opening at the 12 o'clock position, turn it slightly to 11 o'clock, for some reasons it seems to catch the beans better.