I'm new to home roasting, and I'm using a budget machine (Behmor). So far, I've been roasting in the kitchen under the range hood. It's okay, but smells still linger in our open plan upper floor for days after roasting, and I can smell the roast on the hood itself for days too. If I go past second crack with some beans, I get quite a bit of smoke - enough to set off the smoke detectors.

So, I'm thinking about making a set up that I can use elsewhere - either in my workshop (not so great hygienically), or back entrance (not so good because that's where our electrical panel is). Both are in our finished basement. These are really the only two places that I can vent through a window in winter without making the whole house freezing cold without too much concern about long term residue build up on the walls and ceiling.

I was thinking of using an inline duct fan, inside 4" or 6" ducting that goes to the outdoors through a panel that's a window replacement. 4" seems to provide up to around 200CFM, while a 6" provides up to around 380CFM. I'm not too concerned about noise levels as long as I can still hear FC and SC. The larger diameter is more money, and would be more clumsy to set up when I want to use it (it would never be a permanent set up - I imagine a cart with my behmor on it, that I wheel into the space, and vent out the window while I'm using it. The fan is variable speed, so a 6" would do the job. I'm just not sure if its massive overkill. What would you use? Or better yet, what DO you use?

I've seen dryers vented to buckets of water, I can't imagine the smoke would be too bad if ducted that way, but I guess that depends on the size of the roast. Maybe if you kept a larger charcoal filter on the bucket exhaust.

If you have any slider window, just get a piece of wood and cut a hole in it. That's what I do with a 500gram roaster. House still has smell from smoke as you drop beans. The inline fan might help but honestly people like the smell when they come in.

I have a similar setup to Michael's but through a double-hung window. I use inline fans to draw/push air through the vent hose from the roaster itself. I also run a separate vent hood over the top of the roaster to catch any remaining smoke. Over the long term breathing roasting smoke isn't that healthy to do.

I made a small panel to slide into my double hung window. I wrapped the board in insulation tape. I used rigid 4in dryer vent and sealed the joints with high temp duct sealer tape. I also have a cap I put on the outside of the pipe to prevent air from coming in while not roasting. The window has a metal screen panel that catches whatever chaff the collector doesnt so it doesn't spray around the neighborhood. I clean the outside screen after every 30 roasts or so.

I measured the temperature of the duct and it doesn't get very hot so I didn't worry about using a thimble on the panel, but you may want to test that for yourself. The rigid pipe collects a lot less residue and chaff than the included accordion pipe did. Glad to have that accordion pipe out of here. I like this type of set up because it is non-destructive to the house. This pokes out of my half basement into a rocked area with a few mature box wood bushes, so it isn't seen from the road either.

I usually roast at night so the neighbors have said much about the smell. One neighbor did say he smelled me roasting one day and really liked it so that is good . The smell can linger outside for awhile. I did a few batches one day and then went outside and could still smell the roast after 20 minutes or so.

As for pipe size, the 4in will be plenty for a Behmor.

709espresso wrote:I'm new to home roasting, and I'm using a budget machine (Behmor). So far, I've been roasting in the kitchen under the range hood. It's okay, but smells still linger in our open plan upper floor for days after roasting, and I can smell the roast on the hood itself for days too. If I go past second crack with some beans, I get quite a bit of smoke - enough to set off the smoke detectors.

You want to channel the smoke via secondary hood and duct just over the roaster exhaust kind of like this. If you can connect the other end to your kitchen hood airtight, it may provide enough suction to draw out the smoke to avoid stray smoke. I've used Behmor roaster for years like that.

If not, here are couple alternatives shown on this forum. Modding the behmor

Thanks all. Some great ideas in there. I think I have a better sense of what I'm going to do.

When I was roasting with my Behmor, I hung a thrift store range hood over my workbench and vented out the garage door. When I upgraded to my Bullet, I added a vent tube that sits over the output of the roaster and used a piece of roof vent flashing from Home Depot to mount it into the range hood. It works well with the built-in fan from the range hood.

^ I love the banknote hanging there. Is that for a good luck charm?