Well, I have been roasting coffee for some time now (since Brother Nathan and family came up in March), but not until recenlty did I decide to eliminate or reduce the number of cramped muscles that are produced each 20-30 minute sessions per batch. First I set up the blocks on a military issue typing table and used c-clamps to hold them in place. That held the bowl, so that I am not as likely to lose the entire batch into the grass or gravel. Next I took a magnetic guage holder and rigid armature (can be found at McMaster-Carr), and used some bolts to cradle the heat gun. The armature has adjustment knobs, so I can aim the gun exactly where I want it. All that is left to hack together a stirring mechanism so I can just stand back and listen for evidence of a good roast…
Hey, when you perfect your coffee roasting robot, can you clone him and send me one? I am sick of stirring too. But the coffe tastes as good as ever…
I heard about a yeast stirrer that sounds like it might work. I will have to do some more research. The guage holders are pretty cool, and very useful. We used them at MACI, and I was happy to find one in the garage, left by B’s tool & die making grandfather. The coffee really is good…
Here are a few ideas that you might also find useful in your brewing:
http://www.users.on.net/~pfitzsimons/MagStirrer/Magnetic%20Stirrer.htm
http://www.frontier.iarc.uaf.edu:8080/~cswingle/brewing/equipment/yeast_stirrer.php
http://www.fjallenco.com/stirplate/stirplate.htm
http://brewiki.org/StirPlate
All are based on the same idea, a fan with magnets that rotates a stir bar in a beaker. The difficulties that I see in applying this to coffee roasting are temperature (up to ~420?F) and the metal dog bowl interfering with the magnetic field. A glass dish could be used, I suppose, but it’s resistance to heat could cause problems.
There is also the drill option:
http://www.homeroaster.com/Loroast.html
Not sure how well it would work with the heat gun…