OK, so there's no verdict yet, but is there a description of the differences? Hehehe. I'll be very interested to hear. The DIY roasters often seem to have perforated drums, whereas the few pro machines that I have looked inside seemed to have a solid drum.

The one that I'm itching to try is a home roaster with a drum made from a can inside a bigger can. Dual-walled!

Cheers,

Luca
 

Luca,

What is your reasoning behind a double walled drum? It seems it would be harder to heat and harder to slow down creating more lag.
 

Seems to me that a dual-walled drum might help to even out any hot spots. Stainless steel doesn't seem to be very good at diffusing heat evenly and I'd imagine that most of the other cheap materials that home roasters use wouldn't be great either. I have heard great things from some pro roasters about the virtues of solid cast-iron drums and I'd imagine that the drums themselves don't heat up and cool down terribly quickly.

But, mostly, it's just because it's something different! I don't know enough about roasting to really have much of an opinion on any of it, but I do know that even at the commercial level there are actually quite a few differences even between traditional drum roasters.

Cheers,

Luca
 

I don't know about diffusing heat so much as aligning the gas array but I aggree cast iron is the wway to go.

Imagine a 25 lb drum at max capacity vs heat retention and acceleration ability of a 4lb drum at max capacity. This is essentialy the argument for why big drums are consistent (no wiggle in the profile) and smaller ones can be finesse (they can dance if they wanna!).
 

Solid drum in my little roaster is no good. Very interesting experiment though.