Boost Chaff Beans

[moryoga]

Hi,

New to the forum so sorry if I've missed any previous posts on this topic.

I just spent the $175 on the Boost upgrade and was really bummed to see how many beans wound up in the chaff collector, almost 15% of roasted bean weight, and that was with 160g. With 180 I assume it would be a lot more. This seems like a pretty bad design flaw, but maybe I'm doing something wrong- certainly wouldn't be the first time

Would having the Chaff collector body taller eliminate this problem? If so, wouldn't it be pretty easy to design an extender for this purpose? And for $175, wouldn't it be nice to get what would probably be a $5, at cost, solution to a very obvious and hopefully easily fixable problem?

And it really is a bummer as the beans in the collector have not been cooled evenly, it's a total hassle to separate them out if you do chose to use them and if you throw them out that's between 10 and 20% of your coffee in the compost. If I go through 15k of coffee a year, that will be around 2.25k wasted and/or improperly roasted coffee, and to me that's way too much.

Is the tube extension a possible fix?

Thanks

[Ron in Van]

Hi
Sorry to hear about your problem. I agree the boost is not tall enough for many bean varieties at higher charges, ie greater than 120gm. I resorted to cutting the bottom off a tin of green tea leaves that had the right diameter to fit over the base of the Nano, and the Boost chimney sits on top of it. I made it about 7cm tall which is probably a little more than necessary. It works like a charm. No beans in the chaff collector ever, even with 190 or 200gm charges. (the little bit of foil you see around the base was an attempt to reduce some blow by between the tea tin extender and the base, seems to work)

I have attached three photos. One with just the extension, then with the chimney on top, and finally with a piece of dryer venting 90 degree angle (5 inch diameter) that fits the top of the chimney perfectly to direct the hot air out a window through a cardboard insert I made.

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[moryoga]

Thanks for your awesome response. I'll begrudgingly probably try to craft a similar workaround.

For me it just solidifies the premise that Kaffelogic should be providing a free solution, that would cost them $5, to everyone that bought the Boost so fine folks like you don't have to go around cutting up green tea tins to get your $1500 roaster to function properly.

Thanks again!

[Geronimo]

Thanks for your awesome response. I'll begrudgingly probably try to craft a similar workaround.

For me it just solidifies the premise that Kaffelogic should be providing a free solution, that would cost them $5, to everyone that bought the Boost so fine folks like you don't have to go around cutting up green tea tins to get your $1500 roaster to function properly.

Thanks again!

I agree with you 100 percent. This chaff collector has not been designed and tested properly.

They should be providing a free solution or replacement chaff collector of correct length for those people that have the boost kit.

The solution in documentation to pick out the beans is not a good solution. It’s a total cop out for an ill tested design. Anything over 120 grams is a no go for me. Those beans in chaff collector have a different taste to the correctly cooled beans. I’ve tried to throttle back the cooldown speed but still an issue.

A possible improvement would be for Kaffelogic coders to instigate a speed ramped initial cooldown, instead of going from end of roast speed to full throttle cooldown speed 1, there should be a short ramped transition. At the moment you get that initial big pressure pulse as the fan speeds up to cool down speed, and this fires a large quantity into the collector.

Personally I’m pretty bitter about Kaffelogic not sorting this out. I’ve put quite a few people off buying the unit as it is with boost kit. Historically I’ve been a big supporter of the unit, till this problem with the boost kit and beans being fired out.

G

[moryoga]

Thanks Geronimo, glad to know it's not just me

Here is the reply I got from Sean at Kaffelogic-

Sean Ellis commented:

Hi Michael,

There is a solution around the beans in the chaff collector and that is to adjust the cooldown hi speed located in the profile settings tab right at the bottom. These will appear if you have Studio in the ‘Advanced’ or higher difficulty.

Adjust this number to 16500 and then drop down in 50-100 increments until the problem is solved. We have found that this is the easiest fix withou having to dial down your dose. This limits the fans maximum speed during cooldown which is likely where the beans are making their way into the CC.

We have been exploring potential options for doing this with an extra attachment, but we have no sharable information around this currently.

Kind regards,

Sean

________________

Sean seems like a nice guy.

Here's what I wrote back-

Thanks for the advice.

I found two steel pipes, one the diameter of the glass tube to create a contiguous longer inner chamber and one a diameter that is wider and stabilizes the Chaff collector. Both are about 6.5mm tall and this is working well

Did I carelessly miss the fan speed adjustment option in the tiny instructions manual? If so my apologies for my oversight. If that wasn't offered, perhaps including it could be extremely useful.

Thanks

[moryoga]

Also, as per Seans suggestion on changing max fan speed, three things-

1) I shouldn't have to do that

2) I don't want to do that. I'm not a programmer don't want to start mucking around with the Advanced setting. A main reason I bought this roaster was that is advertised as "choose your altitude and roast level and let the Nano do the rest" That's what it should do then.

3) A very simple physical fix is completely doable. I figured it out in about 10 minutes and I'm not too bright. Just through blind luck, a plumbing supply place close enough to my house had the EXACT diameter pipes to extend the Boost ring (7.1mm internal diameter) and a wider one to stabilize the Chaff collector. The second larger ring is too tall, so again, just through sheer luck, my neighbor runs a factory that cuts steel pipe and he's shortening it to the correct length. I'll post that size after I get it back.

C'mon guys. I had to spend €20 on steel pipes, drive around for an hour and bother a neighbor to get the thing I spent almost $200 on to work correctly, when you could and should have figured this out before putting it on the market.

All that being said, this certainly is not a big deal in the scheme of things and I'm otherwise really happy with the roaster.

[Mikk]

Thanks Geronimo, glad to know it's not just me

Here is the reply I got from Sean at Kaffelogic-

Sean Ellis commented:

Hi Michael,

There is a solution around the beans in the chaff collector and that is to adjust the cooldown hi speed located in the profile settings tab right at the bottom. These will appear if you have Studio in the ‘Advanced’ or higher difficulty.

Adjust this number to 16500 and then drop down in 50-100 increments until the problem is solved. We have found that this is the easiest fix withou having to dial down your dose. This limits the fans maximum speed during cooldown which is likely where the beans are making their way into the CC.

We have been exploring potential options for doing this with an extra attachment, but we have no sharable information around this currently.

Kind regards,

Sean

Great help. After following this advice, I found the problematic profiles had been set to 17000. Reducing to 16000 or 16500 solved the issue, and only took a few minutes to check/change all the (many) profiles stored in the roaster.

[moryoga]

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Thanks for the feedback on the fan speed option. Being a low tech guy, I prefer a physical solution and also feel that the lower fan speeds would slow down the cooling times, which I don't want to do.

My metal pipe solution is working perfectly. Zero beans in the collector, just a bit hot to the touch when dissembling between batches or when finished, but not really an issue.

The pics show a smaller blue pipe which goes over the boost extender and its dimensions are - 72mm internal diameter but 70mm would be ideal, external diameter is 83mm. 66mm tall

The black pipe really stabilizes the collector. 107mm internal diameter, 104mm would probably be ideal and external dia. is 114mm and 110 would probably be better. 69mm tall

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[Ron in Van]

Looks very good. It looks like it is much more stable than mine. I only use the inner pipe made from an old tea tin.
Well done.

[moryoga]

Thanks Ron. I hope this helps other Boosters get the most out of their investment.