Nearly forgot- when you exhaust air from an enclosed space you must provide make-up air, i.e. there has to be a way for the air being exhausted to be replaced or there will be no air flow out the exhaust fan.
Bruce
Thanks for sharing that information. Has anyone tried using an electrostatic filter like you would in a commercial roastery? I know these are huge but you can get portable ones designed for use when welding which means you wouldn’t need any venting to the outside at all. In theory it should be able to filter the air and return scrubbed air back to the room.
From memory the oil and carbon is attracted to the charged metal plates and you can then use a pressure washer to clean the plates afterwards.
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Hi everyone,
I am a new Bullet owner and roaster (started on a Gene Cafe).
I roast on my kitchen island near these windows. I open the top halves of the windows for smoke venting. This is fine for most seasons in Boston.
I am considering putting a bathroom fan above my roaster so the smoke vents out directly. I’d love to hear opinions/suggestions. Pic below. Thank you.
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Any possibility of getting under the range hood? A bathroom vent won’t contain the smoke at all to keep it off walls & window frames. Roasting smoke is really ugly stuff!
Bruce
Thank you Bruce!
My range hood does not vent out. It recycles the air in my kitchen.
Yes, roasting smoke is nasty. I had very little issue with smoke on my Gene but the Bullet is different.
Opening the windows works well for now.
Another thought I had was to print the attachment on a 3D printer and have a 2 feet run to the outside with no inline fan etc.
I saw a window dryer vent hook up that I thought may work with that set up.
Something like this:
Thanks for any feedback.
If you use the printed exhaust attachment for the Bullet you’ll need to allow an air gap.
I use a crude ‘range hood’ which is a plastic storage box with a 4" flange installed. An in-line exhaust fan gets most of the smoke out but there’s still some left behind. It leaves a nasty yellow-brown glue behind.
A better approach is in the preceding post which incorporates a filter (same material as the cooling tray uses) inside thee square box and sealed plumbing with smooth bore instead of the drag associated with 4" dryer vent hose.
Both these approaches require an exhaust port for an in-line fan (I used 4" dryer hose vs. 4" sealed hard plastic that @bertje1959 used). It appears the window dryer vent you found has that so you’re almost there. The biggest issue is relying on the Bullet exhaust fan to drive the distance and obstructions while working thru an air gap. I suspect (but don’t know!) that there isn’t enough power to handle it and that you’ll need a boost from an in-line fan. Plus there’s back-pressure to cause smoke to exit at the air gap.
The biggest drawback is assembling/disassembling all the pieces in order to roast. That’s a genuine pita!
Bruce
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Thank you! This is very helpful and I have pondering my design for a few days now.
I’m wondering if I placed an in-line fan in my system that vents outside using the window vent shown above and then creating some sort of a ‘hood’ with an air gap about 20 inches above the Bullet.
If I use an inline fan, what CFM do you all recommend?
I really like the cooling tray filter idea to prevent the fan from clogging up.
Last night I got thinking about those charcoal rangehood filters. If roasting above a rangehood is recommended, then shouldn’t those filters work just as well in a modified hood?
I am thinking of filters such as these…they come in all sizes and I could easily incorporate that into something I build.
Thoughts?
Thanks!
I used this 4" in-line fan (8-step speed control). Relatively quiet which is what you want… it’s hard enough already to hear 1C and especially 2C. In my case I have it set to the max speed. I start getting a little back flow sometimes and that seems to resolve it (probably has to do with wind causing back-pressure which reduces flow rate.
I imagine the range hood filters would work but I would guess that cleaning them will be an issue. There’s a lot of smoke residue and I’m not at all sure the charcoal element in those filters will survive either the smoke or the washing… clings like glue to everything. It brings to mind the charcoal filters in my HotTop which worked but had a short life (think $$$). In his setup, @bertje1959 uses the white material used in our cooling tray which can be washed with soapy water and reused without diminishing the filtration.
Bruce
Thank you Bruce.
This is helpful.
You are right…dis/assembling is the piece I am not looking forward to since I do not have a permanent set-up.
But I do have a very short run the window vent so that should help…I think. Once I have pics of my setup, I’ll be sure to post.
Thanks!
Here is my setup. I roast in the garage and I built this variable speed exhaust system to vent my Bullet. It uses a cheap Home Depot Broan bathroom vent fan mounted to a piece of 1/2 inch plywood. The “funnel” is made from a vent stack roof flashing (also home depot) with a 3" duct pushed through. 
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Creative! Is it permanently up or do you take it down after roasting?
a simple duct-taping solution, under a home kitchen range hoods which we have installed just for this roasting corner
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Hi everybody, my name is Edwin, today I just “seasoned” the Bullet and did my first roast, a 1800m natural process Pacamara from my family’s farm @fincacampobello in Cerro Verde, El Salvador. At Campo Bello, we’re planting new Gesha from renowned Panamanian farms as well as Pacamara and Bourbon, consulting with Willem Boot of Boot Coffee and Finca Sophia, aiming to make one of the best coffee farms in Central America.
Had a bit of a surprise with all the smoke that came from the “seasoning” batch! Wasn’t ready for that.
My current setup is a bit minimal, but next week I’m having the exhaust duct installed, as well as buying containers for the coffee, and a bagging station. Really excited about doing experimentation on the Bullet, and about the community sharing their learnings. If anyone here is coming to El Salvador, hit me up for a tour of the farm.
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Very very cool! How good would it be to offer super-premium greens with profiles on RW?!! Congratulations. Please keep us posted.
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Well done Harry!
Hi all
Very informative what you all have done to vent the smoke. I plan to be roasting my in kitchen under my 30 inch wide kitchen range hood that vents outside. The highest setting for this hood vent is 900 CFM (yes there is make up air as it is required by law in Massachusetts for any range hood above 400cfm). Based on the height of the Bullet there will be about 9 inches of gap to the bottom of the range hood. From your collective experiences will this be sufficient venting solution? I also have a kitchen window close by the stove that I can crack open if needed. Do you more experienced folks think I need to print the vent adopter with a bit more tubing to bring down the air gap between the bullet and the range hood?
It looks like some folks were setting up with the Cloundline S4 or S6 which looks like there is less cfm than my range hood. I hope my 900 cfm range hood is sufficient.
I have been roasting with a FreshRoast SR500 for years and prior to getting my range hood the FR would set off my smoke detector!! Now with the hood and the FR right underneath it hasn’t set off my smoke detector yet.
Appreciate any advice.
At 900 cfm I would think your hood exhaust fan has plenty of capacity, especially since you’re already roasting successfully with a fluid bed roaster that moves a lot of air. Your FR roaster pushes a lot of air to provide bean motion… exhaust is a natural consequence of that design. The Bullet’s exhaust fan moves a lot of air too, but has less force in the air movement since it doesn’t have to agitate the beans. Just pay attention when you start out that your roaster exhaust is moving toward the hood’s air inlet and not lingering without defined motion (you need smoke in the exhaust to see that). Having a window handy is great backup.
Bruce
Thank you @bab for your insight to my question. It seems like I should be ok without a whole lot of additional rigging up to do. I plan to put the Bullet right under the hood - same with what I do with the FR roaster now. Your observations about the air movement between the FR and Bullet is very informative. I know with the FR on high fan it is a lot of air pushed out from the roaster.
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