Hey ecib, this is a great post. That popper is ubiquitous and is one of the few currently available for cheap that meet the side-vent requirement for coffee roasting. The annotated images are first rate. I am glad that you advocate simply moving the thermostat as opposed to removing it like so many people have done over at the Sweet Maria's forum. That practice is dangerous. I can envision relocating it to just the right position where it cuts off so you don't get too fast a roast but your roasting times are long compared to mine. I am using some old generic brand popper I picked up at Goodwill and it gets very hot without any modification. My roast times are too short. I am thinking about actually adding a thermostat because it doesn't have one. Just the opposite of your dilemma.

Though there are a lot of tangent posts about the uhhh… 'coffee culture' here in USofA, they are amusing. Only Americans make such a big deal about making good coffee. And the various coffee forums are the worst offenders. All kinds of snobs, forum bullies, and disseminators of misinformation abound on those sites. Not to say that there isn't some good solid information there, it's just that the signal is buried deeply in the noise. It seems that everyone is engaged in a really infantile competition at being THE master 'barista' in this country. I have to laugh at all this. I went to Italy in the 70s and I was blown away at what Italians simply consider coffee. We call it espresso, they call it simply caffè. We make a big deal about it. They take it for granted. We pay $4 for a shot. They now pay $1. Christ, they've been quietly enjoying superb quality coffee for a century and a half while, at that time we were still using percolators with the reject coffee that Juan Valdez supplied us with. :) When I came back I immediately sought out the coffee shops in the Italian neighborhood. The coffee was good, just not AS good. In Italy you can find good coffee even in little bars in remote train stations in small towns. It's ingrained in the culture. And a barista is just a bartender who knows how to make great caffè, mix drinks, and grill sandwiches. No big deal is made of the craft. We are gastronomical infants by comparison. Enough said…