Bunches of people have asked me about Five Star’s Kettle Corn Express machine. I sent my reply to a few people, so I figured I might as well post it all here. In short: the machine seems to ONLY make very large batches, it’s tricky to keep the kernels from burning in spots, putting too much sugar into it (like my recipe) will seize up the machine and it looks like a bitch to clean.

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This might be something to think about:

The kettle corn express machine. Take a look at this video on their webspace to see what I mean:

http://www.kettlecornexpress.com/expressMachine.htm

Did you see that guy dumping salt FROM THE CONTAINER? Damn that’s gonna be salty.

They want 7 grand for it without their sifting table. Ouch. I found someone in VT who was selling their whole operation (tent, trailer, express machine) on ebay for $8500. Sent that person an email asking if they’d sell their popper separately. No word yet.

Boy, turning the little crank on a blazing hot August day sure would be nice. They claim that the unit pops 8 cups in one go. We do 6 cups. (We CAN do 8 cups, just that it overflows and tons don’t pop)

Also: it looks like a monkey could do it. Hiring someone to do that while we scoop cash would also be nice.

8/19/07 6:33 AM

Hello,
First let me say you guys are my heros. You are working hard and living my dream. I am on the west coast, So Cal, and have been looking to get into the K Corn bis and get out of the office. I am at a place that you must have already been at and now have moved far beyond. So Hats off to you .

Thanks! Not sure how quickly it will you allow you to get out of the office. At the present, I do an office job (editing video) on Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays. I pop at Farmers Markets on Tuesdays and Thursdays. At home on Sunday and eventually I’ll do some sporadic events on Saturdays.

My goal is to match my income from my video editing job with kettle corn. The two days that I do pop at farmers markets, I do surpass it. (note: I get paid $60 an hour to do corporate video editing.)

It’s taken a while to get to this point with kettle corn, (built up the regular customers) so it may take a while to be free of the office.

I am looking at the Express machine as well . It has been over 100* every day this week and 107* one day last week at my house…

Are you in the kettle corn biz right now? You want to buy something to start with, right?

First off, I have the North Bend Originals 160 Qt “machine”.

http://www.northbendoriginals.com/kettles.html

NOT the Kettle Corn Express machine. What is interesting (to me) about your email was that I *JUST* looked at a Kettle Corn Express machine this past week. Someone in Vermont was selling on.

I am interested with your opinion of the Kettle Corn Express machine and how it has effected your business. Has it the quality and value you expected for the price ? Was Beth honest with you? Did they deliver on time?

Lemmme start off by saying that I’ve had some 100 degree days here in New England last year and this year. As I mentioned in my blog, I GOT heat stroke on a 100 degree day last year standing over my North Bend Originals popper. I’m a big guy, I’ve never had heat stroke in my life or even come close to it.

I’ve solved that problem by getting a small Honda generator and blowing a heavy duty fan on me while I pop. Still, it would be nice if I could get further away from the kettle while I popped. Thus, I was interested in getting a Kettle Corn Express machine.

They aren’t cheap. The one that is now on ebay was 4 hours drive away from me. The guy wanted to sell me all sorts of other stuff with it. (sink, tent, etc.) He was willing to let it go for $6,500. He would’ve sold the trailer separately.

Drove the 4 hours to his house in Vermont with $6,500 last week. I didn’t buy it. Where why:

Because it has a flat bottom, you HAVE to cover the bottom entirely with oil. Thus, you can ONLY pop large batches. (4-5 cups of unpopped popcorn - about 12 bags at a time.) With my large bowl shaped kettle, everything settles to the bottom, so I can pop as small a batch as I like. This is important because the noise and smell is what attracts customers. It’s much better to be popping smaller batches more often than say once every half hour.

I like to pop with a descent amount of sugar. The kettle corn express doesn’t do a good job of mixing up that sugar before it pops. It also has one narrow heating element/flame inside the unit. Thus, you get an extreme hot spot directly in the middle of the kettle, but when you turn the handle, the centrifugal force pushes the kernels outward, AWAY from this hot spot. With a bowl kettle, everything falls back into this hot spot. Because of this hot spot directly underneath the “blades”, and with the everything being pushed to the outer edges, you get a dryer spot which smokes like crazy. You’ve seen this video, right?

http://www.kettlecornexpress.com/expressMachine.htm

That’s what’s going on. Oh yea, there were a ton of burnt kernels when you dumped it. And forget about properly cleaning it. The top doesn’t easily come off. You will end up with charred, black layers of sugar in there.

Now..I suppose if you want to sell kettle corn that is lightly sugared with plenty of oil, it will do what you want. It just couldn’t do my recipe properly. In fact, when I tried to make a batch with my ratio of sugar to oil, it seized up on me! (The corn cooled before it left the mouth of the unit and formed a solid block of kettle corn that was stuck together. We had to scrape it out of there.)

Because the North Bend popper has a more focused heat source, it seems that my batches “explode” faster in about 15 seconds. The kettle corn express seems to take a little longer to do its thing. (Even though the amount of heat seems to be the same.)

It’s taken me about a year of popping to get to a point where I have NO burnt kernels when I’m done popping. By stirring it by hand I get a consistent distribution of sugar on everything too. I suppose this is why there is no hand cranked machine which easily produces a soufflé.

Believe me, I desperately wanted a simple hand cranked machine where I could get others to do the dirty work while I collected the money. I suppose this is why I have yet to find ANY kettle corn in a store which matches what I do.

Still..I bet if I monkeyed around with a Kettle corn express machine, I could get it do something which I found acceptable. I just wasn’t impressed enough to part with my $6,500 since what I have now works perfectly. (and my customers arrive consistently at this point)

Lemme know what you think. Because you’re on the opposite coast from me, I don’t find you my competition, so I’ll tell you whatever I know.

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The “oil injection system” on the Express machine was a hand pumped motor oil pump. (no kidding) By “measuring”, you had to time the amount of pressure you pushed on the plunger. The oil sat in this HUGE 40 gallon tank. Would be a pain in the ass to move that sucker. The “tank” is just a farm grade milk container. (The guy who had the Express unit had cows. He recoginized what it was immediately.)

I personally wouldn’t bother with an oil pump. With the North Bend Originals, the oil pot is sitting right there. Takes exactly 2 seconds to put the oil into the kettle.

Tip: the oil will be the most expensive item per bag. Walmart sells the cheapest corn oil. 5 bucks a gallon.

The real slow down is filling the bags. They have machines which weigh and fill bags, but you wouldn’t use them in the field.

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Jeff Fagan of Alabama sent me these photos of his homemade kettle corn express machine.  If you want to ask him any questions on how he made this sucker, email him at: shirinaevans (at) cableone (dot) net