Too Much Coffee

I agree, you'd need an afterburner of some sort - Plus, it's not really all that attractive ;P

Proper ventilation (if and when I go for a bigger one) is not a problem its placement would put it near a lowish roof and a door to the outside.

Obviously fire is a risk and not something i'd welcome. Equally though i've never worked in a kitchen or with a chef that hasn't had a fire so it's not something completely alien to us restaurant peeps. There are bound to be negative sides and I do appreciate the insight.

It's not really a stunt to get more customers (we have enough believe me!), for me it's further exploration into coffee and a chance to be more versatile. Roasting in house would give me the option to store a selection of greens and roast different stuff every week if required. It is of course also a talking point and I think that the type of customer we get (foodies) would appreciate a freshly roasted coffee.

Thanks muchly for the advice. My next step is to get hold of a hottop and start practicing, then i'll move on to roasting small batches in the mornings and see how it goes. Fingers crossed something big (thanks for those models Ordo) will eventually be on the horizon...

A good supplier should be able to give you small amounts for each week anyway Tristan, but you could just roast of site and bring in the coffee , making it all much easier and less smokey and all much more controlled.

Tristan, what about getting your 'usual' amount from your regular roaster supplier and have 'specials' you roast in-house for a 'demo'. The hottop should do nicely for a little while like that Maybe you could even combine it with a cupping / pairing event? Better yet, how about a Hottop and a Gene, side-by-side?

Steve, yes it would be easier to do it off site, but part of the attraction for my boss is the 'wow' factor... Though a hottop in situ and a bigger roaster elsewhere is not a bad idea.... Hmm I wonder if my missus would mind me turning the spare bedroom into a roasters?

Bean_Believer, that is exactly the plan to begin with so we can see how it goes!

If a roaster is to be where the public can see it they're going to want to be able to see the beans roasting. There are a couple fluid bed, glass chamber roasters but I would prefer a drum roaster over them. I think a clear statement of roasting your own might be less complicated.

We have two micro roasters with coffee bars in town. One of them uses an oven for all their roasting, surely at least 5-6 times a day, and I guess max 500g per batch. They have a larger than normal kitchen exhaust. Sorry, no images available.
The oven is used exclusively for roasting, I think.

The other uses a Diedrich roaster of the typical shop variety, 7 kilos capacity. The exhaust and chaff collecting details look good. Image here: http://www.damatteo.se/files/vallgatan.html
This one would be too big for your friend, but a smaller one, like a Has Garanti 2kg roaster, might work well, provided he can solve the issues with exhaust, placement in the locale and all that.

Hi All, sorry to have joined this thread a bit late, but here's my comments.

We were roasting on a 10k probat (just moved over to has garanti)

However, we bought 2 electric toper cafemino's, one for a friend who was doing some work for us, and one as a backup/sample roaster for ourselves. (dont try and use it as a sample roaster - it'll end in tears)

The cafemino is a great looking piece of kit, but I think Id have very serious reservations about having one in a bar/cafe

1) We set the thing on fire more than once. One time we melted chaff in one of the exhaust pipes and had to take the thing apart.

2) You can vent it - sure, put if your coffee is extremely smoky and you dont let the cyclone do it's thing, then you'll get smoke pouring out of the seams in the drum casing.

3) Its really REALLY noisy. The cafemino is built like a tank out of industrial strength parts, including its motors. The drum motor runs a gearbox thing that sounds like a petrol lawn mower of full throttle - not something customers in a bar are going to want to listen to.

4) I'm with Steve, in the fact that roasting is an art. My partner and I have been roasting for years and are yet to reach anything like the caliber of someone like Steve. We'd be confident with our coffee in a coffee bar now, but when we started we could bearly drink it ourselves, even though we'd done a load of home roasting as enthusiasts.

Just my opinions

Dean

There was an amazing German Roaster (on the same stand as the Clover- I guess it was Matthew Algies stand) at Caffe Culture that did everything you want, was eminently profileable, was perfect for a shop, you could walk away and leave it, it had an afterburner and a special chaff cyclone system that wouldn't allow fire (apparently!) and all for only £15000.00

An Iroast in a glass Case Leigh I seem to remember

Steve, I hope you are not referring to the Neoroast
Yes it is wayy tooo expensive but it is a lovely looking piece of kit and works. If I could afford it I'd have it installed yesterday!

It even has a computer panel so customers can have their own personal profile stored for them.

It was the NeoRoast

I'm not a fan of air roasters full stop to be honest and there is no way I'd pay that much for one thats for sure.

I wasn't impressed at all when I saw it, the machine was playing up when I was on the stand, although it had been working well before hand and I was told it was quite a show stopper later on in cafe culture. Certainly not on my shopping list though, a bit of a gimmick.

There is no way that I could pay that much for one either. But if you have the money and you want a roaster in a shop, I know of nothing else that could come near to the Neoroast for "quietness" "repeatability" "attractiveness" "theater".

I don't agree I think a roaster belongs in the roastery and the coffee shop is about covers and good service and not gimmicks.

Theater repeatability attractiveness should be all about the barista and the espresso machine.

For small batch roasting of 1kg to 2.5 kg I would suggest the DIGI PRO 2500 available within the UK.
This is a fully automatic SMOKELESS programmable coffee bean roaster with full user override being used in a number of coffee shops and Delis.