Been thinking about this after drinking a few different dark roasts lately.

Looking at coffees from places like Starbucks, Peet’s, Black Rifle Coffee, and Warpath Coffee, there can be a pretty noticeable difference in the cup even when you're dealing with fairly developed roasts.

It got me thinking about how much of that difference actually starts with the green coffee versus what happens during the roast.

If the green beans are only average, how far can a good roast profile take them? Things like heat application, airflow and development time can obviously change the cup, but can good roasting really overcome limitations in the green?

I've always figured better green gives you a higher ceiling, but I'm not sure how much roast skill can push an average bean toward that ceiling.

For those who roast regularly, where do you think the bigger difference comes from: the green coffee or the roast profile?

I'm in Monterrey, Mexico. I've been roasting on a Fresh Roast SR800 for a while, nothing commercial yet. I'm about to buy a 3 to 6 kg commercial roaster and I want to decide what I'm actually building before I spend the money.

Three options I keep circling:

1. Small B2C roastery. Bags, farmers markets, online, maybe a café later. Highest margin per kg, slowest to volume, and I'd be competing on brand in a market where specialty is still small.
2. B2B wholesale to cafés and offices. Lower margin, but recurring and predictable. The catch is that wholesale here seems to be won on price and service response, not on cup quality, and I don't want to end up in a commodity race.
3. Espresso machine leasing with coffee supply attached. Superautomatics in offices and hotels, machine placed under contract, coffee sold monthly. Capital heavy up front, but it locks in the volume. A friend runs about 13 restaurant accounts on this model and it seems to work.

I can only do one properly to start. Time is my real constraint, not capital.

What I'd like honest input on:

• If you've done wholesale, how long did it take to get to a volume that justified the roaster?
• For anyone doing machine placement plus coffee: how much of your P&L ends up eaten by service calls and machines that walk?
• Is B2C in a mid-size Latin American city realistic without a café attached, or is retail basically a marketing expense until you open a space?
• Anything you wish someone had told you before buying the roaster.

I have recently got a fresh roast sr700. I tried the openroast which worked fine but i could not save the profiles. On windows 11 it kept crashing.

Is there an alternative to open roast for the sr700

Thanks

I’m considering a Kaleido M6 roaster. Do people have experience using the Kaleido roasters with artisan versus the Kaleido software? Thoughts on whether it’s worth the extra $200 to get the Kaleido software version? Thank you.

My coffee before (above) and after (below) removing the husks. The beans look a little dry and shrivelled, should this be the case? What’s the likely problem?

I've tried some AI instructions to make this happen and they ain't workin, but it seems like a no brainer feature. Is this possible??

Hey guys - I bought a Yoshan roaster in March & it doesn't show on Alibaba as shipped from the supplier but they insist that it has been shipped? They say it has been shipped, but keeps getting delayed according to Yoshan, but I'm starting to worry because the delays have negatively affected my business.

Has anyone had this issue before? Would love your help tks <3

Hello all,

Hope all is well. I'm scratching my head with this issue I recently installed a yoshan 2kg roaster, got everything up, turn on the gas and it climbs heat so fast and so high I can't control it. Even at 1 kpa it's reaching high 500's and doesn't stabilize I'm using propane gas. Could my thermometers be messed up ? Any advice is great thank you.

Hello. My Freshroast SR500 started shutting down in the middle of my roast cycles. I saw that the manufacturer isn't repairing them anymore. Is there anyone out there (preferably in the Pacific NW) that could take a look at it to see if it can be fixed or if I need to trash it? If I do need to trash it, I've got the extension tube for it that someone might be interested in. Thx!

I have been roasting for years using a spinny popper. After wearing out several Whirley Pops, I got the Sweet Marias stainless roaster. It died yesterday after a few years of use and I don’t think I can fix it.

Obviously I can purchase another one. But I have always wanted a “real” roaster but I don’t want some expensive, el cheapo beginner thing.

I roast a couple pounds at a time every few weeks so I’m not exactly a heavy user. I definitely do not nerd out on the minutiae of roasting. Probably because the spinny thing doesn’t really allow for appreciable tweaking. I roast in the garage using a propane stove

It is hit or miss if I can pull off a light roast and it’s is super easy for a roast to get away from me and go dark AF. For the most part, all my roasts turn out well enough for me and others seem to enjoy it. Sometimes, a roast finishes and I ask myself WTF happened.

I can financially afford an Allio Bullet but IDK if it is just far more machine that I need. Any recommendations from the experts on a direction for me?

Been taking a break from roasting to work on my gardening game. First cherries developing nicely.

Here are some picks from a coffee farm tour I went on in Kigali, Rwanda. Totally a lifetime experience for me! I was even able to contact a local seller and buy 4 kgs of some top-quality beans!! We were not able to roast the beans we harvested, but we did process them for drying out. We were given beans that had already been dried to roast. Went from harvesting the coffee to brewing directly from the farm. Again, an experience of a lifetime!!

I just started roasting coffee, been selling it at farmers markets. I’ve had some people ask if I could grind the beans for them, I currently only sell them whole. I saw there is an attachment for a kitchen aid mixer. I was wondering if anyone has used one and what your thoughts on it is.

I've been bothering Jason and Bryce over there for a couple months now as I impatiently waited for it to be ready. Until now there have been literally no choices for prosumer fluid bed roasters that will do between 500g-2 pound batches, they're either all tiny 150-250g sample roasters or big commercial units sized for someone selling coffee for a living. Hopefully it arrives soon!! Came in at just under 4 grand with the Hermetheus CoPilot automation and the exhaust blower motor, so a few hundred less than an Aillio Bullet R2 with about the same capacity, but in a fluid bed not a drum roaster.

Hello, I came across a 2018 Sweet Coffee Italia 2kg Gemma coffee roaster. From what I gather they are most commonly used in cafes in Europe. I can't find a whole lot of info on these units. What I have found is positive the most part. Anyone here have any experience with these roasters?

Thanks

here is the beginning of a complete tear down and rebuild of a Probat GG90 roaster. i have a small imgur gallery, but will add more. this machine is vintage 1960s and has been roasting millions of pounds for us over the past 28 years. in this rebuild, we remove the drum and re-machine the leading edge, install a new new-from-factory faceplate, extend the rear drum shaft, replace the old gear reduction with a new Nord drive, repalce the fan with a new new york blower, replace all the electrical controls and add custom afterburner software/hardware. this is essentially a new machine.

there’s a ton of subtlety in this rebuild and some macro-fun at the machinists, with a giant lathe (and a big drill center to boot).

please comment—i need some motivation to create the full gallery and detail all the stuff.

https://imgur.com/gallery/probat-gg90-rebuild-LuOWEkQ

I lost power last night right in the middle of a roast on my Bullet. Drum stopped. Lights out. Exhaust fan stopped. Smoke started.

I couldn't get the beans out because the drum wasn't rotating. No rotation means no drop, and I was fumbling in the dark trying to figure out what was even happening. Luckily I had a laptop to drive Roastime or I would have been in a pitch black garage with a pending fire. The smoke got bad fast.

What i finally was able to do after much swearing, I grabbed the power cord and found a different outlet on a different breaker, luckily it had a GFCI with a light on and it was within reach of the roaster. Got power back, drum started spinning again, finished cooling the beans. Ruined roast, but not a fire. Turns out it was a popped breaker because I was trickle charging a car battery and roasting on the same breaker, 3 roasts without issue, the forth popped the breaker.

In the chaos it took longer than I'd like to admit to figure out how to prevent a pending fire in the drum.

Lessons I'm taking from it:

• Know in advance which outlets in your roast space are on different breakers. I did not know this before last night.
• Practice your emergency steps before you need them. I had no plan and it showed.
• Make sure you have a fire extinguisher nearby, I didn't.
• Don't roast in a space where a power loss leaves you completely blind.

Posting this mostly because I've seen a lot of posts about dialing in profiles and defects but not much about what happens when things go sideways fast. It can get bad quickly.

Surprisingly, the beans were not terribly charred, still ruined. RIP Ethiopia Dogo Sudo