I'm considering purchasing a small commercial coffee roaster (1-2kg batch size). There is going to be a high end restaurant opening their doors in the fall of 2018 and the restaurant owner loves the coffee that I roast. He's mentioned that he'd love if I would supply the coffee for the restaurant (not to serious how he is at this point). I've got some discussions to be had with him in the near future. I currently use a Behmor 1600 of which I like for my personal use. But I don't see it as a good option for roasting 20 or 30 lbs of coffee in a month.
Anyone mustacians have experience with small commercial /shop roasters? I'm looking for recommendations and advice. I'm currently inquiring about a used Mill City 1kg Roaster. The dream would be a 2kg Roaster - but spending 10G on one is daunting at this point!
I've posted roasting threads here before, but they get very little attention. Apparently not common amongst mustachians. I'd be surprised if you hear much from anyone other than me.
I have a Behmor 1600. It will not work for your intended goal. Way too much work, and the reproducibilty is probably too poor for commercial intentions. It's a great value machine (actually the most mustachian machine), but as soon as you upgrade from beginner skill level you will have outgrown it. For myself I was about to buy a Huky, Kaldi, or R1 Bullet, but some life events occurred which are delaying me from purchasing for ~1 year. I have researched these three a bit... either of them might work for your target goal.
The Huky has the largest cult following and longest track record of success. It has a very helpful user base community. It is the least expensive of the three (~$1800 w/ shipping) but comes piece-meal. The Kaldi is the newest, mid price range (maybe $2400), less track record, good performance from what I've heard. The R1 has a small cult following of fanatics, and has some very interesting technology options (induction heating so no gas needed, small foot print, proprietary software rather than Artisan, etc...), but has had a lot of problems along the way. My impression is that many of the problems have been ironed out, but the R1 user community is not open to rational debate about the pros/cons of the roaster and it appears to hinders the development of the machine. I am going to reevaluate everything in a year and then purchase.
Most people will caution you on trying to make any commercial aspirations work without getting a 5kg minimum machine. Of course that's a beefy price tag.
The Mill City brand is supposed to be good, but you should be aware that they are actually made in China. Therefore, it's often recommended to purchase directly from China rather than via the middle man (Mill City). Mill City might have sole sourced it at this point though. I've read a lot of threads complaining about Mill City in this regards... some complaints about the owner as well.
You can likely get a better value roaster than that particular one.
If you simply want to roast large masses of coffee without particular concern of the quality, you can purchase drums that can be inserted into a BBQ grill. This is easily the most cost efficient way to go, but your quality will not be above amateur. With so many coffee roasters out there nowadays, and all of them using standard roasters like Mill City, it's hard to imagine it would work out in your favor. But hey, maybe coffee aficionados are fancy pants snobs and blind taste testing would fool everyone...
