On Sunday at the SCAA, I decided to concentrate my "floor time" on visiting the various roaster manufacturers to see if there was anything new out there that might suit the home roaster, who wants something larger and more substantial than a Hottop and other consumer roasting appliances. The summary statement, if you don't want to read any further, is that nothing much has changed and there are no "reasonably priced" 1-2lb roasters out there that would interest all but the most well-heeled visitors to this website. My own setup, which after it was all said and done cost me around $4K, but over the course of a couple of years, has little serious competition, even now. What I have now is a 1lb/ 500g knockoff of an ancient Probat/Burns, that has been hacked with a new burner, a thermocouple in the drum, and a custom built smoke hood. The roaster is no longer being imported by the company I got it from, so my setup is not even an option to those who would want to put up with the aggravations of modifying it, and the smoke and chaff one has to deal with coming out of it.
On to the Diedrich. As many know, Diedrich is a large roaster manufacturer now located in Northern Idaho, although previously in Southern California. There are historical relationships with the company that spun off Gloria Jeans and other cafe franchises, but the current corporate structure is now limited to coffee equipment manufacturing. They have come up with a "cute" 1lb, electrically operated coffee roaster that they are targeting at the home market:
http://www.diedrichroasters.com/homeroast.html
This is essentially a scale model of a big commercial drum roaster, made with exacting detail, in much the same way that detailed scale models are made of locomotives and other things that collectors collect. On close visual inspection this is what it purports to be, a very small, scaled down, version of a big drum roaster. I spent about half an hour at the Diedrich booth and came away impressed with the detail, but unimpressed with the practicality and price of this product. I should add that they have a 2lb version of this roaster in development, that will also be electrically operated, but which is not yet even in the prototype phase. Presumably it will be even more expensive.
As pictured, at least if you could keep it clean, and could tolerate the smoke from the bean dumps at the end of roasting, it would fit into a modern kitchen. It draws a lot of amps and would probably need its own electrical circuit.
So what are the practical things I take issue with? For one thing, the price is simply way above what most dedicated home roasters would pay; around $5000 plus crating and shipping if you want such "optional" things as a cooling tray. In my conversations with their representative I had the impression that the cooling tray is not very efficient and that it takes 5 minutes to cool off the beans; with my own roaster this takes under 2 minutes. The design of the cooling tray, without stirring vanes has its limitations. My own roaster's cooling tray lacks stirring vanes also but it has a VERY powerful dedicated fan and the air movement more than compensates.
Controllability of the roaster's temperatures is via a 3-position electrical element switch and venting/dampers, of which there are two. Although this is more or less the same design (at least as regards airflow) of a bigger commercial drum roaster, one has to question the utility in such a small roaster. There will obviously be a significant learning curve in order to use this roaster well; don't worry, for hundreds of dollars you can take a course at Diedrich, but would have to budget your airfare and other expenses on top of the $5K for the roaster!
My opinion is that they should have greatly simplified the roaster design to reduce the learning curve, increase usability, and reduce the cost. They could have kept the overall "Lionel Train" type miniaturization, but simplified, if the intention was to put it into high end kitchens. OR, they could have offered a simplified version. I for one do not think that this sophisticated airflow design is necessary in a 1lb roaster, and they could have compensated by increasing the adjustibility of the heating element, making the 3-position switch into one that was infinitely adjustable.
At this price this roaster simply makes no sense other than for the odd high end homeowner who wants a cute toy-like coffee roaster in their kitchen, next to the Viking or Wolf Range, and the Subzero. I am assuming in this post that the roaster works well and produces tasty coffee, which could also be an issue I have not addressed. For the more serious home coffee roaster who wants something more substantial than a Hottop, and who does not want to use a BBQ drum, there are few rational choices. Before buying this Diedrich, however, I'd suggest buying a larger shop roaster, one of the many models that roast between a kg and 6lbs. Most of these can be used with smaller bean loads, and if you ever get tired of them, could be resold for a large percentage of what you paid for them. Prices for this sort of small shop roaster appear to be in the $6K-$8K range, not a whole lot more when you factor in the utility. This Diedrich roaster is not going to be easily resellable, in my opinion, and I doubt that very many real roasting operations would consider this a cost effective or useful sample roaster to put into their shop.
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I'd like to see profile control extremes capable of French in minimum 15 minutes or a stretched out Cinnamon in 25. Agreed bean mass temp monitoring mandatory, additionally roast environment temp monitoring also highly desirable.
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