boar_d_laze wrote:Curious... Why a Giesen as opposed to something more manual and less expensive?Rich

Good question. I feel like this may be the one and only serious roaster that I purchase in my life... so I've pretty much decided to go down the expensive, cast iron, European pathway. There's still a chance that I'll go the 5-6 kg route as well. The other thing is that gas compliancing in Australia is onerous and my willingness to self import a Taiwanese roaster (something I considered for quite a while) is just low.

I've pretty much narrowed the choice down to Giesen or Joper. The Joper sounds like it is more classic and manual. I've also had a strong recommendation for Joper from the person I think is the best roaster in Sydney. She's just purchased a 5 kg Joper to roast her "Special Reserve" single origins and describes this roaster as the easiest plug and play machine she's ever used. She's got quite a few roasters in the rotation and I had a quick look at the roastery. There's a Giesen (I'm presuming a W15), a huge Probat which looks like the workhorse, and a Proaster sample roaster. She's happy with all of her large roasters.

Quest M3 to a Giesen -- talk about an upgrade. Hope you pull the trigger, if only so we can read about your experience!

Is this going to be a "thing" now; Quest users upgrading to full commercial roasters? Is the Quest going to be the Silvia of the roasting world?

I just looked up the 3 kilo. Joper...$16,000 ? That's one heck of a step up from a Quest.

Not that it addresses the greater truth of your observation, but Terence is in Oz and may be looking at very different prices than those we see in the US.

Rich

I think the Giesen and Joper differ how the burners apply heat. Giesen uses ribbon burners; does the Joper use a power burner? Giesen adjust heat by setting ET temps. So I'm guessing the ROR is adjusted by where you have the ET set; and is proportional. Drum speed and air fan frequency is adjustable, either on the keypad or optional profiling. Manual gas valve and magnehelic air pressure optional, at least on the 15K roaster seen at Boot Camp Coffee or their YouTube.

After watching several Geisen sales videos, the keypad control seems awkward whereas the profiling touchpad gives users more control. Either way there's some degree of automation.

Goldensncoffee wrote:I just looked up the 3 kilo. Joper...$16,000 ? That's one heck of a step up from a Quest.

Ends up being about $20k in Australian dollars (although likely more now that the AUD is in free fall).

Price point is an interesting discussion area. There are a number of providers of lower cost Turkish roasters down here. Toper has a direct representative, Roastmax directly imports Turkish roasters and then fits them out with Australian compliant gas trains and wiring. Australian gas compliance overall is tricky. I ended up contacting a number of clients of of one of these lower cost Australian suppliers and the feedback was interestingly similar. They had all been happy with their roasters, suggesting that at the time it was an appropriate "bang for buck" solution. But all of them suggested that they would be happier with an over built European roaster. One client had just upgraded to Giesen. Another specifically mentioned wanting to move to a Probat, Giesen or Diedrich. It's a very slippery slope and the going prices for 5 kg machines here in Australia at this level are all around the 40k mark.

I would ideally have gone down the Taiwanese roaster path, but feel like the compliance nightmare is an issue. It just requires money to fix.

The other part of the problem is that I haven't really settled on what I want, nor what is acceptable from an emissions/odour perspective for the neighbourhood. I expect that I've glimpsed over the edge of the precipice and may well pull back significantly. Nevertheless the exercise has been very good in helping to calibrate pricing expectations for different calibres/capacities of roaster.

Have you ruled Diedrich out? The IR-5 and IR-12 are both under $20k usd without automation and shipping last time I checked and the 2.5 is under $15k.

Hi there,

I was rather hoping that you would chime in. I'm particularly interested in your thoughts on roast profile movement from small to large roasters.

Diedrich pricing in Australia is extremely high. IR 2.5 ~27.5k and IR-5 ~38k. The differential between US pricing and Australian pricing is extremely large. Giesen, Joper and Probat all much smaller differential.

To come back to the airflow question...

I was fairly surprised by how antiquated airflow controls are even on fairly new roasters. I've automated the airflow on my diedrich and I use it as my control process to set ET (via PID). Now my gas pressure controls the bean temps indirectly but proportionally - raise the gas pressure, PID increases airflow to maintain ET, and the increased airflow causes a more rapid rise in BT.

I'd say this is a pretty optimum system if you have the ability to set it up. I've found i need to decouple the system at the end of the roast, though, because as I bring back the gas pressure to slow the BT ROR, the PID will dial the airflow way down. I've found empirically that my roasts that have a low airflow at the finish also have a charred note. I'm ascribing any theory to this yet (although there are several that float around) because none of the theories make sense. I wouldn't even say low airflow CAUSES the charred notes. I'm just saying empirically they've appeared together in my roaster thus far.