Another hobbyist mini gas roaster from Taiwan. The fuel source is butane in this case, but can be fitted to other gas fuel source. A portable can of butane lasts about 2 hours. No trier, but a viewing window. Gross weight about 12kg. Fuel gauge. Drum speed, needle valve for the butane, and vent are all adjustable.


Web site/blog in traditional Chinese:

http://tw.myblog.yahoo.com/solon2501-no...=1#yartcmt

http://tw.myblog.yahoo.com/solon2501-no...&l=f&fid=6

Wow! This is much more adjustable than conventional sample roasters -- it has all the controls and instrumentation of a well made shop roaster. The price requests were answered privately (if Google translate has it right*). Any ballpark on that?


*Am I dreaming or does Chinese to English translation work better than French or German to English?

looks like they are working on a 300g & 500g model, they would be very interesting!

A 300g or 500g model would be a heck of a machine. I wonder what the price points will be and how hard it will be to import one. The mini-500 seemed like it was tough to get to the states. I wish USRC, San Fran or Diedrich would come out with something like at a competitive price.

~j

Wow indeed! Thanks for sharing this chang00. This got to be the most sophisticated mini roaster we've seen. I wouldn't worry much about shipping for 12+kg, but would sure want to know how much these sell for.

another_jim wrote:Wow! This is much more adjustable than conventional sample roasters -- it has all the controls and instrumentation of a well made shop roaster. The price requests were answered privately (if Google translate has it right*). Any ballpark on that?

jammin wrote:A 300g or 500g model would be a heck of a machine. I wonder what the price points will be and how hard it will be to import one. The mini-500 seemed like it was tough to get to the states. I wish USRC, San Fran or Diedrich would come out with something like at a competitive price.

~j

Getting a roaster like the mini 500 is not so difficult to get here but you are responsible to take care of all that, I really thought hard about the 801N. I know USRC makes a 450g roaster (JonR has one) and I believe San Fran makes one as well. From my research and talking to others about US made roasters there is not much room to make them cheaper and if they did what parts and/or workmanship would be changed to reduce the price so more home roasters would consider buying them?

Edit: Yes San Franciscan does make a 1lb gas roaster http://coffeeper.com/sf-1lb/

Not the best comparison but here goes anyway. John Deere decided they wanted to sell more tractors so they made the 100 series to put them in the Home pack stores. What suffered was a different motor and transmission and maybe some other parts I don't know about. Instead of lasting 15-20 years like the rest of their models will they will last 5-10 years.

The quest is a machine where the interest in the North American market got them to have a distributer in the US, hopefully some of these other machines will have the same benefit.

The cost of manufacturing is probably not significantly different, however, for most products, manufacturing is not the only associated cost.

The product liability cost is much higher in the US. For an example of this "crisis", I use medical devices all the time. By looking at a simple plastic or metal device, one would imagine it should only cost dollars to manufacture. But most of the time, the purchase price is in the hundreds, if not thousands. This is not to mention the typical professional liability insurance for my line of work, which generally costs well over $100,000 yearly.

I have seen and touched the various smaller gas roasters at SCAA. At least to me, I cannot see much build quality difference between the Mini and others. If this 100g or maybe 300g roaster has the build quality of say, the Quest M3, it may be another good home roasting option.

I am sure there are many reasons that drive the price up on a US company making a roaster. A mini 500 is around $2500 and a USRC 1lb roaster is just shy of $5000 and it has less parts. I do not mean to say asian roasters are not built with high quality standards.

Got a quote. The roaster costs approximately USD$1600 without shipping at today's exchange rate.

Good price for a gas sample roaster with full instrumentation; not quite competitive for a home roaster