And my final question for the day. Has anyone started off on small roasters from a certain manufacturer and then moved up to their larger roasters. I'm thinking of the higher end European/American roasting firms such as Probat, Giesen, Diedrich and Joper. How comparable was the roasting experience between the small and large roasters... was it easy to move up in terms of scale?

Another way of stating this question... there was a discussion regarding the relative merits of the Diedrich IR-1 and IR-2.5. Someone mentioned that the IR-1 is a profile roaster and is able to transfer roast profiles to the larger Diedrich roasters... I'm wondering how that actually works in practice.

Thanks,
T

I found moving from a Hottop to a North TJ-67 1KG gas roaster much easier than I envisioned.. The gas kind of scared me but its pretty easy..
Not hot enough just dial up the gas
To hot dial in a little fan..
I was worried I had no idea how or were to set gas setting..
The learning curve after a Behmor> Hottop was no where as hard as those..

Can't speak to the profile roaster..

I moved from a HotTop to USR sample roaster without a lot of difficulty. The move from the sample roaster to a USRoaster Corp 3 kilo roaster has been a huge learning curve, and still progressing. There are several factors in my opinion. (1) the airflow adjustments are more complex due to the fact that there are 2 dampers rather than one. (2) There is more thermal mass, so adjustments have to consider a longer response. (3) There are more batch size options. Charge temps are critical, especially for smaller batches. What works for a 5-6 lb. roast will not work for a 1 lb. roast. That has been my biggest issue.

Moving from a home roaster to a large commercial roaster has its challenges, scale being the biggest one. If you goof a roast on the home roaster that's ok, you are only out a few ounces. But as you move up, mistakes can be a little more costly as now your out pounds. But, within a few roasts you will get the feel of how your commercial roaster responds.

As apposed to home roasters, roasts progress steadily, allowing you time to make adjustments before the roast get out of control. And as Ol'Timer stated, charge temps are important to get your batch off to a good start as well as learning how to capture and release heat, one of the more critical aspects you should learn about your roaster.

The move from an 8 ounce home roaster to a 5 kilo commercial was not that difficult as I applied the external roast signals - color changes, aromas, sounds, smoke levels, etc. - to my first series of batches. At that time, everything was pen and paper charting. This was a great way to learn and I could easlily plot my roast markers on subsequent batches, depending upon origion. After about 3 months of paper tracking, I moved into data logging. This added immediate feedback to the external ques of the roast. Roast adjustments became easier to track and cup. Moving from the 5 to 15 kilo, with data logging in place, was pretty easy.

In answer to your question on the IR-1/2.5, yes, it should not be difficult applying profiles to larger roasters, understanding that roast times may not be similar but the basic shape of your "curve" should. In my own experience and on my roaster, I found my roast times increased. For example, what used to take 14 minutes on the 5 kilo, now takes 15 but my curve looks identical.

kwantfm wrote:
Another way of stating this question... there was a discussion regarding the relative merits of the Diedrich IR-1 and IR-2.5. Someone mentioned that the IR-1 is a profile roaster and is able to transfer roast profiles to the larger Diedrich roasters... I'm wondering how that actually works in practice.

Thanks,
T

That was probably me and that was info that came from the sales team at Diedrich. However every IR machine works the same as its brothers just scaled. I would feel very comfortable walking up to any size IR and working it, there is only 3 air flow settings and a gas dial, getting me dialed in would take some time I would imagine.

Automation from Diedrich is very expensive as is their data logging for the IR-1. The data logging was supposed to be capable of sending the roast info to a bigger automated machine and do the math for batch size, drop temp, airflow, etc. it all became a moot point to me since I did not go down the path of also getting a 5 or 12 as a brother.

On the specific question of moving profiles from a Diedrich IR-1 to a larger IR series roaster I can speak to that from direct experience. I have an IR-12 built c. 2000 and an IR-1 that's a couple years old. Measurements on the two machines are not the same but they're both self-consistent and it's relatively trivial to produce a mapping function such that measurements on one can be made to look as if they came from the other. I've been using the smaller machine for product development for the past couple years and this works better than it ought to. I made a video describing the process.

Thank you... very helpful information.