boar_d_laze wrote:That said, most roasters perform best -- in terms of even roasting, agility, accurate thermometry, etc. -- in a fairly narrow range of charge weights. 100g is very low for any of the roasters on your list. I suggest buying whichever roaster is most attractive to you and fits your budget, roasting in its sweet spot, roasting less often, and freezing the surplus for later use.

This would be my advice as well. Choose a roaster based on its overall feature set, not just based on its batch size. My roaster has a sweet spot of 400g, so I typically use half of a given batch within the week and either freeze the other half for later use, or share it with friends.

In theory, a BT probe contacts and measures the temperature of the bean surface. In reality, it will inevitably pick up heats from other sources (hot air convection, heat source radiation & drum surface conduction). When charging at different bean masses, different heat sources may contribute differently, and alter the final BT readouts. Charging at the same bean mass (in your case, ~151g, dividing 1-pound green into three batches) will greatly improve the reproducibility of your roasting parameters (gas/fan adjustments) as well as the resulting profiles. You may also tweak the positioning of the BT probe of whatever roaster you eventually get, and optimize it for small load.

Different beans at different roasting levels peak and decay differently. Save couple small jars of roasted beans in freezer to extend the shelf life if necessary. You may also try to do pressure profiling on Vesuvius to compensate beans variations.

Your budget ($3000) can already afford a (used) commercial 1-pound sample roaster. For example, a brand new Bella mini-500 plus is listed at around $3400. BellaTW sponsored a recent roasting competition in Taiwan and provided several new roasters for the contestants. After the event, all of those roasters are on special discount. There should be plenty of similar events in Europe, and Swiss Franc has advantage in currency exchange. I would carefully evaluate used commercial sample roasters before jumping onto the new Huky/Quest wagon.

I'm pretty sure that the closest thing to what (I think) you want is the Quest, which -- as I understand it (I'm not an owner) -- is pretty consistent in the 150g - 215g range.

That said, most roasters perform best -- in terms of even roasting, agility, accurate thermometry, etc. -- in a fairly narrow range of charge weights. 100g is very low for any of the roasters on your list. I suggest buying whichever roaster is most attractive to you and fits your budget -- up to a 500g nominal capacity -- roasting in its sweet spot, roasting less often, and freezing the surplus for later use.

Rich, as you do so often I think you've nailed it here. The Quest corresponds most closely to the usage scenario I originally posted. That said, I know in my heart of hearts I am drawn to gas over electric and the alternative of going with a gas roaster and edging up my charge weights to around 200-225g and freezing surplus is the alternative usage scenario I should be considering. Thanks for the clarity and alternative roaster suggestions. I feel ready enough to take the North off my list - simply too big. I will look into Yang Chia and Bella Taiwan. If anyone has additional info around the safety issues with Santoker and either wants to PM me or link me to a thread where that is discussed I am all ears. I had no idea there were reports of issues although I had seen a report on a burner opening that had a burr and needed re-drilling.

Your budget ($3000) can already afford a (used) commercial 1-pound sample roaster. For example, a brand new Bella mini-500 plus is listed at around $3400. BellaTW sponsored a recent roasting competition in Taiwan and provided several new roasters for the contestants. After the event, all of those roasters are on special discount. There should be plenty of similar events in Europe, and Swiss Franc has advantage in currency exchange. I would carefully evaluate used commercial sample roasters before jumping onto the new Huky/Quest wagon.

Thanks Patrick. I checked out your Kapok yesterday as well as chasing down the Fuji Royal Coffee Discovery 200g unit that you noted. Incidentally, as far as I could make out the Fuji Royal seems to have stalled in its development somewhat or is only being distributed in Japan. Good points here about potential used (read, pre-seasoned) commercial sample roasters. I will explore the roast competition circuit option. In case you or others have any further ideas on that I'd be interested to hear more.

Thanks again everyone, all of this has been very helpful to me.

I didn't mean to be provocative.

Short answer: The spokes on each end of the HT's drum prevent getting the thermocouple junction into the heart of what we're calling the bean mass. The junction -- the active part of the thermocouple -- has to be located pretty close to the wall.

The context is that a "bean mass" is an artificial construct, not a real thing. What we're trying to do with BT probe placement is get the maximum density of hits (hits/time) at the thermocouple junction; and depending on how the drum vanes are shaped, maximum density location is usually closer to the center of the drum than the drum wall.

Another aspect of context is how probe placement relates to using the same time/temp profiles. I wasn't referring to how well an HT would roast small and medium charges, but how easy it would be to use the same plot to produce the same profile.

Rich

The Fuji Royal Discovery 200g roaster is available. The English web page just has not been updated for years. The unit is small enough that it can be sent via EMS.

There are also several European users of the Yang Chia 800N/Mini 500, in 220V.

I have roasted on the Mini 500, Santoker, and the larger Yang Chia. I would choose the Yang Chia machine for the workmanship/price/performance balance.

Fuji Royal Discovery

boar_d_laze wrote:I didn't mean to be provocative.

Short answer: The spokes on each end of the HT's drum prevent getting the thermocouple junction into the heart of what we're calling the bean mass. The junction -- the active part of the thermocouple -- has to be located pretty close to the wall.

Rich

I believe the latest version (which I have) has placed the spokes further away from the rear wall. I read some where about sensor placement that the sensor should protrude a minimum of 10x the diameter of the probe. I used a 1/8" diameter probe and was able to have it almost reach this perameter by protruding 1-1/8" into the chamber. If you use a 1/16" diameter probe you would have no problem surpassing the 10x rule.