So, I met a guy with an artisan 5 today. For a while I have been wanting to, but recently started to seriously considering getting a 3,000ish dollar machine. Not exactly able to bring up the funds entirely myself with bags, beans, etc and so will be relying on my parents as partial investors. The plan would be to hopefully get things going during summer, preferably this summer if at all possible, get a roaster and start roasting/selling/farmers markets etc. Summer is important because I am a teacher, and work two jobs during the school year which would make starting roasting very problematic.

However, I am determined to get in the game, and while I would love to start out with a mill city tjxxx etc or equivalent, I think less than 5lb would be ineffective and from what I have seen some of the cheaper fluid bed 5lb options can roast without producing excessive smoke/smell, are easier to install without permit requirements, and might be a good foot stool before eventually moving into a more substantial drum roaster. That is just my impression at this point, I am just now taking this seriously, and may end up having to wait until next summer if it doesnt move along pretty quickly.

Anybody have some solid advice?

Roast in the middle of the night so people don't notice the smell!

Someone in my city recently bought the base Artisan 6M for 3K, but I have not seen it yet as he's been busy. I'm sure we'll be doing some roasting when that happens, and can observe how it works without the chaff collector/bean cooler.

Yea hood piece is 350, I could easily handle it from there. I will be really interested in your reports on control. Liked the roaster I was at and he had a couple good coffees, but he goes purely by sight and doesn't even weigh. Talked about 5.5lb taking 20minutes as "pretty fast" and roasted 1.5lb for a customers special order in like six with a straight fc-sc no break between transition (which in my experience required like a 30F/second or more to transition seamlessly and is a sure sign of unequal development) so, didn't get to pick his brain as much as I had hoped, but was still impressed with it for a variety of reasons.

Compelling and Rich in LA used one of the original "5" five models for awhile before upgrading; you might try emailing them car.roaster@gmail.com..

I've heard it can roast 8lbs of greens, but the cooling is limited. With the base unit and external cooling the capacity could possibly be increased.

Compelling and Rich had it for sale just a week or two ago.

haha, thanks for the info guys. I will shoot them an email and see if they have any tips.