Interesting roaster on the bay.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/272362214217

A popcorn popper roaster modified by Mike Sivetz.

If you have not had the chance to read about Mr. Sivetz this website has good synopsis of his work.

http://air-roasted-coffee.com/mike-sive ... onsultant/

His book "Coffee Technology" is an insanely dense 700 page encyclopedia of coffee tech information, and it has me fascinated with fluid bed roasting.

Anyone on H-B have the chance to meet him before he passed? Seems like he was an interesting guy, with lots of innovative ideas.

I've been trying to get my hands on his book for a while, the few times I've seen it, it's been several hundred dollars.

I live in Corvallis, Oregon where he built his business - never had a chance to meet him though. There's a small roaster in town using one of his air roasters called Corvallis Coffee Works The owner Rio knew Mr. Sivetz and continues on in his tradition.

As far as I know the roasters themselves aren't made anymore and the location of the factory is being converted into a pub.

The roaster at CCW is very impressive and the coffee Rio roasts is very distinctive - He won a golden bean award for espresso not too long ago I believe. The Ebay listing doesn't look much like what I saw at CCW. It was sort of a large metal funnel with a giant fan underneath. The fan would cause the beans to create a tornado like effect in the funnel which allows for a very even roast (I don't know much about roasting, so that's just going off the memory of what Rio told me).

Interesting, hope I can try some Sivetz machine roasted beans someday. The eBay listing notes say the owner of the roaster for sale upgraded to a larger Sivetz model. So Sivetz must have been producing a range of roasters from very small to commercial in size.

I bought his book a few years ago directly from the SCAA I think, foggy memory. It was around $100 USD, but it is the most comprehensive book on all things coffee I've ever seen.

I saw the Sivetz book at the last SCAA expo I attended, but didn't buy it. It looked pretty comprehensive.

https://store.scaa.org/products/coffee- ... -book-only

Found it!

Well, I could not resist owning a genuine Sivetz roaster and bought this one from eBay, the auction I posted at the beginning of this thread. It arrived here today and I just fired it up and roasted three batches of 50 grams each. Very interesting, I was getting first cracks at 4-5 minutes, stopping the roast around 7.5 minutes. I munched a few of the Yemen beans and they had the great fruit leather taste I got from these same beans out of my Quest M3.

The roaster is basically a popcorn popper on steroids, gets hotter and the fan blows much stronger. Also has a kind of metal bean funnel added to the top. With no instructions and no clue how to popcorn popper roast I just switched it on, tossed in the beans and let her rip. There is one note on the side that simply says "keep beans moving", so I used a long metal spoon and stirred the beans like crazy the first three minutes of the roast until they started to yellow and smell of hot hay. Let first crack pass and gave it another minute, dropped and cooled they are now having an overnight rest. Each 50g batch yielded 40-42 grams roasted.

The eBayer that sold it to me had bought it directly from Mr. Sivetz in Oregon when he lived there and also has a 2kg roaster from him stored in his basement. He asked me if I knew if anyone would want to buy it, I suggested he try it on eBay as well, but it is a lot larger and would be hard to ship.

That's awesome. Looks just like a smaller version of what I saw here in town. Looking forward to hearing more of your thoughts as you get a chance to use it - definitely a totally different animal compared to your Bullet!

I was under the impression that the fan was powerful enough to move the beans during the roast, but apparently I misunderstood (or maybe that's only on some models.

I have access to a Sivetz... for those who would like to try coffee roasted on one... have so many thoughts. I'm of the new school (actually really love roasting on a Loring) but from a yield standpoint for commercial roasters (where fluid beds used to be ominpresent), it's hard to beat Sivetz machines.

Fausto wrote:That's awesome. Looks just like a smaller version of what I saw here in town. Looking forward to hearing more of your thoughts as you get a chance to use it - definitely a totally different animal compared to your Bullet!

I was under the impression that the fan was powerful enough to move the beans during the roast, but apparently I misunderstood (or maybe that's only on some models.

I did a few more batches dropped down to 40g. I recall my friends similarly sized Ikawa handling 40g well. It did the trick, the beans spin and fountain smoothly with no need to stir. Also interesting that smaller batches slow down the roast profile, I am guessing the increase in spin speed and air movement reduced the air temp on the beans.

archipelago wrote:I have access to a Sivetz... for those who would like to try coffee roasted on one... have so many thoughts. I'm of the new school (actually really love roasting on a Loring) but from a yield standpoint for commercial roasters (where fluid beds used to be ominpresent), it's hard to beat Sivetz machines.

This little popper roaster works great! I am using it to do very small samples before I do larger 700 gram batches in the Bullet. One thing that is nice is my face is literally in the exhaust, and I can clearly watch the development of color, smell the roast. I just let the chaff fly everywhere then sweep up at the end.

I have found that fast short roasts from this Sivetz popper taste great, sweet and clean coffee. Hard to translate the results over to the Bullet but it gives me some ideas on where to start with a new bean.

I just listened to a Sweet Maria's podcast where Tom says he roasts all his coffee for home on his air popper machine. I can see why now. It is easy, fast, and gives surprisingly good results.