I don't think it matters what you get to start, after seeing a YouTube of an Ideal Gothat 23k vintage roaster. It had a huge side burner and maybe the fan is not something that gets adjusted frequently. If the small Santoker is something good for roasting distributer samples, that would be an option. The learning curve on the Gothat is going to be unique, best seen at a roastery with one in service. I've had fabulous coffee roasted on very old vintage German machines meticulously restored, however the owner only purchased the very best green coffee.

Recently I've been running 300g batches on the Cormorant with no issues at all. I believe that one is the pro roasters on here - almico - had used his with much smaller charges, but the BT measurement is compromised, and it is rather complex to interpret.

For sure, i think that it doesn't have the thermal inertia of a larger roaster. I gather from reading that this makes larger roasters easier to use, but have never tried one.

Personally, I'd think that getting something that's as close to the large roaster as possible will minimize the number of bad results later. With a 23kg capacity, those bad roasts will become expensive quickly. I believe that there are several reasonably low priced roaster manufacturers in Turkey, maybe one of these will be a good alternative? Good luck!

georgemvg wrote: Unfortunately, I missed one HB-M6 in a good price. BC2 I think it has a ss drum. The WT and WS series have cast iron or carbon steel drums.
I haven.t found yet a picture of the drum vanes.

Not sure I understand the WT or WS roasters. The WT says it is a double layer and iron drum. A cast iron, double layer doesn't make much sense to me. The double layer is a technique used for sheet metal fabrication of the drum to give it more of the properties of a cast drum but cheaper to make in the small volumes that the drum roasters are made in. So saying it is "iron" and double walled seems like an error or miscommunication.

Another thing to note, nearly all fabricated drums are stainless steel because stainless is food grade. Some even use stainless front drum plates these days. But perhaps they are using some different technology I'm not familiar with.

I have contacted wintop several times. The Wt-500, which is the smallest from Wt series, has a single wall cast iron drum. They say...

Another approach would be to get a proper sample roaster for your business. Don't expect it to be like your production roaster. See if you can rent time on something like your large one and have an experienced operator coach you through it so you don't ruin large amounts of beans. I think it's a mistake to try and learn how to operate your large roaster with a much smaller machine that isn't built to emulate it. It will also take lots of time and effort to learn to roast professionally. Some people pay consultants to get them on the right track.

The Wintop WS series are built by Santoker http://www.santoker.com/
The Wintop WT series looks like it's built by BlueKing https://lanjingmachine.en.alibaba.com/

My guess is Wintop is a Trading Company and can handle overseas sales and logistics.

Milligan wrote:
Another thing to note, nearly all fabricated drums are stainless steel because stainless is food grade. Some even use stainless front drum plates these days. But perhaps they are using some different technology I'm not familiar with.

That's a pretty broad statement. Especially as Diedrich has carbon steel drums. There's a great many roaster that have carbon steel drums. It's certainly true that stainless is easier to keep clean for food preparation surfaces, but that's hardly what the inside of a roaster is.

One difference to keep in mind is a stainless has a markedly lower thermal conductivity than carbon steel does, less than half. At room temperature of the values would be like 10 for stainless and 24.8 for carbon steel. So if someone was trying to limit the heat of conduction to the beans and maximize the convections stainless would be a choice that made sense.

But anyway it seems to be only some Chinese / Taiwan roasters that say they have cast iron drums, and that's interesting for a couple of reasons. It could be that they just lose something in the language translation, but that's been asked before and they seem sure that it's cast iron. But also, iron and steel casting is one of the huge industries of Taiwan. That is the reason that all this tool and machinery production goes on there, metal is cheap there. So it's possible that they could casting iron drums and machine them cheaply. I would think that would be inferior to a carbon steel pipe.

Mbb wrote:That's a pretty broad statement. Especially as Diedrich has carbon steel drums. There's a great many roaster that have carbon steel drums. It's certainly true that stainless is easier to keep clean for food preparation surfaces, but that's hardly what the inside of a roaster is.

I think where stainless steel matters for food / drink is if it's involving liquid or moisture. Roasting drum is far opposite of that.

One of the principals of CoffeeTech visited my home in 2013 to see my North Roaster with a perforated stainless steel drum. He said that cast iron is superior. I didn't get the tech details then. Also a perforated drum works very differently than a cast iron or double walled cast iron drum. There are threads about that elsewhere in the Roasting forum.

Yeah, cast iron has a higher thermal conductivity than carbon steel, by about 5% or so.
But it's also a lot trickier to weld to than a wrought steel. So it's good for even heating.... Just like in your kitchen.. But maybe the most prone for scorching, and the most difficult to fabricate