Hello all!
I am looking to buy a roaster to start learning how to roast.
I want its adjustments to be as close as a bigger machine.
I have contacted cormorant and wintop. The cormorant is a little cheaper than the chinese roasters.
But the chinese one, have a big motor for exhaust, and the whole feeling that I have is that it is more close to a bigger roaster.
Then there are the Huky and the Roestbiene, with the latter having a lot of urgent modifications to become a "semi-pro" roaster.
Their price used are more than a half less.
I am afraid that the Cormorant, even though the design and the quality is top notch, that is intended more for home use. For example, the fans for exhaust are plastic, and the exhaust air path is a bit strange.
What are your thoughts?

The Cormorant is a home roaster but there are no issues with the exhaust or the fans. Mines been in use regularly roasting 1 lb/454g batches since Nov. 2018. How much coffee are you looking at roasting & how often.

I would be a lot, as I have to learn roasting asap. I bought a big German roaster, because I couldn't pass.
So, this will be the learning machine, and the sample roaster in the future.

georgemvg wrote:chinese roasters.

There are many different ones available.

georgemvg wrote:I bought a big German roaster,

Which one?

Kaldi Fortis 600 is good to learn how to roast with a drum roaster

If you are using this machine to learn large drum roasting techniques, I'd probably swing more toward an Arc 800, BC2, or Mill City 500g (or the equivalent chinese version if you can easily get it and have good service.) Those will give you more of the feel of a large machine but scaled down. They are a bit spendy but resell is good on them. They all have quite a bit of thermal mass and will react more like a larger roaster than something like a huky. We are talking about 80-135lb machines vs 15-35lb machines. They are also built to a commercial level to roast all day long, batch after batch.

Capuchin Monk wrote:There are many different ones available.

I was leading towards Ws-200, about 2400 euros or Wt-500, 2600 euros
Unfortunately I am in Europe, and there are little to none options.

Capuchin Monk wrote:Which one?

I bought an Ideal Rapid Gothot. It is in working condition, maybe some retrofitting and painting. But I do not want to ruin the "black chrome" finish outside the drum. The rest should me unpainted or painted....

Milligan wrote:If you are using this machine to learn large drum roasting techniques, I'd probably swing more toward an Arc 800, BC2, or Mill City 500g (or the equivalent chinese version if you can easily get it and have good service.) Those will give you more of the feel of a large machine but scaled down. They are a bit spendy but resell is good on them. They all have quite a bit of thermal mass and will react more like a larger roaster than something like a huky. We are talking about 80-135lb machines vs 15-35lb machines. They are also built to a commercial level to roast all day long, batch after batch.

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.

georgemvg wrote:I would be a lot, as I have to learn roasting asap. I bought a big German roaster, because I couldn't pass.
So, this will be the learning machine, and the sample roaster in the future.

The roasters you are looking at won't be of much use as a sample roaster. Even the Cormorant likes a larger batch size then the typical sample roaster.

Yes I know. But I cannot afford to buy one 50-100gr for a latter sample roaster. I mean, 500gr in comparison to the 23kilos bigger roaster, seems like a sample to me.
The problem is that coffee vemdors send small samples to test...

I would think that you can always pay them for a larger sample......