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Permalink Reply by Jay Caragay on October 17, 2013 at 10:15am

Have you done the math on roasting? The m3 ideally holds 120 grams of green coffee. Expecting a typical moisture loss of 16% leaves you with roughly 100 grams of roasted coffee per batch. One pound is equal to 435 grams, so you'll need to do no less than 4 roasts to achieve one pound of coffee for sale or use in your shop. If it takes you 12 minutes to do the roast plus four minutes to cool, you're talking about 3.5 roasts per hour. If you're paying yourself a roasting wage of $15/hr, then you're talking about a pound of coffee that's really costing you about $18-20 per pound.

That would cool my roasting bug for commercial use real quick.

If you're really serious about roasting for the shop and for whole bean sale, then you need to look at larger roasters - maybe in the 3K/5# range (or larger). Then you'll get some level of scale that makes roasting more efficient and cost effective. With a 3K roaster, presuming you're producing 12 pounds per hour, you're now talking a cost closer to $4.50 per pound and then you can start to make some money.

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Permalink Reply by Mike McGinness on October 21, 2013 at 5:36pm

Jay while I share your sentiment got a chuckle out of your post. (453.59g not 435g to a pound:-)

The only place a Quest M3 has in commercial usage is as a sample and/or profile development roaster.

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Permalink Reply by sage on October 22, 2013 at 8:45am

thanks guys for your input...if i were roasting as my sole venture, yeah the quest wouldn't be my first choice. but, as an adjunct to my business, to offer another choice for customers, and to increase sales some...i think it mightbe a worthy adventure/investment. some days at the shop i have additional time, plus my power there is free, so it would offer me the opportunity to explore roasting. 16% chaff waste?...had been hearing more in the range of 10%. ??
thanks again,

sage

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Permalink Reply by Danny Heiss on October 22, 2013 at 3:13pm

.....

Free power?

..........

I envy you.

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Permalink Reply by sage on October 22, 2013 at 4:38pm

yeah, but 25% of my sales goes to rent!

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Permalink Reply by Brady on October 23, 2013 at 3:46am

The 16% is a pretty good overall loss number.

Hey, the nice part about underestimating demand is that once you realize how popular your coffee is among your customers (and what it is actually like to production roast on something tiny) that little Quest will make a great sample roaster.

If you're gonna add it to your operation, I'd say do it as a first step and plan for how to quickly accommodate a bigger guy ASAP. I'd also keep a low profile while you do your first batches until your stuff is good enough for other people to drink. Once you do start sharing your stuff you can get a feel for initial response. If it's good enough you can think about pulling the trigger on something bigger.

As I understand, the Quest is quite happy running back-to-back, which you need with that small of a batch size. A model like the Hottop has more capacity and good control but not as well suited for back-to-back roasts. Both will need plenty of ventilation though.

Hope that helps. I'm not a roaster, but have played around with stuff at home and done quite a bit of looking at these beasts. Good luck!

sage said:

thanks guys for your input...if i were roasting as my sole venture, yeah the quest wouldn't be my first choice. but, as an adjunct to my business, to offer another choice for customers, and to increase sales some...i think it mightbe a worthy adventure/investment. some days at the shop i have additional time, plus my power there is free, so it would offer me the opportunity to explore roasting. 16% chaff waste?...had been hearing more in the range of 10%. ??
thanks again,

sage

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