Discuss roast levels and profiles for espresso, equipment for roasting coffee. There are other things to control than just heat application, but we’re not quite there yet. A simple step-by-step video of what it's like to roast on a Bellwether Roaster. In a sense, it seems like one-stop-shopping for a café owner. What I mean is that the roasting drum is made out of stainless steel and does not rotate; the beans are mixed to assure even roasting by “paddles” that lift the beans off the drum surface and loft them into the air. We have zero desire to be an importer — we think the existing players are already operating at a very high level of service to clients in the consuming countries. Fast-forward to 2018, and that roaster has come to life. The Bellwether machine roasts six pounds of coffee at a time, and the average Bellwether customer roasts 100 lbs of coffee per week. If you've dialed in a preset profile for a coffee, it will alter the algorithm automatically to correspond to the weight of the coffee. The post-roast gases go through a chaff cyclone, just like you would expect, and then through an assembly that applies heat and cleans off the particulates and VOCs. Post But we can’t quite talk about them yet. It quickly gets complicated to discuss how one assesses that price! Bellwether unveiled what it says is the first commercially available ventless, electric coffee roaster to the public this weekend at the Specialty Coffee Expo in Seattle. Bellwether Coffee General Information Description. You're signed out. We think growers are our partners, and that without them, we are sunk. If one person out of 20 tips, that’s an extra $2/kilo in payment to the farmer. by ira » February 7th, 2017, 5:09 pm. The Coffee Compass. and all its parts are copyrighted, all If playback doesn't begin shortly, try restarting your device. Because we sell coffee in 22-lb boxes, it requires no materiel handling operation (no forklift etc). With the pandemic receding, Gilliland and Co. are looking ahead to the rest of this year. A conventional drum roaster burns a lot of fossil fuels, not to mention the by-products that are put into the atmosphere. With the most pessimistic reports predicting the near extinction of arabica coffee in the next fifty years due to climate change, the specialty coffee industry has an invested interest in reducing coffee’s environmental impact. Really! by JavaMD » February 4th, 2017, 8:39 pm, #7: Measure your roast capacity. So hot air comes in from the back, passes through the coffee beans, and exits through the front of the drum. He cofounded the Coffee Compass mostly as an excuse to visit more coffee shops. Our fleet of roasters reduced CO2 emissions by almost 900k lbs. The software that controls Bellwether’s roasters also features a marketplace where users can browse and purchase green coffee beans in 22-pound boxes. That works out to an average savings of … Bellwether says its 70-by-34-by-30-inch roaster can process up to seven pounds of coffee in 15 minutes. The Bellwether roaster roasts up to seven pound batches. Are there plans to produce a larger, more commercial machine? Post Contact Us to Learn More! When you are generating the kind of massive heat input required by a normal roaster, it is hard to be precise. An Order Form will include the terms and conditions, and each party’s obligations. We think importers are a valuable part of the value chain. "Our roaster is rated to do 24 lbs an hour and will cost under $50,000. by pngboy » February 3rd, 2017, 5:04 am, #3: #1: Meet the Bellwether Roaster The future of commercial coffee roasting. The big leap here is that the roaster does not control the process of heat creation and application; the roaster controls the outcome of heat creation and application. Post The Bellwether can roast and cool 5lbs of coffee in 15 minutes, giving most users 2-3 roasts per hour. With our device, the roaster is always the captain! To get a system like this to work correctly, you have to be pretty clever about how you implement the catalytic element. It’s spinning, for one thing, which kind of means wires won’t work. Because it requires no venting, it requires almost no infrastructure spend. After being cleaned and heated, the gases go into a blower that moves them back through the roast chamber. 1st effort roasting on Huky 500T... advice? Ouch, Legal disclaimer and copyright: This content In 2020, the Bellwether Roaster made a BIG impact on curbing emissions in coffee. It’s easier to control the heat application than in a traditional drum system, because your only heat input into that system is hot air. Running a café, or simply working behind an espresso machine, has stoked the flame of many people who dream of owning their own coffee brand. The Bellwether Roaster uses an electric heating element and smart energy storage, achieving the same roast quality without any need for gas. You mentioned we have a ventless, emissions-free roaster. by TomC (original poster) replying to JavaMD » February 4th, 2017, 2:59 pm, #6: We’re privileged enough to be buying from Royal, Sustainable Harvest, and InterAmerican. One of the interesting applications of this technology is that it allows cafes to roast in-house without an expensive and space-consuming ventilation system. Sign up for Free Updates from A quick note about that tip: In the US, the most common amount to tip at a coffee shop is $1. Post Not yet, although we get asked a lot. As they say, small is beautiful. Bringing consumers closer to the farmers gets easier when you’ve brought roasting to the shop, too. Required fields are marked *. Roasters have complete control over their profiles! A 3-kilo batch can be lifted by anyone, and our hopper is removable, so that they can weigh the coffee at hip-height. What sort of control do roasters have over their roast profiles? Michael Butterworth is a coffee educator, consultant, and writer. “We see Bellwether as a tool to liberate roasters and café owners from the parts of roasting that are prohibitive to the efficiency of a workday and allow them to focus exclusively on the parts of roasting that a machine can’t do,” Pachaud says. Roast Anywhere The Bellwether Roaster is … Tap to unmute. The solution, according to Gilliland, is a zero-emissions roaster. Roasters can draw a profile using our iOS app; that profile is sent to the device, which will follow it very precisely. As a former roaster, I think just following a roast profile precisely is already quite a feat. Would you be able to fulfill 50 extra orders a week? Your email address will not be published. I like the concept of putting a Roaster in each cafe. We demystify roasting by bringing it into the retail space and making it an activity that anyone –not just physically strong people of a certain height able to lift a whole batch into a hopper — can do. What about 100 or 200? Any suggestions would be great! Think about a roaster’s exhaust stack: all that valuable heat being drawn off by the exhaust fan and dumped onto the air. Cafés that purchase Bellwether roasters pay for them on a monthly basis. Most roasters generate immense amounts of heat, put a tiny fraction of that heat into the coffee, and then dispose of the heat as quickly as they can through an exhaust system. When this Reservation converts to an Order, we will apply your reservation payment toward the order payment. Do you think the Bellwether roaster can help connect consumers to the roasting and sourcing process? This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. But here's something else that's kinda cool. We need to focus on this product. For consulting enquiries please visit butterworth.coffee. I can tell lots of things about how it works! by Séb » February 7th, 2017, 1:27 pm, #9: Even more so because your roaster is losing heat really quickly (and not just through the exhaust system — there’s all that uninsulated metal, too). With our roaster, we take that exhaust heat and use it as roasting heat. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Your email address will not be published. It is also possible, although not really easy, to control the air’s temperature. Signed up as a 6 pound unit would be great, I had some interest into this roaster....until i learn the price! We are trying to make that connection stronger. Forget installing vents, afterburners, and … Zero-Emission Roasting Powered by electricity to be the lowest carbon footprint commercial coffee roaster ever made. But there’s another piece to this: We will provide roast profiles with each green coffee in our marketplace, profiles we have designed in our pilot facility specifically for that coffee. It is a continuous fluid bed roaster with zero emissions and no permits needed to start roasting. Commercial Coffee Roaster | 3 kg Batch Capacity; Commercial Coffee Roaster | 5 kg Batch Capacity; Commercial Coffee Roaster | 10 kg Batch Capacity; Commercial Coffee Roaster | 15 kg Batch Capacity; Industrial Type Commercial Coffee Roasters. It’s like the difference between watering your garden with drip irrigation — or a firehose. This cleaning process is primarily catalytic, but not just catalytic. But in addition, we have an iOS application (separate but connected to our core app) that will allow end consumers to connect directly with the farmers. Our Tip the Farmer app can be displayed next to the point of sale, and will show customers information about the farm that grew the coffee they are holding. With traditional drum systems, you have heat conducting in from the metal drum, but that drum temperature is really hard to measure. That heat was supposed to end up in coffee. That way, shops don’t have to worry about setting up relationships with suppliers or buy massive amounts of beans if they’re just trying to set up a temporary roasting solution. Absolutely. It can be operated continuously without required down time so daily capacity will depend on how many hours of operation your store allows for. Instead of green, unroasted coffee being shipped to centralised coffee roasting facilities and then shipped to retailers, Bellwether enables its customers to roast on-site—no gas lines or ventilation required. The Series B funding follows an initial funding round of $10 million in August of last year, giving the Bay Area company an unprecedented amount of startup capital in the coffee equipment industry since its early 2018 launch. (This design was popularized by Loring.) We work within the existing green coffee infrastructure. Home roasters, not small business owners: Do you sell or give away coffee. With the most consistent and controllable roaster available, our customers—from large brands to small neighborhood cafes—are in complete control of their coffee offerings using our electric, ventless, zero-emissions coffee roaster and intuitive roasting software. Post by JavaMD » February 4th, 2017, 2:16 pm, #5: Here are some practical tips to work out your optimal batch size: Know Your Roaster & Type of Heat. We have unlocked methods for controlling other key variables for coffee quality. The C market is at $2.70/kilo right now. Coffee roasting equipment maker Bellwether Coffee announced this morning that it has closed a $40 million funding round. Some of my friends in the Bay Area roasting scene are behind its development, but I don't know the chief engineer or much about the fine details of the roaster, but it should be interesting to watch. So we think that if you have 10 busy cafes, it’s probably cheaper to get 10 Bellwether roasters, one for each cafe, than it is to ever build a roastery in a warehouse and put a big old 40-kilo drum roaster in there. This process — chamber, cyclone, heater/cleaner, blower — is repeated as the air recirculates through our device. Powered by electricity, producing zero emissions, and compactly designed, the Bellwether re-imagines commercial coffee roasting for a sustainable world. No vents or gas lines required. In our system, we have a stable amount of heat in the system, and we just need to add enough to counteract the small, predictable thermal losses through our insulation, and the heat required for the roasting process itself. I found one chain in Nashville that offers shipping and seems to have a Bellwether roaster, but nothing that indicates any particularly blend that is definitely using it. Bellwether Coffee, ‘the fastest-growing company in coffee,’ raises $40M Series B … We will deliver content about farms that is best-in-class in it’s quantity and quality. I've heard about this coming for a little while. Berkeley-based Bellwether Coffee, a start-up armed with $58.2 M in funding, says it's new recirculating roasting … Bellwether Coffee is manufacturing the first zero–emissions coffee roaster. The electric Bellwether Roaster reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 90% versus traditional gas-powered alternatives. They aren’t being paid enough to eat well (with obvious, notable exceptions like Brazilian fazenda owners).