ValentinoAzzurro I know nothing about the Kaleido, so I’ll do some homework. Have you had any truck with them? There is something intriguing about a machine that looks as though it’s walked straight out of a 1970s sci-fi movie!
I have not ever tried one, but every european (Italian) coffee exhibition I go to…they are there.
HarveyMushman ooh not sure I would have said that Harvey. Perhaps something like “there are less expensive options” or “dang, it hurt to pay that much!”.
I’ve had mine coming up three years and it did NOT work out of the box due to a faulty bean probe but that was diagnosed by the retailer quick smart and replacement was fast and easy.
Its really been great and I love the 1kg capacity (which in reall terms means 800g).
But yes, there are less expensive ways to get into roasting I’m sure.
However if you have the budget and are roasting around 800g per week, by my calculations the bullet paid for itself in around 18 months (versus buying roasted beans) and it’s the one machine in my coffee suite that genuinely saves money.
tompoland HarveyMushman ooh not sure I would have said that Harvey. Perhaps something like “there are less expensive options” or “dang, it hurt to pay that much!”.
I had to find it to confirm I wasn’t going mad!
I wasn’t sure if you meant it was overpriced or just quite pricey.
I’d love one for the exact reasons you mentioned. I’ve also noticed that roasting enough, especially compared to buying decent SO coffees, it eventually works out costing less.
Sorry to hijack the topic but @tompoland do you manage keep the smoke outdoors via that venting method? The reason I haven’t bitten the Bullet (ahem) is that I don’t really have a means of fixed ventilation and would have to rig up something like yours.
La Marzocco Linea Mini - Mazzer Philos
Ikawa Roaster
tompoland However if you have the budget and are roasting around 800g per week, by my calculations the bullet paid for itself in around 18 months (versus buying roasted beans) and it’s the one machine in my coffee suite that genuinely saves money.
That’s impressive. Paid for itself in 18 months. I had to go and do the maths :-)
18 months = 78 weeks.
Total consumption for 800g per week over 18 months: 62.4kg of roasted coffee.
Let’s get some good coffee in the UK, roasted, by roasters that we usually buy here: £30 per kilo, roasted.
Let’s say that coffee costs, when bought in bulk, is £8/kg.
You also said that 1kg of green coffee in reality yields approx. 800g. Therefore I would need to buy 78kg of green coffee to yield 62.4kg of roasted coffee.
So:
62.4kg of roasted coffee, at £30/kg: £1,872 over 18 months if bought from a roaster.
78kg of greens, at £8/kg: £624 over 18 months for green coffee. The difference is £1,248. £69.33 per month.
The cost of the Bullet in the UK is approx. £3,300 after a quick google search. This would mean it would take approx. 47 months for the roaster to pay for itself. That’s just under 4 years. That is, of course, excluding electricity, trial and testing and roasts which just went wrong.
With my usage It would take me over a decade for a roaster like that to pay for itself.
May I ask you to show your maths and rationale, please? I’m curious. :-)
tompoland
Thanks for that, Tom. Nice to read your positive comments.
Things are becoming a bit clearer now.
I’ve read a lot on the Meccano… sorry, the Kaleido and I don’t really fancy it. Think I might pass up on the Cormorant,too.
So,I might just bite the bullet and buy The Bullet.
But, before I do,I might take a look at the Ikawa Home, which gets a good rap from many sources.
Plus Points: It can do back to back roasts. It’s tweakable, gives me something to mess with.The small charge would allow me to sample different origins in a short space of time. It’s around €1250, compared to the Bullet’s €3600.
Minus Points: You’d have to do back to back roasts. The small maximum charge (100g) means I would have to roast 5 to 6 Times a week to guarantee continuity of supply.** Also, the technology is a bit of a mystery to me - and I ready for a new learning curve?
HarveyMushman?
** suppose I could use the time practising guitar or improving my chess😎
MediumRoastSteam I’m happy to go with your maths rather than my memory (which is what I was going on, never a good idea so thanks for fact checking).
Recalculation in AUD (pay off period remaims in the more common currency of time)
Previous rossted beans for 800g was $40 (prorated from $50 per kilo)
Green beans $17 per kilo yielding 800g.
Bullet $5,000
1x roast per week saving 40 - 17 = 33 per week or 1,716 per annum.
5,000 / 33 = 3 years pay off. Not the 18 months that I remembered but still not too shabby.
No allowance for power, run off solar.
To be fair, I’ve used about 1 in 50 roasts for burr seasoning so there should be a small allowance made for waste, especially firing the early part of the learning curve. Another fact that diminishes my ROI is the temptation to occasionally buy beans at $30 a kilo.
@MediumRoastSteam I appreciate you catching my mistake. You could keep yourself gainfully employed as a fact checker.
Ah the plot thickens.
Great detective work, you and @MediumRoastSteam are keeping me on my toes.
That post was in response to @JHCCoffee asking for advice on buying a roaster with the context of “Max $1,000 Cdn, hopefully much less”.
Hence: “while I can wholeheartedly recommend it, the price is too high”.
What a difference conext makes!
ValentinoAzzurro small maximum charge (100g)
That would drive me nuts 🙃
I think it makes more sense as a small batch sample roaster. Heck, I can easily destroy 60 - 80g dialling in a new bean!
HarveyMushman you manage keep the smoke outdoors via that venting method?
Yes it works surprisingly well.
And I have a wife who, whilst extraordinarily tolerant of the buying and selling of grinders, is at the other end of the spectrum when it comes to odours.
I roast in a room that was designed to be a home office space, so inside the house. I just shut the door while roasting and whilstnthere is so e rssidual odour itndossnt linger long.
The extraction fan is a cheapie off ebay.
The aluminium ducting is from an electrical supplies wholesaler (although the local giant hardware store had them too).
The O ring clamps are from the aforementioned hardware store.
The desktop arm holding up the “chimney” was an unused microphone stand.
The chimney itself was a old Tupperware container that my wife is probably still looking for (better to ask for forgiveness than permission).
And the only other ingredient is copious quantities of duct tape.
tompoland 1x roast per week saving 40 - 17 = 33 per week or 1,716 per annum.
5,000 / 33 = 3 years pay off. Not the 18 months that I remembered but still not too shabby.
Caught another mistake. 40 - 17 = 23, not 33. Therefore 1,196 per annum. 5,000 / 33 = 217 weeks or approx. 4 years. 😉
Regardless, in the grand scheme of things, not too bad. 👍
The maths for me are swayed by favouring apparently expensive roasters. Ozone, Newground, AllPress etc, their SO’s are £40-45 a kilo. We get through 2kg a month.
I just had a look and I can buy greens from the exact same region as one of the coffees currently on offer above for £7 a kilo. I’m seeing approx 11% loss on roasting although that might be due to smaller batches and lighter roasts than Tom.
There’s definitely savings to be made in the longer term.
@tompoland that’s great, thanks! Glad to hear it works well, I’m certainly keen to get a bigger capacity roaster to pair with the Ikawa and the Bullet ticks the boxes.
La Marzocco Linea Mini - Mazzer Philos
Ikawa Roaster
HarveyMushman There’s definitely savings to be made in the longer term.
No doubt. As demonstrated. I was just curious about the 18 months return of investment.
As for the difference in price between toasted in greens.. just because they are the same region doesn’t mean they are the same price. They can be from different farms, different grade, different processing etc. However, nothing stops a roaster buying a £7 per kilo as greens and selling for £40 or £45 roasted. 👍
When unused to roast and buy greens, there was a group on FB which bought by the sack and then very kindly shared, so it made it affordable. At the time, about 2 years ago, I’d say a decent coffee was about £7-£9 per kg, those usually retailing roasted for £30-£33 or so from what I could gather. More fancy stuff like anaerobic fermented naturals Central American “boozy” coffee could be had for £12-£14 per kilo. IMMV.
Platypus I’m already inventing plausible price porkies for if I splurge on The Bullet😎
hello@“DavecUK”#1 Yes. That’s one of the things that, in all honesty, I find a bit daunting. The designers seem to have gone out of their way to ensure that no unauthorised person gets inside the machine. Watching some of the maintenance videos I gained the impression that I would be spending as much time with a screwdriver as I would with Artisan!
Sometimes I think I was shamefully neglectful of the Huky, but it did run like clockwork for 13 years, with minimal attention. I was scrupulous about the vacuuming, attacking it after and before every roast with my handheld Ryobi and paying particular attention to the gas burner base (supplied), which wasn’t a terribly good match for the machine. You had to do, else it was a potential fire raiser. The Huki was quite a chaff chucker and not particularly careful about where it chucked it - maybe because it was one of the early models with the perfed drum. Sometimes chaff would appear as if from nowhere, mid roast, settling on the front edge of the burner in chunks and if you didn’t get rid instantly it could flare up like November 5th..
Apart from vaccing and the occasional blob of lubricant,I left well alone and the machine rewarded this ingratitude with years of faithful service.
If I get The Bullet I know I shall have to change my ways.
This is a bit of a left field suggestion but perhaps a new Huky and an Ikawa or KaffeeLogic as well?
The former would serve as a reliable, larger capacity roaster with the latter an opportunity to experiment with a more tech-led solution.
I recently described the Ikawa as the Apple product of roasters in that it’s an incredibly well-designed product and user experience which can be ‘one button’ simple through to somewhat more involved with custom roast profiles.
Both can also be used quite happily with a cooker hood or open window.
Not sure what your consumption is like but I roast 600g a week on the Ikawa which is two sessions of 25-30 mins. As I understand it the Bullet has a warmup time of about 25 mins so whilst the 100g capacity of the sample roasters might be initially off putting, it’s not as arduous to roast multiple batches on as it might seem.
La Marzocco Linea Mini - Mazzer Philos
Ikawa Roaster
I’ve had 3 very happy years with my (gas) Cormorant. Roast in a garage with venting. Deep cleaned it once I think. Doing 2-3kg a month. Not even halfway down a gas cylinder it sips it.
The lack of traffic in the FB ‘by the sack’ Green Buying Collective group since the main instigator went back to New Zealand is a bummer…
DavecUK FWIW…
I know “ quite needy” is a relative thing. And I haven’t had another roaster before the bullet. So it may very well require more work compared to others.
What I can say though is that despite me having ten thumbs and no fingers, I found it relatively simple and not especially time consuming. I’m not suggesting Dave is incorrect because I haven’t had experience of other roasters which might be much simpler and faster to clean and maintain.
I remove the chaff collector once a month which takes about two minutes. It’s simply clips off and then I shake it out in the garden.
The little window needs cleaning and the bean probe should be cleaned once a month but I’m probably only doing it every three months. The last part does need a screwdriver. But it’s really not that daunting and I guess it’s a ten minute job.
The instructional videos have been very helpful and when I needed to replace the bean probe I felt a bit intimidated by the idea. But I needn’t have been because the whole thing has been built-in such a way that it’s easy to disassemble and there’s pretty much only one way it goes back together again.
HarveyMushman thanks for that. I was momentarily tempted by your highly creative solution until I did the maths and realised that’s a new Huky + an Ikawa Home.Kafeelogic Nano cost-wise would be well up in Bullet territory, possibly even a bit more.
Most of the time I roast 500 g every six days - never quite lasts the week. Some weeks if we have guests over, friends staying or the arrival of my increasingly coffee centric grandson I might need a second roast.
Not entirely sure about your Apple metaphor. I have had a love/hate relationship going with Apple since 1990. This has continued to the present day when the Dark Lady of my Sonnets and myself have amassed a collection comprising two IMacs, three MacBook pros, three iPads, two iPhones and Apple Watch, all of which are used for specific tasks. Back in the day Apple were the good guys, restless innovators who stood up to the might of Microsoft and forced the pace of technology. These days they are just churning out bloat fodder- every trumpeted innovation just serves to eat up memory, while defects in the hardware are ignored. How much, for god’s sake, would it cost for them to put on a hinge that actually works without slipping on the iMac monitor?
Sorry, rant over. Thanks for your continuing help.
