The IMF coffee roaster isn't your typical style of roaster and to answer a common question we get asked "why the IMF?" we have produced this video explanation.
Unedited Transcript
so why did we choose the imf coffee
roaster
[Music]
hey guys luke here from artisti coffee
roasters and welcome back to our youtube
channel
where we guide you through all things
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them for you
so the big question is is why did
artistic coffee roasters and myself
choose to buy an imf roasting plant
well there are five things that i looked
at when assessing lots of roasters out
there
and what would suit us best so for me to
assess
all the different roses out there and
what best suited our needs
i needed something to standardize that
and the things that i looked at
was size price quality performance
and control so i'm going to dig deeper
into each one of those now and hope that
gives you a good idea as to why
the imf was the best solution for us so
in my investigations
the biggest thing that i found was
different across all roasters was the
actual
size of the whole plant once it was
installed in a factory
now you can see here that the imf is
actually really compact
it's actually so compact that this was
designed for a much smaller space
in another facility that we had and we
only had a roof height
of 3.4 metres and it was actually up
eight stairs
and we were going to stay in that
location until we grew and we realized
there were some other constraints
affecting the business from growing like
getting pallets of green beans landed
and forklift access
so we moved into this premises and
obviously size isn't an issue for us
here
but the whole area of our roaster the
blender
our packing station and the benches
behind us all fits in a six and a half
meter by six and a half meter space
so when you start thinking about how
you're going to be spending money on
rent space per square meter and how big
your actual facility is just from that
perspective of cost
getting it smaller actually is a very
good financial reason
for buying an imf roaster so the
equivalent roasters i was looking at
would be about four times the size and
the height was huge
because the afterburner was way up near
the exhaust fence going out through the
roof
and they actually had two heat sources
they had one for the actual roaster
and one for the afterburner so that's so
much more gas that's actually going to
be used
so this unit here is only about two
meters wide
and three meters long so it's really
quite compact to fit
your destoner your afterburner and your
roaster all together
now we do have our loader just a little
bit off to the side but that's only
about 800 by 800
and you could move that anywhere because
it does come through with the suction
hose
and so the roaster here is only about
2.4 metres high
so we didn't have an issue there with
that roof now
the other thing is the blender so if
you're going to pre-blend or post blend
you need somewhere to store those beans
after you've roasted them and this unit
will go through the distoner and up to
the preload hopper
that actually sits at 3.4 meters high
the actual width of that unit is only
two and a half meters
and the depth is two meters and that can
handle 120 kilos
of coffee that's all blended together so
it's very compact
to have such a big capacity so when you
look at i guess bang for your buck
in terms of output and volume and space
we can comfortably do 700 kilos in an
eight hour shift
and if you did that over five days
you've got three and a half ton
and you're not even pushing this
equipment in such a small area
so that's something that was really
important for me in consideration of
what machine to buy
so quality is the imf roaster built
strong and to my expectations
the simple answer is yes there is just
so much engineering that goes into
refining all this technology in such a
small space
they've actually done an amazing job the
durability of the panels the finish of
the work
um just every little bit of detail for
me just ticks all the boxes
and the engineering side of how it
actually works and just being able to
achieve this
actually amazes me um we've had the
roaster for four years
we've only had two real issues one was a
little software bug that got fixed up
and the other was a hardware issue which
was really easy to fix
it was just a readjustment of a spring
so overall the quality for us is just
outstanding
we think it's reliable and we've had
great success over those four years
performance so it's not just about how
quick you can roast coffee
it's about the overall package and how
well you can get your beans
into your hopper how easy it flows
around the whole
roaster itself and this unit works
amazing
there's a couple of vacuums that will
control the green bean straight up to
the top
and there's another vacuum which will
put it up to the loader as well
there's no delay in time or we're not
waiting for any one part of this roast
to either put green bean up
or to go through the d stoner or put it
up to the blender
so that performance is really well timed
and executed perfectly
for us according to our roast times so
we can get roast times anywhere from
13 minutes to 17 minutes wherever you
want to go
because the heat on this is amazing i
liken this to
a formula one race car over a v8 race
car where you might have
a v8 engine and five gears the formula
one
car has a v12 with multiple gears and as
you're
zooming around a corner you can just be
changing gears as much as you like
there is just so much heat on tap here
it's astounding
that even though it's a 30 kilo roaster
i can put a 32 or
almost a 33 kilo roast in there and
still achieve the exact time
that we would want for a 30 kilo roast
so there is just huge amounts of heat
and i cannot stress that amount
enough it is just beautiful to work with
but it is controllable heat
so that performance just gets a huge
tick now that we've actually been able
to use it
in the beginning i wasn't really sure
about the
science and how this was going to work
it is a quite a technical
roaster but we've come to love it
and we've come to be able to tame that
beast to be honest
so again really happy with the
performance of
the roasting capability and the
performance of how the whole unit works
control the imf roaster is controlled by
the siemens plc
and this is used in so many other
manufacturing businesses and components
around the world and we all know
and heard of siemens before and so this
plc
is very easy to use it's simplistic to
touch what we want to turn
on or off or easily adjust any of the
motors or the fans
or any of the devices in this unit
the great thing is is that this is
actually connected straight to the
internet
so we can have people dial in from italy
to assess what's happening with the
roaster
if there was a problem and that's been a
real help when we did have
that bug we talked about earlier so last
of all
price for me the whole package with an
imf
it all was put together as one big
option the blender the destoner
the green bean loader and all the other
things you need to consider your gas or
electricity
all of that overall was a cheaper price
than
other units now that's probably an apple
for apple's scenario
we didn't have to sort of add on a
de-stone or add on an afterburner and
then the price change
where we've had some real big wins is
the one
heat source through the afterburner and
that vortex system is using far less gas
than what i projected
to be able to run this day in and day
out so the installation of this roadster
was really quick
we had it off the truck and here very
quickly
and when the tech turned up within eight
hours we were able to start firing it up
and run some roasts
with other units you do actually have
quite a couple of weeks worth of build
time
and you have to get texts flown out from
italy to be able to to build that
and obviously the cost of flights and
accommodation for them to do so
can really add up the physical size of
the imf
plant takes up far less space than other
roasters
in your factory so that is a big cost
saving ongoing
if you think about the rent you're
paying and how much space it takes to
fit a roaster in
you do some maths and it's a huge
long-term saving
so for me overall weighing up the
initial costs
and the ongoing costs it just made sense
for me to choose the imf roaster
i feel like i've got amazing value for
money great performance
a great product in our end bean that we
can actually roast
and it's just a great piece of machinery
to work on
so hopefully that helped you understand
why i bought an imf 30 kilo roasting
plant
now if you've got any questions hey
shoot us a comment down below i'd love
to answer them for you
thanks very much for watching have a
great day so just to clarify we are
not paid by imf we did not receive
anything for this
it is purely our review and sharing it
with you guys so that you can actually
make an informed decision
on your next roast to purchase again any
questions please reach out to us
happy to answer them yes we do love our
purchase
thanks very much
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[Music]
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