Hey everyone—looking for some guidance from those with more commercial roasting experience.
I’m opening a coffee shop in about ~6 months, located about 30 minutes west of Portland, OR, and I’m planning to bring roasting in-house to supply the shop.
For context, I’ve got ~4–5 years of experience roasting on a 2kg Aillio Bullet, probably around ~1,000 batches total. So I’m comfortable with profiling, but this would be my first step into production-scale equipment.
The vision for the shop is very much specialty-focused:
3–4 staple coffees (consistent, high-quality offerings)
2–3 rotating “exceptional” coffees where I can really explore origin characteristics and push profiles a bit more
Right now I’m trying to find a roaster that I can grow into—something production-capable but still flexible enough to experiment and develop coffees at a high level.
I’ve been looking into:
Primo PR-35
Probat L12
Diedrich (IR series, likely in the 12kg range)
From what I understand, each of these has pretty different roasting characteristics—for example, Probat tending toward brighter, higher-acidity profiles and faster throughput, while Diedrich leans toward more body/sweetness with slower development and more control .
I’d love to hear from anyone who has experience on these machines (especially in a small café + wholesale setup):
What would you recommend as a “grow into it” roaster in this size range?
How limiting (if at all) are machines like the L12 in terms of workflow or flexibility?
For those running Diedrich IR systems, how steep was the learning curve coming from more traditional drum roasting?
Any strong opinions on Primo in terms of consistency/support?
Also open to other machines I should seriously consider in that 10–20kg range.
Appreciate any insight 🙏