Hi Aaron, no correction from me, because I am not fully detached from these concerns you raise (except for 1), which were shared by me when I started down this path. But I am moving away from them and I will share my perspective as to why.
The thing that bothers me most about this is, they brag on how 'fast' you can roast coffee. Also, The 'it pays for itself in a little as a month' reminds me of a sleazy infomercial or high pressure used car salesman pitch.This 'fast' thing bothered me too until I visited the company and saw Ken and then someone else roast some coffee. What they say and what they do when roasting are two different things. Even in the video he said 'about 8 minutes' and the overlay says 9.25. I think it was actually longer than that. They really were trying to develope the roast both times, but what they were talking about was I think directed to their target market, that underserved commercial shop with 12-25 lb a week needs. In that regard I think they understand their target market much better than we do. This is really a low priced commercial roaster, not a high priced hobby roaster. There is a very good commercial roaster near my house that roasts on a gianormous ambex. I would dearly love to pick his brain and learn from him, but I don't because that is his livelyhood and I don't want to intrude on that. Most of us were there at one time and understand that. So when I run short I buya couple lbs of his espresso blend and have a short conversation. Ken is not focused on us and I don't hold that against him.
Another thing that really bothers me is, they came out with their first model what 8 months ago for a lesser price. Now this 'new' model is on the streets with what are really major modifications and a significant price increase (probably justifiable given the changes) What about all those people who bought the 5, only to feel like well, yah, you got the prototype, here is slicker one, sorry about your timing. Whos' to know if a year down the road they come out with the nifter neater Model 7 and the 5 grand I paid for the 6 well... sorry, outdated model.I actually approach this from the opposite perspective. I would be more upset if they had NOT come out with the new model and am thrilled they did it so fast. I have been on the leading bleeding edge so many times, it borders on Masochism. $1000 for a dot-matrix printer that took three full days of my time to get working because they printed the pin-outs backwards; $6000 for S-100 bus computer paid for dearly with all my Anheuser Busch employee stock; $2300 recently for 3-d printer that now sells for $1200. The list is endless. But I never felt 'taken' by any of those choices. Plus, it seemed to me that CoffeeCrafters was bending over backwards to please their customers. I know that they shipped a new roaster to replace a freight damaged one while they dickered with the shipping company. I am pretty sure a large majority of the model V owners are OK on this. I could be wrong.
The quickness thing, roasting beans in 6 or 7 minute, at least to me seems very fast, (im not even going to comment on the comment they made about less time, just get the popcorn popper and a soup can geez) and you are not fully developing them that way. It is almost like, well we can give you roasted coffee, but if you want it 'professionally roasted' well.... Don't get me wrong I own a few I roasts which yes I do still use so know all about the 8 minute roast, but for a better coffee, umm NO!!
I love the concept and yes know you can loft them higher to stretch out the time but that only goes so far, it's akin to ok lets keep them at 325 for ten minutes...do we really want to do that? Maybe I just don't understand the fluid bed process well enough but to me it just seems like you don't have a lot of real control over the process, which is why most people kind of go that route to begin with.This is the one that is hardest to be open minded about, because all of my short 4 years of coffee roasting has been on drum roasters. After the gene cafe, I took a roasting class with Terry Davis at Ambex in clearwater. When I started the class,I was of the opinion that all these aroma and flavors that our esteemed cuppers pick out was a bunch of BS. Terry made me see that even though I could't do it (and still can't), it was in fact real and a result of training.
Well, at some point in all the reading about fluid bed and hands on with the new roaster, there was an 'AH-HA!' moment where something made sense to me. Most of the fluid bed roasters that Michael Sivetz designed and built from the 80's on were true fluid bed and had to be scientifically designed to use a specific batch (charge) weight (1/4 bag, 15 lb etc) because of the loft motor and roast chamber choices. THere was a 'sweet spot' of variables for a given charge. This was fine for commercial setting and has a lot of advocates.
The Artisan 6 is not a true fluid bed roaster, it is a 'spouting bed' resulting from the conical roast chamber and the diffusion of the loft motor air. In both cases the coffee is roasted by transfering heat into the moving bed of beans. We do the same thing in a drum roaster. There is a lot of science going on here with the thermo and fluid dynamics which I do not understand, but I don't need to understand it to use it. Intuitively, I don't see how enough heat gets transferred into the beans through that cylinder of hot air moving through the center, but it does. And most important in the spouting bed configuration...it is fully controllable over a large range of charges. The higher the 'spout', the less heat gets transferred because it is simply being moved 'through' the bean mass. The lower the 'spout' the more heat transfer. Understand the parameters of the heat transfer and you can control the roast.
Here is an artisan graph of a very early roast #425 of Guat HueHue. I entered the times and temps into the artisan software manually because I didn't have the TMD-56 meter working yet: See attachment
This looks very much like a sonofresco profile to me.
Here are the last six roast time-temp curves graphs downloaded from the Amprobe showing 6.5 - 9.5 minute roast times and only one went into 2c:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/2r160p9qh922dgx/GCBC_CCA6_R429-R434_TTprofile_2014jul16.pdfGroup 1: R429_CRV_454f_T0710_20140710233600-L1
Costa Rican Volcanes 2 years old 454F 7.1 min
Group 2: R430_CRV_455f_T0840_20140710233600-L2
Costa RicanVolcanes 2 years old 455F 8.4 min 2c
Group 3: R431_MAC_459f_T0650_20140710233600-L3
Mexican Altura Chiapas 459F 6.5 min
Group 4: R432_GHC_F455_T0950_20140711141909-L4
Guat HueHue CODEH 455 9.5 min 'profiled'
Group 5: R433_BMS_F449_T0950_20140711145240-L5
Brazil Mogiana YB 449F 9.5 min 'profiled'
Group 6: R434_VCD_F449_T0880_20140711152350-L6
Vietnam CauDat Temple Hills 449F 8.9 min 'profiled'
There is good reason that old farts (talking about me and a majority of our club membership I'm sure) are skeptical and cynical... too often it is justified. But I am always curious and looking over the horizon for better. I like what I see here.
Kevin