One of the best experiences during my visit to Probat & Emmerich this week was visiting their museum collection and factory tour. The very early roasting machines, many hundreds of antique household hand grinders and even a solar energy coffee roaster on display.
At the Probat factory café, the German Coffee Roaster championships were taking place and I was there to assist Marko Luther of Artisan and Tonino.
For all roasts, Artisan as used, with a laptop next to the Probatone 5 machine for the roaster and a parallel Artisan display on a big screen for the competitors and all other spectators. Marko Luther made sure that the software would run fine and that no roaster would forget to press a button to save the roast profile to be evaluated and published later. I assisted with some others in weighing the roasted beans and measuring the roast color using the TinyTonino device.
More about that special event soon.
During a tour of the gigantic factory there were interesting stories and we saw hugely impressive machinery, dozens of expert technicians and mechanics, a hall for the training of student technicians and of course many many roasting machines and industrial coffee grinders.
A line of roasters like we have at home, some like we see in the cafe/roastery type businesses that appear all over the city these days, but also roasters for the industry that range from 'small' lab roasters with a capacity of 250kg to the bigger ones that roast thousands of kgs at a time. Customers from large chains and major brands come visit, bringing along twenty thousand kilograms of green coffee and they spend a day roasting it all on whatever super machines are available, then making up their minds about new orders.
In some halls taking pictures was strictly prohibited and there I kept my lens capped but in others it was allowed to make photos as long as no details were studied up close.
