I’ve just spent a few days at Giesen Coffee Roasters in Ulft, a lovely little Netherlands town situated near the Germany border, to check in on how our fully re-built and refurbished Probat G90 is progressing. Giesen’s Marc Weber and his team of engineers have be working hard on our roaster for some months and the results are spectacular.
The process started with Marc finding the required roaster, which in our case was a 1947 Probat G90, with its cast iron drum in excellent condition. The condition of everything else is largely unimportant as whatever is not thrown away and replaced can be fully restored to new condition with relative ease. The drum was fully striped down to its most basic components and everything went on the receiving end of a sandblaster. Once the dust settles all of the parts are painted and then reassembled with new bearings and seals. All of the existing electric motors are tossed in the bin and replaced with new three phase units. The old Burners and Gas train are also discarded and a new six row array with 96 ceramic burners, three solenoid valves, a pilot burner and regulator fitted. The cooling tray received the same treatment with most of its components requiring complete replacement due to damage and wear. A new Cyclone was manufactured out of 4mm thick steel, which Marc jokingly told me would easily put up with a chaff fire — and if one were to start, just let it burn. I think he was joking?
Our now fully rebuilt and re-furbished roaster stands side by side with a customised Giesen Roaster Control System. The touch screen interface gives us access to the stored recipes that we use to operate the roaster. Once recorded and fine tuned, the recipes allow us to precisely control the power level of the burners, the airflow velocity through the roaster and the drum rotational speed throughout the entire roast duration.
At this stage it looks like the G90 will arrive in Melbourne in eight to ten weeks (sometime in early August).
Hmmm — I guess I better start thinking about how to I’m going to install it.
