Jotagallo (Inversiones Jotagallo S.A.)

History

Jotagallo was not born of coffee. It was born of metal. The company claims ninety-five years of activity, and its foundry line alone claims more than eighty-five. Over these decades, it cast parts for aqueducts, sewers, telephony, cement works, crushers, oil, gas and metallurgy. Coffee arrives by agricultural machinery, and agricultural machinery arrives by the cast part. The company made the components before selling the appliances. It belongs to a family group present in steelmaking, plastics and agro-industrial equipment. Until 2012, it was called La Macarena S.A. That year, it took the name Inversiones Jotagallo S.A. The rest of the chain was built around the bean. First pulping, which removes the pulp around the cherry. Then drying, hulling, roasting, and a line devoted to cocoa. Some of these machines do not come from its own design offices. The Ecomill washer is built to the design and manufacturing patent of Cenicafé, the national research center on Colombian coffee. The company therefore knows how to industrialize someone else's plan, and that is no small thing: it presupposes a workshop able to hold imposed dimensions. The roaster, for its part, is the last link added to a chain that begins at the cherry. It is not a roaster maker that diversified. It is a foundry that has worked its way down to the cup.

What it makes

Jotagallo builds drum roasters, manually loaded, gas-heated. The cylinder is not rolled sheet. The catalog gives it as cast, in iron enriched with silica and chromium as antioxidant agents. It is the foundry's signature: the company casts its drum as it casts its aqueduct parts. Cast iron carries more mass than sheet at equal surface, so it keeps its heat better when the cold load drops into it. The silica and chromium slow oxidation there, and a drum that oxidizes loses material. Now the manual requires that the clearance between the cylinder and the front plate not exceed two millimeters. It is checked with a shim, a blade of calibrated sheet metal. Beyond that, the bean escapes and jams between the parts. The cylinder is also insulated by a ceramic, so the burned gas heats the bean rather than the workshop. The company's documents do not agree on the burner. The October 2025 manual has you check that the flutes have a gas outlet at every point, and the sales page announces a flute burner. A flute is a tube drilled with a row of holes, which spreads the flame along the length of the drum instead of concentrating it at one point. The catalog of the same year says the opposite: jet-type burners, and it specifies that no flute is used. Nothing allows a ruling. A venturi precedes the burner, that is, a constriction that draws in air and mixes it with the gas before combustion. The manual requires a blue flame, a sign that combustion is complete. An extraction fan pulls the air and hot gases through the cylinder, then to a cyclone, that chamber where the air spins and deposits what it carries. An air intake valve placed at the back controls this passage, in four notches. Closed, it cuts off all air passage. Opened to thirty-three degrees, it serves moisture extraction. At sixty-six degrees and then wide open, it serves pyrolysis, that is, the decomposition of the bean under the effect of heat. The manual adds that these last two notches are opened to finish the roast. The cyclone collects the silverskin, that fine skin that detaches from the bean, and the combustion residues. It is this last point that tells the principle. The products of combustion do pass through the coffee, they do not stay outside. Under the drum, a stainless tray catches debris. The gas is held by a solenoid valve and automatic ignition, with an alarm if flow drops. The company casts its own parts. Its foundry works on high-frequency induction furnaces of 400 kg of liquid metal, molds by the Pep-set self-hardening resin process, and checks every part in a metallurgical laboratory.

The models

The production range has five sizes, coded J1, J3, J7, J12 and J30. The 2025 catalog lines up the four large ones with 3, 7.5, 12.5 and 30 kg per batch. The smallest is disputed. The catalog puts the J1 at one kilo of roasted coffee per batch. The sales page announces it as one pound. The manual, for its part, specifies that capacities are understood as green coffee. The three statements cannot all be true together. The technical table of the 2025 manual does not distinguish the models. It gives a single line for all: fifteen minutes in normal roasting, eighteen in dark, that is four then three batches an hour. The 2020 manual, on the contrary, gave figures for each reference. The 3 kg there held a batch in 15 minutes in normal and 17 in dark, that is 12 then 10 kg an hour. The 7 kg needed 16 and 19 minutes, for 26 then 22 kg an hour. The 12.5 kg needed 18 and 25 minutes, for 42 then 30 kg an hour. These three machines weighed 90, 130 and 160 kg respectively. All plug into 110 or 120 volts, 50 or 60 hertz, and burn propane or natural gas. The 2025 manual gives one motor and two reducers for the J1, two motors and two reducers for the other four. This second motor matters: it separates the drum from the cooling tray, so one batch cools while the next one roasts. The preheating control leaves the factory set to 220 degrees. The company also builds a sample roaster, which does not belong to the same family. It roasts 80 to 100 g of green coffee, in eight minutes at least, on quartz heating elements and not on gas. It weighs 12 kg. Its profile therefore does not carry over to the production drum, since the heat source is not the same.

What you gain

The drum is cast, not rolled. Cast iron carries more mass than sheet at equal surface, so it takes the temperature drop better when the load falls in. The cylinder is also insulated by a ceramic, which holds the heat in the drum instead of losing it in the workshop. The air valve has four notches, and each notch answers a phase of the roast. Closed, it cuts the air passage in the cylinder, hence convection. The bean then heats through the wall and keeps its water longer. Two digital probes separately read the gas temperature and the bean temperature. The catalog announces a USB port that connects the machine to Artisan, the free software that records and plots the roast curve. Roasting then stops being a memory: it becomes a trace that can be reread. Cooling takes under two minutes, because the path between the tray and the fan is short. A bean that cools fast stops roasting fast. The joints are clamp type, so the tray comes off without tools for cleaning. Finally the machine runs on a propane bottle and a household 110-volt outlet, without three-phase power.

What you lose

The combustion gases pass through the coffee. The cyclone collects not only the silverskin, it also collects combustion residues, and the manufacturer requires its jar to be emptied every 24 hours. A yellow flame or a fouled burner therefore ends up in the cup. The air valve has only four positions. Air is set in steps, never continuously, and between thirty-three and sixty-six degrees there is nothing. The USB port gives the curve, it does not give control. The manual says so itself: roast duration remains within the experience of the master roaster. The gas is set with a knob, and no setpoint replays a profile. What was done is recorded, it is not reproduced on its own. The 2025 specification table gives a single line for the five sizes: fifteen minutes and four batches an hour, from J1 to J30. A one-kilo load and a thirty-kilo load cannot share these figures. The published throughput is therefore a round number, not a per-model measurement. The documentation also contradicts itself on the burner, jets on one side, flute on the other, the same year. The buyer cannot know on paper what they are buying. Finally the warranty lapses without preventive maintenance performed by the company every six months. Outside Colombia, this condition is hard to meet.