Neuhaus Neotec
Industry and continuous roasting, Ganderkesee, Germany.
History
Neuhaus began in Delmenhorst in 1931, in cereal machinery, and for a time built mills and continuous roasters under Burns license. Neotec, in Hamburg, developed about thirty-five years ago, according to an undated text from the manufacturer, the RFB system: industrial roasting in a fluid bed, the bean carried by the airflow without touching any wall. The date of the merger of the two companies is not published; the whole has belonged to KAHL Holding since 1991.
The most telling fact comes from the manufacturer itself: the fluid bed champion continues to sell drums, “for customers specialized in long roasting times and traditional profiles.” In other words, pure hot air does not easily reproduce a long profile, and Neuhaus Neotec does not claim otherwise. Its technical answer is the CTR II of 2020, a closed-circuit drum whose KONDUX system doses by flaps the ratio between conduction and convection.
What it makes
Fluid bed plants with no moving parts, gas-fired, electric or hybrid, with recirculation; drums with an external combustion chamber; laboratory machines.
The models
- RFB: 30 to 450 kg, up to 4,500 kg/h
- GOURMET: low temperature, up to 200 kg
- NEOROAST NR 15 and NR 30: 5 to 30 kg, 2020
- MAESTRO: drum, 1,000 to 4,000 kg/h
- CTR II: drum, up to 660 kg
- RFB-S: RFB-Junior and SHOPROASTER (200 g to 5 kg, electric
The manufacturer's site contradicts itself on the capacities of the GOURMET and the NEOROAST depending on the page consulted
What you gain
No paddle or agitator in the chamber: no internal wear, no breakage from friction, easy cleaning. Purely convective transfer reaches the whole surface of the bean at the same time, which reduces the gap between core and surface. Above all, the low inertia: the manufacturer claims quick recipe changes “without the result being affected by the mass inertia of conventional systems.” Electric is available across the whole range.
What you lose
A fluid bed requires a permanently high airflow: fan and heater become a significant part of consumption, and the profile depends only on the airflow/temperature pair, which leaves fewer levers than a drum. The load range is bounded by the physics of fluidization. The air carries off the chaff, so a cyclone is mandatory. And the cup lacks the body that conduction builds: this is why the company also sells drums.