US Roaster Corp

History

Dan Jolliff, whom the company calls Coffee Dan, was born into coffee. His father, Dan H. Jolliff, was a delivery driver for Cain's Coffee, a roaster in Oklahoma City. Jolliff says he was six the day his father opened the truck doors. The smell decided the rest. He first opened his own coffee business in Wilson, in the south of the state, because he wanted to roast himself. In 1998 he handed the keys to his brother and his father, then founded a roaster repair shop in Oklahoma City. This origin explains the company. You only design a machine well after taking hundreds apart. The shop, moreover, still refurbishes machines by Gothot, Probat, Diedrich, Jabez Burns and San Franciscan. It occupies 1530 West Main Street, a former bicycle factory from 1928, some eighteen hundred square meters that a neighboring building has since brought to eleven thousand. The turning point came from a grant from OCAST, Oklahoma's public research agency, and the help of engineers from Oklahoma State University. This aid financed the Revelation, the heat-recirculating machine that made the shop known outside the state.

What it makes

All the published models are rotary drums. No fluidized bed, that process in which the bean is carried in suspension by a stream of hot air without ever touching a wall. The company gives its reason in its sheets: a drum heats the bean by two paths at once. The first is conduction, the direct contact of the bean with the hot wall. The second is convection, the hot air that passes through the drum and licks the bean. The manufacturer writes that the balance between the two is adjustable on the Revelation range. The heat comes from a gas burner, with a venturi mixer on the small models and forced air on the large ones, or from industrial electric heating elements. The drum is stainless steel and the body is doubly insulated, so that the cabinet stays cool to the touch. The Revelation adds a catalyst, a metal support that burns the fumes well below their ignition temperature. The air thus cleaned, and still hot, goes back into the drum instead of going up the chimney. The manufacturer specifies that this catalyst retains the heavy aromatic compounds, those it holds responsible for off-flavors, and lets the light ones return.

The models

Two lines, plus a few machines apart. The Millennium, gas or electric, has a published technical sheet for the sizes 3, 5, 12, 18, 23, 35, 60 and 90 kg per batch. The series continues in 150, 250, 300, 360 and 500 kg, and the industrial page adds a 70 kg with no sheet. The 12 kg announces four medium roasts per hour and an adjustable burner from 10,000 to 90,000 BTU per hour, the BTU being worth about 1,055 joules. It starts at 39,995 dollars. The 150 kg climbs to 800,000 BTU per hour and weighs 6,550 pounds, or nearly three tonnes. The 300 kg sells for 698,000 dollars, the 500 kg for 869,000 dollars. The Revelation, with recirculation, has a page per size in 5, 12, 15, 23, 35 and 70 kg, with a 1 kg Mini Rev released in 2017. Two models carry a proper name: the F5, five pounds or 2.3 kg, launched in May 2020, and the F-16, sixteen pounds or 7.3 kg. Added to these are sample roasters with one or two barrels of one pound each, and the whole range offered in a version for cocoa beans, from 5 to 500 kg.

What you gain

The gain is thermal, and the manufacturer quantifies it machine by machine. An ordinary drum sends its fumes to the afterburner, the auxiliary furnace that burns them, then to the chimney. The heat leaves with them. The Revelation sends this cleaned, still-hot air back into the drum, and the published consumption figures follow. The 7.3 kg F-16 announces 30,000 BTU per hour at peak and 20,000 on average at full load. The 1 kg Mini Rev announces 8,000 BTU at peak and 5,000 on average. By comparison, the 5 kg gas Millennium is given as 5,000 to 50,000 BTU, and the 12 kg as 10,000 to 90,000. The all-electric version does without a chimney: the manufacturer writes that the electric F-16 can work without an exhaust duct. Since 2025, the 300 kg Millennium in turn recovers the heat of its afterburner.

What you lose

Recirculation has a physical price. The air that returns to the drum is not fresh air. The catalyst retains the heavy compounds and returns the light ones, the manufacturer writes it itself. The roaster sets the proportion of recycled air, not its composition. He therefore accepts a roasting atmosphere chosen by the machine, where a sweep with fresh air left him that adjustment. A catalyst only works above its light-off temperature, hence the electric preheating the manufacturer describes on the F5. As long as it is cold, it cleans nothing. Finally everything is hand-built in Oklahoma City, about a hundred and fifty machines a year in 2021. Lead times, parts and service depend on a single workshop.