That said, the FR system is certainly good enough for some pretty good shops. And if you’re a cafe/retailer capable of doing 1000#/mo but can’t add a gas roaster at your store (for any number of reasons – and there are many), the FR system appears at this time to be the only logical recourse as well as one that’s affordable.

The system they provide is certainly capable of roasting good coffee with reproducible results, no one from the roasters guild argues against this point. They balk at the portrayal that roasters are unwilling to embrace automation or engineering. This is patently false and every roaster manufacturer offers many degrees of automation for all of their roasting equipment, including retrofitted systems for vintage machines.

Mr Wiesberg is at the center of his own controversy because his abrasive personality NOT his equipment. He has ruffled feathers amongst a broad spectrum of the coffee community, from roasters to consultants to engineers. Breaking many of the rules of sales, not the least of which is disparaging his competitors, he has sought to create controversy in an effort to market his product as groundbreaking and paradigm shifting.

Freshly roasted coffee is a mantra of many roasters and has been for ten years running. To allude to Mr Weisberg and Fresh Roast are central to and champions of the cause is shortsighted and utterly lacking in historical context. I can count a few dozen roasters who have been marketing coffee with production dates and a very short freshness window for many, many years, long before Mr Wiesberg joined the coffee community.

As we move forward, automation will be central to the industry. Very few roasters would disagree with this notion. Indeed, the true roastmaster will excel with automation because the secret to a great coffee lies in the development and execution of the profile and coffee selection.

Selecting exceptional green coffee is at the very core of great coffee. Without the sensory skills of a trained professional, all the automation and technology in the world cannot make a lackluster green coffee taste great. While tools and instruments can be employed here, nothing is as capable as the sensory skills of a good cupper and the initial profile development of a skilled roaster.

The idea that roasters are opposed to technology is laughable and honestly the negative reaction to Fresh Roast Systems is rooted in their apparent disdain for the so-called artisan roaster.

Honestly, there are a number of roasters who would consider an 89 from Ken Davids a bad day. There are a number roasters who consistently score 92 points and higher 5,10 or more times over the past few years.

These roasters use Probats, Gothots, Loring Smart Roast, Samiac, Diedrich, Roure, Renegades, Primo and Sivetz machines. The common thread is flat out amazing green coffee and a knack for finding the profile that brings out the best qualities. A great roaster can take a great coffee and make it sing on any machine, however even a great roaster can’t make chicken soup out of chicken poop.

The “visceral’ reaction is not to the technology or the concept, the reaction is to the way Mr. Weisberg approaches the industry, like a used car salesman. If you know nothing about cars you may be fooled by his rhetoric, but if you know enough about the product you realize he is just a sales guy trying to badger his ‘customers’ into buying a product.

I have never seen a visceral reaction to Carl at Agtron (his competitor, Nor to Probat, Diedrich or Ambex…. hmmm something is amiss in the article

Texas Roast of Rockwall, TX received a respectable 89 point review of their Cowboy Roast dark blend from reviewer Ken Davids of CoffeeReview.com. Just respectable, that is, until you take into account that the coffee was roasted by a computer! Amazing!…