We’re a passionate bunch here at Ryder! Passionate about serving up delicious, quality specialty coffee, and passionate about doing it in the most environmentally friendly way we possibly can. We’re proud to be New Zealand’s first electric roastery, embracing technology for sustainable, consistent roasting, and paving the way for a new generation of roasters.
Long story short, that’s our big “why” for our decision to import a brand new, recently released roaster from Germany that we’d never actually seen in real life before! If we were going to drop a fortune on a new roaster, we weren’t going to compromise on the quality of the results the roaster was capable of, nor compromise on our efforts to run our roasting business as sustainably and planet-friendly as possible. You’re looking at the very first Electric Probat roaster to land in Aotearoa, and we’re proud as punch to say it’s ours.
This shiny new roaster, named Van, is the Probat P05e – the electric version of one of the world’s most well known roasters. We patiently waited for Van’s arrival from Germany, with Pete tracking the movements of the ship as it made its way across the globe to us. For those who want to know more about the technology behind roasting electric on this beautiful machine, read on.
Traditionally, the roasting process creates gases which are emitted into the environment – an afterburner may be used to incinerate some of these gases, but this creates other emissions, none of which are environmentally friendly. When using electricity to roast, far less emissions are created, and there is no need for the installation of an afterburner, minimising our carbon footprint in the roasting process.
Time spent warming up the roaster ready for a day of roasting is also cut down dramatically thanks to the electric hot air technology, requiring next to no time to warm up (or cool down!) as it works basically like a hair dryer – on demand heat, unlike gas heated drum roasters which typically take 30-60 minutes to properly warm up. This saves us energy, and time! The electric roaster is also capable of running at 100% weight capacity, so we can roast a full 5kg batch of green beans in this guy (as opposed to running at the ideal 80% capacity in a gas heated drum roaster ie 4kg of green beans) so overall the machine is more efficient.
Though previous attempts have been made by other companies to create an electric roaster that stands up next to its gas heated counterpart, adjustments to the roast were often sluggish and did not create like-for-like results in the cup.
Probat’s knocked it out of the park with the technology they’ve used in the p05e; heat adjustments made during the roast are seen instantly, and the quality of the finished product is just as good as the gas version. We hope to see more of them arriving on our shores in the coming years, so as an industry we can move forward together in having a lower impact on the planet.
We hope when enjoying your next cup of Ryder coffee, you’ll take a moment to appreciate the efforts we go to in ensuring our coffee is sourced, roasted, and packaged with the least impact on the environment as possible.
Pete, Sam and Wes unboxing their brand new Probat P05e delivered by ship from Germany, March 2024
