Whitmee and Swadlo
Whitmee
We roast on Whitmee at the moment. Whitmee began life in Great Britain around 1923 when everything was built like a Sherman Tank. Structurally she is the same. A traditional drum roaster with the rear of the drum perforated to allow airflow over the roasting beans. She is gas fired and has a long pipe burner which is turbo charged with the addition of a combustion fan and mixer, which allows us to dial in the flame to a higher temperature. We removed all the belt and pulley system and retro fitted a number of individual fan and drive motors.
After some experimentation we have settled on a quite fast 64 rpm drum speed and a batch load of around 20kg. The capacity of the roaster is bigger, but the result is better than with a smaller volume as the drum is long and narrow. Our roast times are between 14 – 18 minutes. We don’t know a lot about the history of the Whitmee in NZ other than she came from the sale of Roasters Coffee in Wellington and then the subsequent sale of Burtons in Auckland. The building that was roasters, apparently used to be the home of FAGGS Coffee, so we believe that they may have inherited it from them.
Swadlo – V30E
I must remember to take photos of these roasters when they arrive so there is a record of what they look like. Never mind. We have decided to build the Swadlo back up like it was. We found a little bit of history about Swadlo – namely that they are a World War 2 Austrian built machine. We’re not sure where exactly our Swadlo was built however it seems that during the war Otto Swadlo was forced to make guns for the Nazis, so once the war ended he pulled out all of his tooling and began making roasters again. The great thing about the factory was they hand painted everything by brush – so that shouldn’t be too hard to replicate.
The design is a little more modern than Whitmee and lends itself toward a Probat in scale and operation. We have however decided to modify it’s dodgy electrical system and retro fit a gas manifold – something hand built and very controllable – and hopefully efficient. We intend to put a big glass panel in the side so we can see the burner in action, and not have to stare in a little hole to check the flame.
Check out the brochure here
Whitmee Jnr.
Our sample roaster is still in development. At this stage we are using it regularly to gauge performance and areas we can improve upon when we build the next one.
Building this roaster was great fun - we had some help from Scott at NZFX. Using Robotics programs we were able to simulate the roaster working on the screen, then tweek the design before using the water jet to cut out the model. The Whitmee Jnr roasts up to about 1kg and is conventional flame under drum. Made from mild steel and has an extremely well lined roast chamber. Air flow is provided by fans sourced from a computer wrecker, (separate cooling and air flow vents.) heating by bottle gas – via rinnai gas heater burner and controler with a separate cyclone.
As I said it is a developing prototype, we will keep you updated on any re-developments.