Craftsman of Coffee Roasters
The passion for coffee has given birth to thousands of new businesses, but only a few are innovating. Most coffee shops still use imported machines, which are not cheap. Then there is Johny Rahadi, 61, who is taking his creations to the global stage.
The passion for coffee has given birth to thousands of new businesses, but only a few are innovating. Most coffee shops still use imported machines, which are not cheap. Then there is Johny Rahadi, 61, who is taking his creations to the global stage.
These days, Johny is busy with a new experiment: energy-saving coffee roaster. The machine will be released in the next few months.
With his new machine, Johny uses heat waste as an energy source. The heat released from the machine is reused, which helps save energy during the coffee roasting process. One gas canister is usually enough for roasting coffee only 30 times; the new machine can roast coffee 45 times. “The fuel becomes 1.5 times more efficient compared to older machines,” he said on Thursday (19/7/2018).
His previous innovation is a super-efficient coffee roaster that can perform several functions of the roasting process.
Johny is like a little boy who is always hungry for new toys and modifying them. He nearly always thinks about how he could modify, add to and upgrade the machines. Innovation is what he does.
That is why his house in Duri Kepa, West Java, where he has been living for 20 years, is also a workshop for building prototype coffee roasters. Every time he gets an idea, he goes to his workshop and experiments.
If an experiment leads to a new product, he will finish. “I put myself in the shoes of a consumer. I keep looking for weaknesses in the machine, fix it and improve its function and appearance,” he said.
Uncle John goes global
The coffee roaster that Johny produces is sold under the Uncle John brand. Although it is produced in limited numbers, Uncle John has gone global. In Asia, his coffee roaster is popular in Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand. He has also sent the roasters to the United States, Germany and other European countries that are dominant in coffee machine technology. The potential in the Scandinavian market is big.
Of the hundreds of machines that he has produced, none are identical. It would be more accurate to call him a craftsman of coffee roasters. His creations are not mass products. “They are all customized according to the character of those who placed the order,” said the espresso lover.
How are the roasters created? Johny said everything was the result of daydreaming. Several coffee businesses had come to him with different needs. Some of them wanted to produce coffee beans with a specific flavor. Others wanted to produce special coffee with a machine that was easy to operate. Several ideas came to his mind from these varied needs. The resulting coffee roasters have a personal value for their owners.
Johny emphasized the importance of understanding how coffee is roasted. Roasting coffee, he said, was like a journey. To get a chocolate flavor, you had to stop by station A, while to obtain a citrus flavor, you had to stop by station B.
One needed good senses to determine the destination station. This meant that a good sense of smell was necessary in order to arrive at the desired flavor. That also required long experience.
Playing with machines has been part of Johny’s life. He has loved to tinker since he was a teenager. When an iron broke, his father asked him to fix it. He succeeded. Since then, Johny has enjoyed disassembling and fixing machines.
In 1982, he worked as the head of a coffee plantation and factory in East Timor. The job forced him to learn about coffee farming, post-harvest processing, sorting the coffee beans and how to roast them.
In order to produce high-quality beans that could be accepted globally, Johny studied at List Beisler in Hamburg, Germany. He became an expert in roasting coffee. He then opened a coffee roasting business on the side.
Prior to East Timor’s independence from Indonesia in 1999, Johny decided to quit his job at the company. He started to think about his next steps. He already had expertise in producing specialty coffee, but Johny did not want to stay in the same place.
“If I remained as a roaster, there are many others with the same ability. I wanted to do something that many people cannot do,” he said.
First machine
Johny took three years to finish his research and experiments on his first coffee roaster. His first machine was the result from basic materials. He used milk cans and created some materials on his own. He even made a special cutter, along with a welder and other metalworking tools. He made all of his tools.
Limited capital was no obstacle. Even under such limitations, Johny could produce his machines. His wife, Lanny, supported him. Later, their son Jeffrey quit his job to focus on the roasting machine business with Johny.
Johny’s first machine was a mini-roaster with a capacity of 500 grams. It was not perfect. The metal plate was thin, because it was from a milk can. Yet, he still wanted to produce specialty coffee by increasing the torque of the roaster. He upgraded the machines one by one and improved them.
Ultimately, he created a coffee roaster with a bigger capacity. Its trial surprised a coffee shop owner from Florida, the United States. The resulting roasted coffee tasted very good. The coffee shop owner immediately bought the machine for Rp 100 million. “I was shocked by the offer,” said Johny.
The next day, a container came to transport the coffee roaster to Florida.
Johny believes technology develops very fast, so he does not want to stop. Like the automotive industry that always produces new, innovative products, he also upgraded his coffee machine. He hopes more of the younger generation would take the same path.
Born: Surakarta, June 30, 1957
Education: Agriculture degree, Surakarta State University
Wife: Lanny Rahadi, 62
Children: Jeffrey Satria, 33; Sarrita Rahadi, 29