I bought myself a Christmas present, and it's just now arrived at the DoubleShot. It's a 2-barrel sample roaster. I've been looking for one for months (possibly years), and finally the right opportunity came along.

Many thanks to Dan at Roasters Exchange in Oklahoma City. This thing is a beauty. It's a Jabez Burns. I got the big roaster, my 15 kilo Vittoria, from Roasters Exchange over 5 years ago and it's been a reliable, excellent roaster. So I felt confident buying this roaster from Dan as well.
Good sample roasters are hard to come by and it was a long journey to find this one. I went and picked it up on Monday and I'm pretty excited about firing it up.
I looked up the Patent numbers on the USPTO site and found the original filings with drawings and descriptions. The drums for this thing were designed in 1909 and the entirety of the roaster was redesigned in 1925. Therefore, I suspect it was built in the mid-20s. It looks so good because Roasters Exchange restored it.

A bit about Jabez Burns.
It's a company that was started by the man (Jabez Burns). Burns invented this style of roaster, which is the type that is used by almost all coffee roasters today. He began producing them in 1864, and the company is still producing roasters today, after being swallowed up by the behemoth, Probat. Jabez was born in London and moved to New York when he was 18. The guy was an inventor and wily business man. Burns started a publication associated with his business in 1878, called The Spice Mill. I'm not sure what all he wrote about, but in reading Mark Pendergrast's account in "Uncommon Grounds," it sounds like his opinions in the trade journal got him in some hot water. Some quotes:
"Coffee, you develop, and by skill and judgment change from caterpillar to a butterfly, as it were-- you bring out a hidden treasure."
"The very best coffee in the market may be made insipid trash for the want of sufficient roasting."
I like this guy.
Other stuff mentioned in Pendergrast's book that Jabez Burns purportedly wrote were not so... agreeable. He stated that women shouldn't be in the workplace. And worse, he thought coffee should be mixed with chicory. Ugh.

Regardless, he made some fan-damn-tastic coffee roasters. And now we have one. What's it for?
Well, when we're looking for great coffees, brokers and importers send us 1/2 pound samples to try. We have to roast them and cup them. The roaster we've been using for samples has been unreliable, inconsistent, and it doesn't produce the same profile that the Vittoria does. This roaster will produce a more consistent roast, more efficiently, and it will mimic much more closely the flavors we'll achieve in the production roaster. So it's for sampling. We've wondered how many great coffees we've missed out on over the years because we thought a coffee was bad, when it really was a bad roast. For example, I almost didn't buy the Guatemala Villaure. But I asked for a roasted sample and it was outstanding. We won't have this problem any more because of our new, true blue, 2-barrel Jabez Burns.

It's really something. You might not think so, but it is. A lot of roasters our size don't have professional sample roasters because they're so hard to come by and they're really expensive. From what I understand, even the micro-roaster of the year (according to Roast Magazine) doesn't have a sample roaster.
This is the big time.