The Aillio AiO 2-kilo commercial coffee roaster on display at the 2022 Specialty Coffee Expo in Boston. Photo by Howard Bryman / Daily Coffee News
Coffee roasting equipment company Aillio, maker of the 1-kilo Bullet R1 roaster, has revealed its next step up in size and technology: a data-driven 2-kilo-capacity commercial roaster called the AiO.
A prototype of the new machine, which is slated to enter production later this year, was displayed by Aillio last week at the SCA Expo in Boston.
Photo by Howard Bryman / Daily Coffee News
Much like the R1, the all-electric, induction-heated AiO drum roaster monitors the temperature of the beans with an infrared sensor, it is capable of automated roasting and it invites users to engage with Aillio’s Roast.World cloud-based network of roast recipes and analysis, green coffee resources and other information.
Designed collaboratively with the Danish firm Kilo Design and boasting a relatively compact footprint, the AiO is designed specifically for use as a countertop shop roaster, where it can serve as a showpiece for cafe customers.
Photo by Howard Bryman / Daily Coffee News
The machine’s back and side panels are designed to open wide for access to parts and for ease of maintenance, while many of the interior components fit seamlessly together in modular fashion, reducing the number of welded connections.
Incoming air is measured and heated based on the roast recipe. Aillio Co-Founder and CEO Jonas Lillie told Daily Coffee News that a space is reserved inside the machine for an exhaust filter that is still in development. An additional external air filtration system is also currently being designed by Aillio, which was founded by Danish brothers and now based in Taiwan.
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A cyclone collects chaff and directs it to a chaff box with an exit portal at the bottom of the machine into which users can connect to a vacuum hose.
Finished roasts are dropped into a square internal cooling chamber that utilizes both vibrations and jets of cool air to agitate the beans. The cooling chamber is monitored by its own infrared sensor until the machine shakes the beans out of the front of the roaster without tilting.
Photo by Howard Bryman / Daily Coffee News
Additional sensors throughout the machine monitor air pressure, exhaust humidity and temperature, altitude and more. A touchscreen interface as well as hearty brass knobs are intended to feel familiar to the hands of people working in coffee. Roasting can be accomplished manually through these physical controls, or it can be automated.
“We wanted to have the knobs because we believe that baristas like to pull levers and press buttons,” Lillie said of the AiO, which includes an illuminated bean viewing window but does not have a trier. “You don’t need a trier when you’ve got good data. So we actually don’t believe that it’s necessary.”
Photo by Howard Bryman / Daily Coffee News
Artificial intelligence designed by Aillio has been incorporated to help tweak automated recipes to account for small deviations in factors such as local temperature, barometric pressure, machine tolerances and other factors. The system can also assist in green coffee inventory management.
Photo by Howard Bryman / Daily Coffee News
“We’ve tried to build the whole ecosystem around people not having experience with roasting coffee, but they want the quality, they want the savings, and they’ll be able to start without any [experience],” said Lillie. “Once they get more into it and they want to play around more, they want to get a feel for it, then they can start creating their own recipes and try to source different beans. We’re still going to have that artisan feel and involvement. That’s never going to go away.”
Lillie said the anticipated price of the AiO is roughly $16,000 USD.
Photo by Howard Bryman / Daily Coffee News
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Howard Bryman
Howard Bryman is the associate editor of Daily Coffee News by Roast Magazine. He is based in Portland, Oregon.
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Hey Howard/DCN,
Wanted to offer a small correction. Ailio first showed the AiO in Amsterdam in 2018 at World of Coffee.
Cheers!
The problem with this machine is it still needs exhaust, did they mentioned anything about that?
Great article! I appreciate the write up as I could not make it to SCA Boston. The details about the chaff collector were much appreciated, but what does the exhaust requirements look like for this roaster? That is what has me on the fence about becoming an early adopter, and the site does not mention any details about this important detail.