The Stronghold S8X roaster at the SCA Expo in Houston. Daily Coffee News photo by Howard Bryman.
South Korean roaster-maker Stronghold is rounding out its lineup of commercial coffee roasting machines with the launch of the 4.5-kilo-capacity S8X.
Appearing at the recent SCA Expo in Houston, the new machine began shipping to customers this month, filling the middle ground between the company’s existing 850-gram-capacity S7 model and its more production-oriented 8-kilo-capacity S9. (Read all of DCN’s 2025 Expo coverage.)
“We realized we needed a size that easily can handle a super busy cafe, and maybe a few wholesale accounts, or to get up to three to four cafes,” Arash Hassanian, CEO of Stronghold’s United States distribution partner Roastronix, told Daily Coffee News at the Expo. “We came up with the S8 machine, which can roast 10 pounds of coffee every 7-8 minutes. The idea is to offer something compact, something very vertical instead of being horizontal, that is still 100% electric and with amazing software and replications, so that the cafe doesn’t need to have a 10-years-experienced roaster to have the best coffee.”
Daily Coffee News photo by Howard Bryman.
Within the same fundamental fluid-bed roasting approach as the S7 and S9 — including a proprietary drum using a halogen heat source — the S8X aims for greater efficiency both in terms of energy consumption and routine maintenance.
Ambient air is preheated via intake through the bottom of the machine, routing it through the machine prior to running directly over the heat source and into the bean chamber.
“We’re using the energy that’s already inside of the body of the machine before we heat [the air], to save energy,” said Hassanian. “It’s not recirculation. Fresh ambient air gets sucked from the bottom, and it gets preheated because the inside of the body is usually warm.”
The S8X also adopts an off-the-shelf halogen heat lamp, which Hassanian said costs 70% less than the lamps in earlier models, if replacements are needed.
“[The S8X lamp] is easy to find, you can buy it from anywhere,” said Hassanian. “While an S7X lamp is $270, a lamp for S8X is $30.”
The S8X is priced at $38,000, which Hassanian said lands it squarely between the S7 and the S9.
Daily Coffee News photo by Howard Bryman.
Founded in South Korea in 2011, Stronghold made its first entry into the United States market with the S7 in 2017. Five years later, its S7 Pro model was selected as the official machine of 2022-23 US Roaster Championships, marking the first time an electric roaster was selected as the compulsory equipment for the competition. Stronghold remains the official production roaster sponsor for the 2024-2027 seasons of the World Coffee Roasting Championship.
The Stronghold S2 roaster. Daily Coffee News photo by Howard Bryman.
At the Stronghold booth in Houston, which was run by Houston-based exclusive distributor Roastronix, the 350-gram Stronghold S2 made its first U.S. appearance. Still in beta testing on the Korean market while undergoing certifications for U.S. sales, the machine is designed as either a professional sample roaster or high-end home roaster. The price is currently projected to be around $10,000.
“People really like it. It’s beautiful, it’s simple to work on, and it has the same technologies [as larger models], so you’re not sample roasting with something that will be hard to transfer to production,” said Hassanian. “The benefit for home roasters is that, because it roasts up to 350 grams of coffee, you can roast once a week at home and have coffee for the whole week.”
The Stronghold S2 roaster. Daily Coffee News photo by Howard Bryman.
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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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