Ritual is a countertop coffee roaster designed for the home kitchen. The product features fluid-bed roasting technology, modern aesthetics, and a logical user interface. I selected home coffee roasting for my project due to my interest in specialty coffee and desire to design an exciting and interactive home appliance.

Coffee roasting is the key process stage in defining the flavour characteristics of beans. Roast parameters impact the tasting notes, bitterness, acidity, and body of the coffee. Until recent years, the process had been somewhat inaccessible to home users. Ritual is designed for coffee enthusiasts wishing to explore the entire green bean-to-cup process. Unlike other products in the category, I wanted to create a product that enhanced the coffee experience for individuals, not professionals.

Ritual employs an immersion-style fluid-bed roasting system. The product functions through heated air agitating and roasting the beans, creating a fluidised-bed. Beans move around the roast chamber in a unique spiralling motion. Chaff (a paper-like byproduct of roasting) collects in the upper body, with heated air escaping through the vents. The roast chamber attaches via a novel two-way locking bayonet, enabling users to position the ergonomic handle on the right or left. Integrated weighing scales enable accurate (and automated) process adjustments, and the 4-inch touch display provides users with key data from their roast.

The fluid-bed system uses a custom 65mm vacuum motor to draw air from the top before forcing it past a nichrome (NIC60) heating element. Heated air flows through the investment-cast dispersion head to induce dual toroidal and poloidal (spiralling) bean movement. All polymer components requiring temperature resistance are injection moulded PPS (40% glass-filled); the remaining parts use a PC/ABS composite with balanced properties. Die-cast zinc (zamak-3) forms the main stand/base of the product, with a stamped zinc sheet for the upper vents.