Czech Republic-based coffee roaster maker Typhoon Roasters now has United States representation through Las Vegas, Nevada-based coffee professional Mason Salisbury.
The founder and head roaster of the boundary-pushing coffee company Luminous Coffee, Salisbury is currently converting a portion of the 2,000-square-foot Luminous production roastery into a Typhoon showroom and education center.
According to a recent announcement (Instagram) from Typhoon, Salisbury will be the U.S. point person for sales, technical support, parts and training for Typhoon machines.
A pink powder-coated Loring roaster — which has to this point been shared by Luminous and other local coffee roasters — will remain alongside an electric-heat 10-kilo Typhoon Hybrid roaster slated to arrive in the coming weeks. Over the next two years, Salisbury hopes to bring in the line of Typhoon equipment, including the 20- and 30-kilo roasters, as well as the brand’s smaller shop roasters and sample roasters.
Typhoon was originally founded in 1995 in Prague, serving customers primarily throughout the Czech Republic and other parts of eastern Europe. The company first introduced itself to U.S. coffee professionals at the SCAA (now SCA) expo in 2010.
Two years ago, the company made a major mechanical leap with the launch of its Hybrid line of roasting machines, which combine drum-based and fluid-bed heat application. Distinct from conventional fluid-bed platforms that keep green coffee aloft in a vertical column of heated air within a single cylindrical chamber, Typhoon Hybrid machines channel hot air through a string of jets that each send hot streams of air into a horizontal bed of coffee.
The machines show off this process thorough visually striking horizontal windows on the sides of the machines.
“When you see what the working environment is of a 10-kilo or 20-kilo Typhoon, the way heat develops in there, it’s just so new and refreshing,” Mason Salisbury told Daily Coffee News. “It brings people that have been in coffee forever to be like, I can learn again.”
A seasoned barista, roaster and consultant, Salisbury founded Luminous in 2020 with a groundbreaking level of green coffee sourcing transparency and an unconventional sales strategy. Luminous issues new coffee offerings and curated merchandise in limited quantities once a week, opening its online store for 24 hours at a time. Coffees typically feature experimental post-harvest processing techniques, and the packaging is consistently creative and colorful.
Salisbury first connected with the crew at Typhoon as a buyer of the 10-kilo machine.
“There are no freebies in this. I bought this roaster full price,” said Salisbury. “I see value in commitment. Commitment is the most important thing when it comes to starting a business or a relationship.”
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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.
