The roastery is a work in progress.  

Our venerable Diedrich IR-12 was purchased from a highly regarded specialty coffee roaster in St. Louis who wanted to sell his family's "starter roaster" to someone serious about roasting high quality, fresh coffee but wouldn't directly compete with his business.  Few colleagues even knew that the roaster was for sale. Through a friend of a friend in the specialty coffee business, Lodi Coffee Roaster's founder John Gorton loaded the old Diedrich roaster into an open air trailer behind his Ford Explorer, covered the roaster up with a tarp during a torrential thunderstorm and brought the prized possession home to Lodi, Wisconsin.

Many professional roasters believe that Deidrich machines are the best coffee roasters  in the world.    Our roaster is particularly special, not because it's any better than other Diedrich roasters, but because it was personally built by founder Steve Diedrich (and maybe one other helper, he tells us) before he moved to Idaho and built his now famous roaster manufacturing plant.

Our mission is to apply the Diedrich tradition of quality and attention to detail in our daily roasting.

We roast only what we can (in good conscience) sell as representative of the best coffees in the world.  We do not believe that coffee has a realistic shelf life of months; rather, its peak flavors begin to fade after weeks. Therefore, we encourage our customers to buy coffee in small quantities--only what will be  consumed in a week or two or three. And because coffee rapidly stales after grinding,  we beg our customers to invest in a grinder (even a cheap one) and to grind whole beans only when ready to brew coffee. In return, we pledge not to sell stale coffee.  It's the least we can do for our customers...Next time you buy "fresh roasted coffee", ask your retailer when the coffee was roasted.  Your question might be met with a shrug or a claim of freshness without a specific roasting date or a claim that roasted coffee has a long shelf life.  We know when our coffee is roasted, and we'll gladly share that information with our customers.