Contemplating Buying a Coffee Roaster … but

JHCCoffee

Hi All
I am contemplating buying a coffee roaster. I welcome your recommendations. The selection of roasted decaf beans here in Canada is limited/poor, and quality is hit and miss, so roasting my own would improve my access to beans that I might like.

I did (some years ago) have a Behmor and encountered numerous roasting success challenges, to the extent that I eventually sold the machine.

My main challenge is that I am quite hard of hearing, such that I (with the Behmor) I couldn’t hear the first or 2nd crack, above the noise of the drum motor and fan, even with a microphone placed outside the unit (and an equalizer to filter out extraneous noise). I had few roasts that I could call tasty.

My second challenge is our cold climate. The Behmor produced some extend of coffee roasting exhaust and associated smells. This was acceptable in the summer, as I roasted coffee outside, on the deck of my cottage. However my wife would not likely tolerate that odor indoors. Positioning the unit on our stove top, beneath our unvented kitchen stove fan, would not be a viable option with her. So this needs to be a basement located operation, with no migration of any odor into the house. So the machine needs to have some kind of air cleaner or alternatively an air exhaust that I can easily duct to the outside. My wife drinks Kurig coffee; so my Lelit, NZ and accessories are viewed as consuming kitchen counter space. I think that you may get my drift about this.

Hopefully roasting technology has paralleled the “prosumer” trend in espresso machines, such that there are products available that meet the following needs:

machine detection of first and second crack
machine monitoring of temperature within the heart of the bean load (centre of the load/mass)
good rotation of beans
Bluetooth connection to a PC, that controls the entire roasting process using a temperature/time/airflow recipe that I input
automatic logging of roast data, downloadable to a spreadsheet
ability to upload roast profiles received from others
quiet
low or no odor
Reliable (solid build)
Readily available parts
Able to roast 1 kg (ie 2 pounds)
Compact
Max $1,000 Cdn, hopefully much less

Doram

JHCCoffee Able to roast 1 kg (ie 2 pounds)
Compact
Max $1,000 Cdn, hopefully much less

I daresay that even a machine that only answers your last three points doesn’t exist.

MediumRoastSteam

JHCCoffee - No offence, but you are searching for a unicorn. :-)

hornbyben

I’m sure others will chime in, but as far as I’m aware the only fully automated smokeless home roaster is the Ikawa, capacity is only 100g though, and the cost is £1,270!

The bigger the batch the more smoke you’ll produce though, so given that concern multiple small batches might actually be better for you.

InfamousTuba

Unfortunately I think it will be hard to get all of those features, especially first crack detection on a machine under $1000. The market seems to be moving in that direction but at the moment a lot of the products are Kickstarters which are always a gamble.

Machines like the kaffelogic nano 7 fit most of your requirements but don’t have first crack detection and are right at the top of your budget. Machines like the ikawa are over your budget but are fully automated. So far one of the only machines that fulfills all of the features is the roest but it is way over your budget.

You might want to keep your eye on the bunafr that is on Indiegogo currently

Although I can’t recommend backing a product that doesn’t have any prototypes out in the wild. It feels like the products are a year or two away from being easily available to home users at reasonable costs

JHCCoffee

MediumRoastSteam No offence, but you are searching for a unicorn. :-)

No offense taken.

Not too long ago the NZ was a unicorn. As was what is now the Lelit E v3.

Let’s take price off the criteria list for the moment and see what ideas pop up. I’m also hearing that I’ll need to consider a smaller batch size.

This may end up being a two step process: 1) finding something now, possibly a used item to fit my budget, and then 2) buying one of the roasters that are under development now, once they’ve been released and matured. I am also betting that once the market becomes abit more saturated with these newer products, overall price levels will come down.

DavecUK

Such a roaster does not exist and I am not sure ever will.

Verion

I have an Ikawa and it suits my needs.

But the fact that they increased the price for £999 to £1270 late last year, but then decreased the monthly editing Plus subscription cost from I think £29.99 to £4.99.

@JHCCoffee The only other smokeless home roaster is the Sandbox R1 or R2, but I think they would blow your budget.

Amberale

I have been using a Kaffelogic Nano7 for a couple of years now.
While it can not roast 1kg, it can roast back to back to back roasts of 100g and, with the new extender coming soon, should be able to do 200g batches.
A fan vented from your basement to outdoors is all you would need to keep the house odour free.
One caveat, it is very, very difficult to get a great result from/with decaffeinated beans.
You just cant get the delicious flavours that you will get from single origin caffeinated beans.
You can, however, mix your average decaff roast with a great SO roast and enjoy a great flavour with less buzz.

tompoland

I have an Aillio Bullet 1kg capacity (which means 800g in reality) and while I can wholeheartedly recommend it, the price is too high.

Verion

tompoland That’s some epic venting. Reminds me when I had a Gene Cafe.

Rob1

An automated roaster capable of a 1kg batch size, full automation, compact and less than $1000 Canadian…….not happening. Ever. Small roasters with these fetures e.g Ikawa and Kaffelogic have commercial appeal as well as domestic use. I really can’t see the market being saturated, especially if coffee becomes more and more expensive. There might be some air roasters available on alibaba or aliexpress that fulfil some of your criteria.

dutchy101

This looks like an interesting project. I know absolutely nothing about roasting or roasters, but it popped up on Indegogo recently:

tompoland

Interesting tx. I’ve only been roasting around 18 months so I’m hardly an authority but my initial concern would be if the beans are being roasted evenly via exposure to hot air all around their surface as they would be in a fluid air roaster or a traditional tumble barrel roaster.

dutchy101

Yes, I have no idea of the mechanics or physics of these things, but it looks nice, lol

ajohn

Talking briefly to a roaster the sampler and experience seems to come into things. It’s a business that started from roasting at home. That resulted in 2 Topers. Then Probates when they moved premisses. It seems the Probates allow a gentler roasting profile. She commented that the beans had to come out very quickly when they were ready. At odd times some one else has roasted them and they are slightly different.. This to produce an unburnt 2nd crack bean but for consistency wont any other bean have similar problems?

TBH I wonder if all of a supply of a particular green bean will allow the same dead set controlled cycle to roast them properly? This appears to be the aim of certain home gear,

InfamousTuba

ajohn At odd times some one else has roasted them and they are slightly different.. This to produce an unburnt 2nd crack bean but for consistency wont any other bean have similar problems?

A lot of issues we had with different people roasting the same beans was down to when they marked first crack so if the software they use is good enough it could be more consistent. The roest is fairly good at detecting but it is still preferable to listen yourself.

ajohn TBH I wonder if all of a supply of a particular green bean will allow the same dead set controlled cycle to roast them properly? This appears to be the aim of certain home gear,

You can produce very consistent results if all of the various factors are kept exactly the same, it depends on the machine and how well it can control everything from between batch protocols, accurate bean temperature reading and also adequate heating capacity. Full automation is still a work in progress but it is getting there quite fast

InfamousTuba

I still have the same doubts with the bunafr that I had when I first saw the indiegogo, they show loads more features and claim better roast quality than every other roaster but they haven’t shown the roaster in action yet, no prototypes and only one roaster attached to the project. I’m also not convinced by the chamber having to cool the beans down to room temperature to then heat up again for the next batch, it makes the machine compact but it will slow down back to back roasting. The smoke filter needs replaced every 25-50 roasts, and the design is propietary so that may not be around forever and is an extra cost for roasting.

I am curious about how it would stack up next to the ikawa, roest or the aillio bullet in side by side tests. I think a 220v version is still a long way away so I won’t get a chance to test it alongside those three for quite a while.

I hope it can perform as well as they claim because at a full price of £758 before shipping and tax it could be a good machine, but like all kickstarters it is a gamble to buy an untested product this early in the production cycle.

DavecUK

I used to see some small sivetz type units on AliExpress, they apparently did 300-500g? and had a power control for heat. I always thought they might work, but they are manual.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003799906056.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.main.3.44af6b921Fkgdm&algo_pvid=141ccc59-8db7-4882-901d-5951c4153aaa&algo_exp_id=141ccc59-8db7-4882-901d-5951c4153aaa-1&pdp_ext_f=%7B%22sku_id%22%3A%2212000027209780281%22%7D&pdp_npi=2%40dis%21GBP%21277.32%21277.32%21%21%2199.92%21%21%402145288516730491775137401d0761%2112000027209780281%21sea&curPageLogUid=2i0cYrWZl7ti

JHCCoffee

I’m back to thinking about this, now that my spouse is used to the idea of somewhat larger budgets for espresso equipment… And my birthday is coming up in the fall…

I will obviously need to bump up my price criteria to about $2k CDN and reduce my min batch size to say 200g. And as I now have a remote mike that pairs with my hearing aids, I might be able to hear first and second crack, so less need for automatic first/second crack detection; a nice feature but I can live without it.

But I still will need to be able to visually watch the progress of the roast on a time/temp graph, and be able to adjust the roast profile, either on the fly or for the next roast.

And as I will within 2 years be downsizing to a condo, unit size, and bring relatively smoke and oderless, is key.

Any updates on gear or experiences?