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

> @"JHCCoffee"#p34422 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.

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.

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"#p34422 - No offence, but you are searching for a unicorn. :-)

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

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

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.

I have an Aillio Bullet 1kg capacity (which means 800g in reality) and while I can wholeheartedly recommend it, the price is too high. [URL=https://i.imgur.com/yMhluG8.jpg][IMG]https://i.imgur.com/yMhluG8.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

@"tompoland"#p34442 That's some epic venting. Reminds me when I had a Gene Cafe.

> @"MediumRoastSteam"#p34428 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.

Contemplating Buying a Coffee Roaster … but

MWJB

HarveyMushman I don’t even use the cooker hood and just roast next to an open window. The smell isn’t strong and dissipates quickly. Even after roasting 600g earlier in the week the smell was gone in a few minutes.

It’s not really practical, nor warm enough, for me to roast close to an open window at the moment, roasting under the cooker hood makes things better, but still I am left with the smell for a few hours.

There isn’t any active smoke supression, nor filtration on the Ikawa, whilst there isn’t any visible smoke, it chucks out hot air/gas. Ikawa confirmed to me that trunking to an open window would be a good idea.

HarveyMushman

MWJB

It definitely produces less aroma than the Kaffeelogic. I agree it’s not ideal having the windows open but as I don’t have a garage/outbuilding I’m stuck with kitchen roasting.

I’ve seen someone use copper angles and trunking with the Ikawa, the only issue I see is that it gets very very hot in the exhaust vent and anything making contact with it would be scorching hot for some time afterwards.

Having said that, given the outlet port is just a hole on top of the machine it wouldn’t be difficult to just stick some tubing in there.

HarveyMushman

Updating this again with further positive experiences with the Ikawa after a month of use and about 4kg roasted.

I’ve now started using non-Ikawa beans and despite expecting disappointing results I’ve been impressed. I bought some Ethiopian greens from Rave. Starting with Ikawa’s recommended espresso profile for a washed process, I cupped a few different curves, mainly trying different drying and development times.

All were enjoyable but it was pretty straightforward to output a roast equally as good as the Ikawa bean which is a result as the Rave are less expensive.

By comparison even Rave’s greens are fairly pricey so the next test is to try other third-party coffees.

I will say that Ikawa have done a great job of making it very very easy to consistently roast nice coffee.

Also their support team are brilliant. I had a problem where I couldn’t add a coffee to my library on the app (which was ultimately my own connection problem) and they were quick to offer support.

I’ve no affiliation with Ikawa but really can’t say enough good things about their Home roaster if anyone’s looking for a very easy approach to consistently good home roasting.

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