I saw that deal and my reaction was identical - either clearing stock prior to stopping doing them, or prior to a replacement model. However ,,,, does that matter? Certainly, I’d argue in the latter case, not much … unless the new model (if there is one) has some must-have, killer new features.

In my own case, I was hovering between Gene Cafe and the Behmor, but I am starting to thing either the Sandbox or something like the Ikawa might be a better bet. Yes, a lot more expensive and yes, limited capacity but that limited capacity means roasting more often. And that is both an advantahge and disadvantage. The more I investigate, the more I feel the need to learn about roasting, and THEN doing small batches and being able to keep almost all parameters fixed and consistent (via profile) makes it much easier to learn the effects of changing just one parameter. Also, the bigger the batch, the more expensive any batch-ruining cockups will be.

I can stomach the extra up-front cost if I need to, but avoiding the hassle of buying the wrong machine and having to sell and buy again is important for me to avoid.

But the whole thing is so new to me that picking the right TYPE of roaster, never mind brand/model, is not easy.

    I think you are reading my mind. Was just back looking at the Sandbox, seems the Bella Barista 25% discount offer is no longer valid. But if the Ikawa produces decent results the lack of hassle would be worth the extra expense I think.

    I think (note - THINK) the BB offer is still valid but it wasn’t entirely clear, I grant you. It isn’t on the “current offers” bit, but I did find a page with a date suggesting it was still on. If I decide on Sandbox obver Ikawa (and am leaning that way) I’ll ring and ask them. The decision between Ikawa and Sandbox is closer if it isn’t still on.

    I’ve had a Behmor for about 5 months now and have been enjoying using it a lot but I don’t have anything else to compare to as it’s my only experience with roasting.

    I like the fact it’s really quick to preheat and get to roasting, it takes me about 20-25 mins to roast 400g from start to finish. It’s got a bit of information on temperatures, exhaust and “drum” (though it states it a thermostat near the drum and not in it) so I can now judge when beans are about to crack pretty well and have had a few consistent roasts recently! The pre-set profiles seem to be working nicely too, and there’s the option to adjust things on the fly, but I’ve not ventured that deeply, yet..

    I dislike the drum. It’s a absolute (can we swear here, I won’t just in case…?) twit to get the drum out sometimes unless you have a thin heatproof glove (which I still don’t so it’s slightly self inflicted) which makes the cooling process a tad clumsy at times. Also, the cooling function is a bit useless as it stays really hot for a fair few minutes so I always dump the beans into a separate cooler (AliExpress, £44, brilliant!)

    Happy to answer any more questions, and I’m roasting later on so happy to take photos etc if wanted.

      Del_UK into a separate cooler (AliExpress, £44, brilliant!)

      I’ve been recently doing this with the Gene, to finish off the cooling process. I made the cooling with a cardboard box and a colander, attached to a Henry hoover. Gets rid of chaff and cool down pretty quickly. I’ll take a photo later, as having trouble uploading images at the moment.

          MediumRoastSteam

          I did have something that I lashed together using a 6 inch extractor fan, but after it began falling apart and nearly took the tip of my thumb off, I decided £44 isn’t that much to spend.

              CoffeePhilE yes, limited capacity but that limited capacity means roasting more often. And that is both an advantahge and disadvantage. The more I investigate, the more I feel the need to learn about roasting, and THEN doing small batches and being able to keep almost all parameters fixed and consistent (via profile) makes it much easier to learn the effects of changing just one parameter. Also, the bigger the batch, the more expensive any batch-ruining cockups will be.

              My two cents: I wouldn’t get something with a very small capacity. You can always do a small batch on a machine with larger capacity, but not the other way around. Remember that you lose weight in the roasting process. From 100 grams - what will you have left? How much do you use in a shot? How many shots will you get our of it? You want to be able to dial in, then have some left to enjoy. And you need to rest the beans, so might be a week or two before they peak and you find out what you have. Or you might want to taste the coffee in intervals to find the optimal resting time… For me 100 gram batches seem impractical, and I think I would get tired of that quite quickly.

              I am using the Gene, by the way, which can do ~250 grams batches. Don’t have experience with many other roasters, as I got mine in 2009 and it’s still going strong. I read some people think the Behmor is an upgrade over the Gene, while others think the Gene is an upgrade from the Behmor. With the current offer prices, if I were in the market for a roaster, I would be quick to snatch either the Behmor or the Gene before they go up in price again (but of course it could be that they are reduced because a new model is on the way, if that’s a concern).

                  Doram

                  I agree, and you can always make a small batch in a big roaster, but you can’t make a big batch in a small one. The Behmor will happily roast 100g but that’ll only give 80-90g of roasted, which for me is only about 5 shots.

                    Doram All good points.

                    To adresss some of them ….

                    • how many shots? Well, typically, 18g for espresso, but more for a Clever jug. How many of each I do varies day to day, and which one depends on time of day, and mood. . Rarely more tha 3 or 4 ina day, and typical is probably about 2.5. I also tend to switch to decaf in the evening, so it’s likely I’ll have three or even four bean selections on the go at any given time, and I’m normally the only one drinking ‘proper’ coffee. The bigger they are, the older they get by the time I get to the end.
                    • According to Dave’s review, the theoretical 100g max is actually more like 150g. I assume, perhas erroneously, that there is a degree of repeatability if roasting to a known profile, in fairly short order. Yeah, beans can change as they age, but how much difference (and so how much dialing in) will be needed if I roast bean x on Monday, then again on say Thursday (given consistency in as many factors as possible, especially weight, but also environmental factors like ambient temperature, whether first roast of several back to back roasts or whether the roaster is already hot, etc).
                    • Agreed on most beans needing resting time. That’s a matter of planning, though. If I expect to need them on Friday, and they need (say) 5 days rest after roast to optimise, I need to roast on Sat/Sunday.
                    • I take the point about it “getting old quick”. My circumstances do lend themselves to that, though. It certainly wouldn’t for lots of people.
                    • Again, due to circumstances, getting more roasts done in a short period of time accelerates the learning curve. For me, doing two or three a week is a good thing, compared to doing two or three a month, for larger batches. I agree that usually those small batches would be a negative, but for me, I think they’re actually a positive. Maybe I need to explain why. Let me think about that a bit.
                    • I also take the point about “loss”. I understand 11-15% weight is about typical, but it varies bean to bean.
                    • One of the things that puts me off the Behmor is what appears a rather awkward manouvre getting the cage in, and especially out. Without gory details, I have very restricted usage of my left arm and, at least short of a finger amputation op, no way am I getting my left hand inside a glove, and have limited strength/movement in that arm anyway. A mitt? Maybe.
                    • The Gene seems, from watching videos, to be much easier for me than the Behmor, in relation to getting the cage in or out, The Nano even more so, and the Ikawa is a dream in that regard.
                    • Repeatability. I think there, the Sandbox does pretty well, and probably (at a price) the Ikawa even more so. In case you haven’t seen it, you load a measured quantity of beans in a kind-of feed chamber in the top of the Ikawa, then “drop” into the pre-heated roasted rather like more commercial roasters, but on a micro scale. They roast on a fluid air bed, and, upon completion, you push a button and they’re dumped into the waiting containers. The Ikawa especially seems, to me, to be designed as a sample roaster for bigger machines, and seems to concentrte on better sensor data, giving profiles that are transferable to bigger roasters, and hence, have to be somewhat repeatable.
                    • I want to stress, I don’t and never have roasted so much as bean 1. This is what I’m picking up from watching videos, both on product demos but also theory and commercial roasting classes, and from reading books. But I’m painfully aware that that kind of research only carries me so far, which is why I value opinions from you guys.
                    • So, from the last point, this post isn’t intended to argue with you. I’m trying to explain why my priorities might be a bit different to yours, and most people’s. I hope. And that as a result, the ‘best’ machine might be, too.
                    • I started out thinking exactly as you outlined, and concluded the same - Gene or Behmor. It’s just that the more I looked, and the more I thought about it, the more the single biggest weakness of “sample” roasters, capacity, started to look like a strength, in my case.

                    One thing currently making me very, very nervous about the Sandbox (and other Smart App roasters) is, well, needing to control it via a phone. Even more so,the “VIP” mode subscription. That frosts my conkers badly. And I have so far failed to find out what it costs, or how the roaster is limited if you don’t have the ‘VIP’ subscription. I very much resent the notion of paying that much for the roaster, then having to pay a subscription to use it, so whether that aspect kills the Sandbox stone dead for me will depend on how much, and what not having it locks out.

                    If the subscription is to fund extra services, the provision of which incurs a cost for the providers, then fair enough. If not having it restricts the ability to control the actual hardware, then it’s a non-starter for me.

                        CoffeePhilE

                        Based on that, I wouldn’t get the Behmor. It is as I said a pain to get the cage out when hot and then unclip and dump the beans.

                        I was tempted by the Sandbox also but like you, didn’t Like the idea of a premium VIP cost for what are, as far as I could tell, user generated profiles.

                          CoffeePhilE

                          With regards to the sandbox subscription…. Exactly my thoughts. If you are not registered, you can still use the roaster, but you are limited on what you can do… I.e.: no custom profiles, etc.

                          If register, you can use the roaster to its full potential, the VIP giving you some extra perks.

                          My concern, similar to yours, is… if Sandbox smart decides not to support a particular phone, or goes bust, or whatever… what happens? What if hey block you from using the app, etc?

                          So, no, based on that alone, it’s a no no for me. I wish it could be controlled by some small buttons on the machine, or some sort of control box you could buy. The phone being an add on.

                          It’s a great roaster, however. If it wasn’t for the roasting over the phone aspect, I’d buy one in a heartbeat.

                              MediumRoastSteam

                              Exactly. A pet peeve of mine in the PC gaming world is Steam …. being committed to launching via their platform, despite havning paid £40, £50 or more per game, So if they go broke, ban me, whatever, then what? I could have (probably would have) spent a few grand on games, but for that. But, not doing it.

                              On the Sandbox, if VIP gives you forum access and finding/loading profiles from others in there, then fair enough. But what if I get a profile directly from a mate with a Sandbox? What about creating one manually? What about another Sandbox user on here?

                              Perhaps most insidious …. if I buy into the hardware now, what’s to stop them changing their mind about what they decide they’ll let me do with “their” roaster, in the future? It isn’t their damn roaster, once I:ve bought it. It’s mine. And I don’t like the idea of them deciding, post-sale, that I shouldn’t be allowed to do this or that, when if they’d said that before I bought it, I wouldn’t have bought it.

                              I have a DJI drone and am in that position with that. So far, thankfully, I haven’t been screwed over by them …. and it’s a cracking (like the coffee reference?) little drone too. But I’m aware of the possibility.

                              Ditto the Nano, which seems both better and worse. That, it seems, you have to create or edit a profile on a computer (Windows or Linux-based in my case) and then upload it to a USB stick. Then transfer from USB to the roaster, after which you appear to have very little control. Again, not ideal.

                              The Ikawa? Dunno. Still trying to get my head around that,

                              But those factors might be what brings me back to Gene/Behmor …. or to just buying my coffee roasted for me.

                                Another thing, re: Sandbox. I’ve just noticed on their website a ‘feature’ that says …. “Automatic Cloud Data Record”.

                                First, no. In fact, <bleep>. no. I don’t want anything getting automatically stored in the cloud under someone else’s control unless it’s something I absolutely need, and certainly not what/when/how I roast. Can that be disabled?

                                Secondly, how? I keep mobile data on my phone turned OFF. Which probably means using my wifi, so now I need to trust them with that, too? To roast coffee? The Sandbox is looking more and more like a dead duck to me.

                                Maybe the best bet for me is a roaster that doesn’t and can’t use a smartphone at all, in the first place?

                                This recommendation popped up in amazon, when I was ordering something. Frankly, I did not check the details. Take a look anyway and note there is no pun intended.

                                  Thanks for the thought, but it’s not for me. Yeah, you can kinda roast coffee, but control? Repeatability? Sensors and profile? I’m currently watching a 1hr long deep dive into the Ikawa. It’s right at the top of what I’m prepared to spend, but is the last of the “Smart” roasters (that I’m aware of). So, for the sake of completeness, I’m looking for any similar gotchs’s. If this washes out, then it’s probably Gene, Behmor (tending towards Gene for reasons mentioned earlier), or not at all.