A spoiler up front, on July 29, 2021 I ordered a Fresh Roast SR800. See below for details and a discussion of other options.
His conclusions are both surprising and encouraging. I should keep the SR800 (which I will certainly do) and work on some customization and hacking.
You can roast beans in a cast iron skillet, and people have been known to use all manner of popcorn poppers. All kinds of DIY plans and projects are documented. I decided to bump it up a notch to get started.
At the other end of the spectrum, you can go nuts and spend $500 or so and get either a Behmor unit (that looks a lot like a microwave oven) or a Kaldi, which looks like a small factory and needs to be mounted over some kind of burner.
Steve mentions one big negative with the newer Behmor units, and that is they have some random timer that you have to confirm or the roast gets halted (and ruined). This is some kind of interlock scheme to ensure you stay near the roaster, avoiding unattended use and fires. Good intentions perhaps, but not a feature I can admire. There is no way I would buy a machine with this feature. So, for that money I would jump to a Gene Cafe.The reason I would not buy the Kaldi is that I want a self contained unit, not something I run over my own stove, so again, we jump to the Gene Cafe for machines in the $500 and up range.
Another top recommendation is a Gene Cafe for $625, which is a drum roaster. It handles 1/2 pound and is a stand-alone unit.
If you want to bump it up yet another notch, look at a hot top.
I am looking to get into this without spending 500 or 600 dollars for a Behmor or a Kaldi. I may end up regretting that, or maybe I won't -- we shall see. My idea as I enter into this is to see what I can buy for half that money, maybe $200 or even less if possible.
Affordable options are the Jiawanshan for about $90, but it has a non-stick coated pan and I hate non-stick. The Mixfin unit (and many others) look like the same thing rebadged, also with non-stick pans.
The "Fresh Roast SR540" sells for $189 on Amazon right now and handles 1/4 pound. Or you can go for the SR800, which handles 1/2 pound and sells for $259.
I ordered the SR800 on July 29, 2021 from Captains Coffee. He offers free shipping on orders over $199 (so the SR800 ships for free) and he throws in a "sampler" of 6 pounds of coffee for free to get you started.
Here is a review from Spruce Eats:
If you want to shell out $159 you can get the Razzo chamber which is made of thicker glass. By the time you buy one of these you are spending over $400 all told and can start thinking about just getting a Behmor or a Gene Cafe instead.
I found this extremely informative review of the CR800 --
I've roasted thousands of pounds of coffee in various roasters, everything from Probats to popcorn makers. Obviously I can't have a large gas roaster at home (I wish) so I'm stuck with slighly smaller roasters. I'm trying this roaster just for fun.This is a fully manual roaster; you need to stand next to it and continuously adjust the settings to get a decent roast. The controls let you adjust air flow (fan speed) and heat output. It is an outdoor roaster - the simple design has no smoke control and makes lots of chaff.
Capacity is listed as 8 ounces, but in reality it's best at around 6 - 7 ounces for wet processed beans, and about 5 ounces for dry processed. So your yield is in reality around 1/4 pound per session. Capacity also depends on ambient temperature, since none of the heat is recycled, and almost none of the heat goes in to heating the mass of the roaster itself (like a drum roaster).
It takes some skill to get an even roast. The heater is fairly low powered, so you have to keep the fan at a speed that just circulates the beans, yet keeps them from floating. Too low of a fan speed yields an uneven roast, too high just bakes the beans. Since the moisture level changes throughout the roast, you need to continually adjust the fan speed.
There's a temperature probe that appears to be located upstream of the beans. It gives a general idea of how hot the air is, but it doesn't tell you how hot the beans are, nor how much heat they are absorbing. Because you can't watch the temperature while adjusting controls, you end up standing next to the machine and constantly fiddling with the knob. Not necessarily a good thing because of the smoke, even outdoors. A good fume extractor is handy even outdoors.
The coffee beans only touch glass and aluminum. The base is plastic, and the chaff collector hat is plastic. Both have that characteristic Chinese plastic smell when new. The hot air blows through a metal chamber, but the intake is routed through the plastic base. If you're super concerned about plastic, this may be an issue. Hot air does go through the plastic chaff collector, but only on its way out.
The chaff collector is a failure. A large percentage of chaff jams up against the inside of the collector, and drops back on top of the beans when the machine is shut off. Of course you can either turn on the blower and create a chaff fountain; or you can remove the chaff hat before turning off the blower. Either way creates a huge mess (another reason that this is an outdoor roaster). A properly designed chaff collector would have a U-turn so that the chaff drops down into another chamber, not on top of the beans. The chaff hat gets extremely hot, and you can't remove it with bare hands. The two halves do not lock together, and I have ended up accidentally lifting up the top half too many times, creating a giant fountain of chaff. Messy.
The blower motor is about 1/5 hp. The heater is 1400 watts (Level 9, max), and can be adjusted down to 1100 watts (Level 1). You can use an extension cord, as long as it has the proper rating. Sound level at 3 feet ranges from 62 dB - 67 dB depending on fan speed. Subjectively, it's not too noisy, and sounds about the same as a hair dryer on the 'low' setting. The base area, including controls, stays relatively cool during operation. Nothing locks together - the glass cup simply sits on the base, and the chaff collector sits on the glass cup. I found it to be reasonably stable on a flat surface, but an accidental bump could knock the whole thing over.
And finally.... yes it can produce a good roast. I've run everything through it, from tiny Kona beans to dry process Ethiopians to African peaberry to top shelf Gesha (or Geisha if you want). I was able to get a good quality City, City+ and Full City roast from all of them after a few test batches. I normally don't roast past Full City because I don't drink charcoal water, but if that's your thing, there's nothing stopping you from making some burned Starbucks coffee in this roaster. There are no safety controls, nothing to stop you from roasting beans until they turn black.
If you only drink a small amount of coffee and like to experiment, this might be a good roaster for you. If you drink more coffee (4 cups a day or more in your household), and your goal is to roast some good coffee without hassle, this might not be the best choice.
You often find the CR1010 recommended, but sadly it was discontinued in 2014. It sold for $220 full retail and would roast up to 1/3 pound. It is rated at 800 watts (compare to the 1700 watt rating of the Fresh Roast SR800). It would go on sale for as low as $150.
I was tempted by a used unit on Ebay for $150, being sold by someone who said they had upgraded to a Behmor. Perhaps if the price was $100 I would have bid, the seller said to "make offer", so we will see what happens with a $100 offer.
What happened with the offer was the seller came back (predictably) with $125. However with $22 shipping, that brings the price to $145 and I can get a new Fresh Roast 540 for $178. Even if my offer had been accepted that would be $130 and it seems to make sense to pay an extra $40 to get a new machine with a warranty. I mentioned all this in what I hoped was a friendly email to the seller and he then told me he would accept a $110 offer.
After Nesco discontinued the well regarded CR1010, they came out with a cheaper machine for about $90. And the word cheaper is appropriate because the machine was recalled due to it being made of plastic and causing several fires. That seemed to take Nesco out of the coffee roaster business for good.
SHB - strictly hard bean SHG - strictly high grown (both indicate grown over 1350 meters (4400 feet))
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