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So why do people do home coffee roasting?
Freshly roasted coffee . . . there’s nothing like it.
I watch people on-line passionately stirring those green coffee beans in a frying pan on their stoves at home, patiently waiting for those precious “cracks” to signal the first sign that their roast is about done. The first crack finally makes a loud pop or a crack sound like a branch breaking. Then here is comes, the second crack that sounds like rice krispies . . . ah, now it’s time to pull it off and cool it in a colander, and eyeball that perfect medium roast.
If you have the master’s touch in coffee roasting you might achieve your perfect roast in about 15 to 20 minutes with careful stirring with a wooden spoon. It is said the aroma is absolutely heavenly! Up until the 1850’s in America this is how coffee was roasted at home or outside in a shed because of the smoke. I had to chuckle as one person who was instructing in the old fashioned method said “If you have a home fire extinguisher, you’d better keep it handy . . .you might really need it!” He admitted that trying to coffee roast in his own kitchen with little ventilation did manage to set off all the smoke alarms in the house.
Somehow the romantic idea of roasting one’s own green coffee beans just ignites a passion in certain people. For those who would like to be a little more safe and get a little more modernized help with home coffee roasting, read on. Here are some of the favorite and best home coffee roasters for sale that will keep the process much more painless.
Table of Contents
Best Home Coffee Bean Roasters:
FreshRoast SR500 Automatic Coffee Bean Roaster
FreshRoast SR500 Automatic Coffee Bean Roaster, Buy here on Amazon:
This is a good coffee roaster for roasting small batches of beans.
It helps to listen to coffee bean roasting tips on youtube.com or on other coffee lover sites to also determine the amount of beans you wish to roast. This will also help you decide which coffee bean roaster is right for your taste and lifestyle.
Here is an Amazon review from an owner of this machine:
“It may take you 6 or 8 roasts, but I guarantee you will learn to love your SR500 once you find your personal favorite roast style. When it comes to roasting, if you spend time researching online and watching reviews and sample roasts you will find every extreme of advice from one end of the spectrum to the other. Most often you will hear dire warnings saying DON’T roast your beans too hot, or too fast, or too long. I say POPPYCOCK! All of the advice out there had me so tentative that I under-roasted my first 4 batches, yielding an undrinkable tannic fecal sludge! However, now that I have ‘found my roast’ I LOVE this machine. You may read a lot of negative comments about the older models but my Dec 2012 model doesn’t suffer from low fan speed or low heat problems, and the time can be adjusted mid-roast without the fan stopping. My only complaint is that the screen in the top of the chaff collector has a few strands starting to come out (because it is die-cut and i tried brushing chaff off of it and pulled the strands loose). Now I just blow it out to clean it. I have found that I can do very nice roasts ranging from 1oz bean samples to 4oz batches. Good quality beans always come out VERY evenly roasted (if you properly dry the beans and don’t overload the batch size).”
Buy this product on Amazon:
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Nesco CR-1010-PR Coffee Bean Roaster, Black
Make coffee roasting easy for an affordable price.
The NESCO Coffee Bean Roaster is a coffee enthusiast’s dream, bringing the freshness and quality of roasting fresh gourmet coffee to your home. NESCO’s Patented Catalytic Converter is the beginning of a new era in coffee history and a major step in the return of great tasting coffee to your home. “Once you taste the freshness of the beans you’ll want to share it with everyone you know,” one enthusiast commented.
One very satisfied Amazon purchaser gives an awesome review here with practical advice on how to use the machine:
“I consulted the instructions and saw that for dark roast it recommends 27-30 minutes. I loaded it to the dark roast line and hit go. The unit hadn’t seemed to make any smoke at all in the garage so I moved it to the kitchen. 15 minutes into the roast the beans were a rich oily dark brown and I decided it was time to cool them down and that I had probably gone to far. I hit the cool button and the fan and auger speed up, and out came the small cloud of smoke. Immediately I moved to open the window to vent the kitchen and turned on the range hood. Too late, the smoke detector went off and I was grabbing a box fan and magazine, moving the roaster back out the garage. The catalytic keeps up with the lower airflow of the roast cycle, but not the higher rate of the cooling cycle, or maybe the catalytic turns off once the element isn’t on. Either way there went my hops of roasting coffee indoors in the colder months of the year, and I lost the coffee too. The first two batches ended up in the garbage.
I have sense gotten the hang of it, leaving the unit outside the back door on the stoop and checking it. The next batches I just ran the 20 minute cycle and only filled to the “Dark Roast” line, and the roast came out maybe just a little darker than I’d prefer. Problem is this roaster is a bit under powered for using outside when cold. The ambient air temperature affects the roasting time and makes results unpredictable. I find myself running a batch then adjusting the temperature and watching the next cycle to get it where I want it. The issue is that means wasting about 3-4oz of beans of each batch for dialing things in, not a huge deal.
The uniformity of the roast of the beans is really good, no more light and dark beans like my old air roaster, which relied on the amount of air movement to agitate the beans. Cleaning is pretty easy, after each cycle, clean the screen dump the chaff and wipe out the glass chamber. This unit is a lot quieter than my old air roaster too, I can actually here the first crack when it starts. The roaster holds a bit more than the 2oz of my old one, say 3-4 oz depending on which line you load too. I am unsure how they get that you can roast a 1/3 lb batch at a time, but it not a big deal. I am pretty happy with it for the price and ease of use its a keeper, I just wish it handled the smoke a little better.
Update: I did a full pound of coffee in this unit in 5 batches( ~3.25 oz each). 15 minutes of roast time for each batch with no cooling cycle. I had a chilled bowl and a screen strainer standing by for cooling the beans when they came out. The roast is better this way, and the final product was right on. I also suggest at least 48 hours for the beans to off-gas. Over all very pleased just needed a little time to get the process down.”
Click here to buy this Nesco CR-1010-PR Coffee Bean Roaster, Black–on Amazon
Related product you may wish to review:
Nesco CR-1010-PRP Professional Coffee Bean Roaster, 800-Watt
This machine has patented catalytic technology which reduces smoke and odor.
•This Nesco machine has pre-set digital controls.
•It roasts the coffee beans in about 20 minutes
• It has a quiet operation.
• Users find it easy and economical.
Buy this product on Amazon
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Top Coffee Bean Roaster
Behmor 1600 Plus Customizable Drum Coffee Roaster
A favorite coffee bean roaster for the family who likes to roast together as a hobby
One person’s story from the Amazon reviews:
Several years ago I thought about doing home coffee roasting, after seeing a small roaster that looked like a popcorn maker, and the green beans, at a local kitchen wares store. My wife told me I didn’t need the toy, so the thought went on the back burner. Fast forward several years to December 2009. With my retirement and all that new time, I needed yet another passion. So I found the Behmor 1600 online from Roastmasters just before Christmas, and yes, it was a gift to myself. And my wife and I, haven’t regretted it since. After about twenty, half-pound roasts with several green bean varieties, also from Roastmasters, the Behmor has functioned flawlessly. The latest model has many notable features, including good visibility so one can observe the coffee bean transformation process. I find this process enjoyable, including the emerging aromas. The Behmnor is a drum roaster using quartz heat lamps. The wire drum design effectively moves the beans so the resulting roast is very uniform in color and consistency. As soon as the roast cycle completes, the Behmor goes into a cooling cycle that typically takes about twelve minutes. The total time for my one-half pound, total roast and cool cycles, averages around twenty five minutes.
The Behmor has virtually foolproof automatic control of the roasting process and safety features; and manual adjustments can be made to customize the roasts, when one becomes a true roast-meister. The roaster is relatively quiet so one can easily hear the first coffee bean cracking sounds, and eventually the second crack, if one ventures in that range. Many of my roasts are taken between the first and second crack, and sometimes just before the second crack as a matter of my taste…”
This happy customer from Amazon is still smelling those freshly roasted coffee beans:
“I’ve owned a Behmor 1600 for a while now and I average 2 roasts every week. I did a lot of research first and read all the forums. After roasting beans on a gas grill, this unit is heaven.”
Behmor 1600 Plus Customizable Drum Coffee Roaster
Buy this coffee roaster on Amazon by clicking the link above.
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Hottop 9oz Programable Model: B Coffee Roaster + 3lbs free green coffee
Comments from a purchaser of this Hottop Moidel B coffee roaster on Amazon:
Why in the world spend big money on a coffee roaster? First you have to get why roasting your own is the way to go in the first place. I am not a coffee snob or a least did not think I was. But over the last few years the coffee from the majors has been terrible. To the point that I could barely drink the stuff. What to do without breaking the bank, Green coffee beans, hmmmm what’s that about? A little research and I decided give it a try. Being cheap by nature I went with the frying pan/ nut roaster option. A few roast and I was hooked I had my coffee back! Now you can get a pretty fair roast by this method But it has many drawbacks so I decided I wanted a roaster but what one to choose? More research. After researching for a week I decided on the hottop, for two primary reasons the hottop dumps the finished beans into a cooling pan at the end of the roast and all the parts for the machine are available. So hows it work?
Great! I have the B model and love the control it gives me over the roast. It roast evenly and the filter system works but it does smoke so ventilation is still a must. It’s quiet one can easily hear through the end of first crack and second crack if one roast into second. I found there is a lag when adjusting on the fly but not as much as you would think. Well built all stainless steel and a handsome machine to have in the kitchen or wherever you do your beans. It is rather large though so if using in your kitchen it will take up a fair amount of space, Did I mention it’s built like a tank? The drum is heavy for its size and the motor strong with a smooth rotation. the element can be adjusted any time from zero to full output about 600 watts. fan likewise in 25% increments. The eject function works like a charm and cools the beans well.” (Can read more)
Here is another satisfied customer who purchased the Hot Top Coffee Roaster On Amazon:
I recently purchased this roaster after my Behmor finally became unworkable. I had used the Behmor for about 3 years, roasting about 10 batches per week. So that is 1500 roasts — not bad. For someone who roasted once a week, the machine would last 30 years. But we have five serious coffee drinkers in our household — multiple morning cappuccinos all round, afternoon brewed coffee, decaf after dinner and into the evening– and many dinner parties and guests as well.
I had to get rid of the Behmor because, despite cleaning it — both with the self-cleaning cycle and occasional manual cleaning–it was no longer able to roast through first crack. The Behmor was advertised as able to roast a full pound. Maybe it could do that when I first purchased it. But I found that as I used it, its ability to roast into darker degrees decreased. Generally I would roast about 8 oz but set the machine for a 1 lb cycle. In short, the Behmor has such a conservative safety control built that you really can’t roast as much coffee as claimed.
After doing some research, I decided that only an upgrade to the Hot Top would make sense. It seems expensive, but I did the math and found that the money saved by buying green coffee and roasting it will would pay for the machine in just over a year. And the coffee I had to buy in the supermarket after I threw out the Behmor was intolerable anyway. In other words, we would be throwing out money if we did not get a satisfactory roaster. . . ” (Can read more on Amazon)
Click here to buy this product on Amazon
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Related Product:
Hottop (9oz) Programable (Model: “P”) Coffee Roaster + 3lbs free green coffee
These users of the Hottop Coffee Roaster seem to like them very much! One purchaser went into a lot of detail why he chose the P model over another model of Hottop. Here is his personal research:
“This roaster is a replacement for my previous non-programmable Hottop (KN-8828B) that I had been using for the last 6 years. The delivery service was satisfactory as usual with Amazon and Amazon partners. It arrived in one piece but did seem to take a few days longer to receive than other purchases shipped directly from Amazon. Not really an issue in my mind, and certainly not something that directly involves the roaster’s performance. Also, I had to pay for shipping (yeah, I know I always pay for it in some manner) which is a bummer. That just takes that psychological satisfaction level down a peg when normally purchases over $25 from Amazon ship for “free”. My previous roaster served me very well. I would recommend it to anyone wanting to start home roasting coffee, and would rate that model KN-8828B, (newer non-programmable model is the KN-8828B-2K) 4+ stars. It is simple to use, quiet, and will yield about 6.5 ounces of roasted coffee per roast ( I like darker roasts, so you lose a little more moisture/weight from the bean than with light roasts). I detract a star for the plastic construction that failed (namely, the base and almost all of the internal plastic screw mounts that became brittle and broke, and the control panel input actuators on the inside of the control panel). I probably did over 700 roasts in that 6 year period, so that machine cost about a $1.30 per roast, plus the filter replacements. All the other components seemed fine, and I’ve ordered the replacement parts to get the old roaster up and running again. The non-programmable model was very easy to use, and allowed for complete control over the roast inputs (cooling fan, temperature, and to an extent time) throughout the roast cycle. The P model does not. It requires you to input a roast profile into 8 segments, and then you are pretty much constrained to those settings during the roast. You can change the heat settings, but not the cooling fan or the roast times within the roasting segments. It is not too difficult to program, but it’s just much more involved than I believe is necessary. I went with the P model as it was the only model Amazon offered, and they gave me a year to pay for it with no interest, which is nice rather than plunking down nearly $1200 (for me, just another psychological thing). If they had offered the B-2K model, I would have purchased it instead. If you’re considering between the two models, do not think of the P model as a “better” unit. It’s not. It’s the same machine in all respects other than it let’s you store 8 roast profiles at the expense of limiting your ability to change critical inputs during the roast. Maybe it’s just because I was very used to the first model, which does also allow you to store three roast profiles without having to program each segment. It has more control panel images (just basic idiot lights, not fancy or high tech so there’s no ooh-ahhh factor) that do not really add any value to the roast as compared to the non-prog model. Home coffee roasting is all about developing your coffee to your preferred roast style (taste). That is a factor of roast time and temperature, and will normally require you to be able to adjust the roaster settings to compensate for differences in the type of bean, outside temperature and humidity (I roast outside). Despite the constraints, I’ve managed to produce some good roasts at the expense of losing a few while learning how to deal with the programming issues. So what you are paying for in the P model is over $400.00 of computer circuit board and a few extra wires that do not improve the coffee roast or the roasting experience. Overall, construction Is pretty much like my old roaster, it’s just more expensive and without the same level of control.”
Click here to buy the Hottop coffee roaster Model P on Amazon
Green Unroasted Coffee, 5 Lb. Bag, Fresh Roasted Coffee LLC. (Sumatra Mandheling
If you need larger amounts of green coffee beans click here:
Buy this product on Amazon:
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If you need a much larger quantity of green coffee beans, click here to buy on Amazon:
If you need a much larger quantity of green coffee beans, click here to buy on Amazon
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More on Best Home Coffee Bean Roasters:
If you are going to adopt home bean roasting as a hobby into your lifestyle you will want to find the best home coffee bean roaster for your taste and ease of use.
Top Coffee Bean Roaster
Gene Cafe CBR-101 Home Coffee Roaster – Red
You can roast more beans with this machine
You can roast up to 250g of green coffee beans in about 15 minutes with the easy-to-use Gene Cafe CBR-101. It has a fully viewable roast chamber and fully adjustable time and temperature allow for maximum control over your roasts light med or dark
This machine has unique 3D off-axis rotation ensures an even roast every time.
The Gene Cafe has an impressively quiet operation.
It works just fine with standard 120v power.
Amazon review on the Gene Café:
“In the past, I roasted green coffee beans using modified air popcorn poppers, and while you can get some great results, the amount of coffee you can roast at a time is really tiny. I got tired of that, and decided to move up to an appliance that was engineered and manufactured specifically for roasting coffee.”
Related product:
Gene Cafe CBR-101 Home Coffee Roaster – Black
Buy the Gene Café-101 Home Coffee Roaster on Amazon–RED
By the Gene Café on Amazon:–BLACK
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