Roaster advice wanted

Have you thought about using a popper to get your initial feel for roasting? There are lots of ways to modify and adapt them, using expensive electronics to get a home-grown roaster with more control than any storebought one. Even without fancy electronics, the quick'n'dirty solution still roasts as well or better than any of the pre-fabricated models. For quality to price ratio, you really can't beat the lowly corn popper, though later on, you might feel ease of use, batch size, or chaff collecting merit more consideration than quality alone.

Steve,

I just got my FreshRoast Plus 8 last week and I love it! The coffee is fantastic! You will not be disappointed in the roast. The FreshRoast handles small batches, though, about enough for one pot at a time. If that is not a problem for you then you are going to enjoy usuing this roaster. Roasting is easy, cleaning the chaff is easy, everything is easy!

Roasting coffee is fun at first but once the novelty wears off, is something you do because you get fresher coffee and/or it costs less. However, the thing that started driving me nuts was the small batch sizes. Most of the units you linked to look to be like 3-6 oz models which for me, would not be enough.

Sweet Marias sell quite a few different roasters, but more importantly, they post reviews of each roasted detailing the features and warts of each roaster. Worth reading.

Thanks for the advice everyone. I ended up finding a lot of reviews at sweetmarias.com and also at coffeegeeks.com

You've misattributed the quotes. You should be directing that to Chris Ely, not me.

My favorite roaster is the one on the right.

Can roast anything from 6 to 206 pots worth of coffee at a time (given a pot with a 60g basket). Roasting is easy, cleaning chaff is easy, everything is easy!

;-)

I love my Zach & Dani's roaster. Simple, no smoke, great roaster, price is right. sweetmarias.com

John

I don't have any experience with these, but if you prefer the freshroast, you could go direct to the manufacturer at $59 + shipping

Pete

Hi Chris;

I read that someone thought you should try an inexpensive corn popoper to get you "feet wet" I agree,.As I did it, but do not try using a sink strainer like I did to catch the chaf as the strainers are made of plastic and melt. The wife is still laughing. Bob