Many people wonder whether you can really roast coffee at home. Coffee roasting at home is fun, easy and a rewarding hobby that doesn’t require much equipment!
But which home coffee roaster to buy? Selecting the right roaster requires careful consideration of roasting levels, batch size, smoke tolerance, level of control, price and physical size. A smaller, more controllable roaster may be more consistent but lack adequate batch size than a larger capacity manual roaster.
Read on to learn about an engineers perspective on the state of roasters today! See the slides below for my quick cheat sheet of the critical aspects of these roasters to help you choose the perfect one!
Intro to Home Roasting
If you simply have a pan and green beans you can roast at home. Every method or home coffee roaster has pros and cons so it’s important to understand your goals as a roaster and the limitations of each machine. For example the Behmor 1600 AB Plus is not designed for dark roasts whereas something like the Fresh Roast SR500 only lets you roast 70 grams at once. A simple cast iron pan can get you a great French roast, albeit with a lot more stirring and attention and you can roast half a pound at a time!
Beyond a roaster (or maybe before the roaster) you need green beans. There are many great resources out there to buy green beans like Fresh Roasted or Sweet Marias. The most important aspect to buying green beans is deciding what type you want. There are a ton of coffee bean origins and different certifications to consider like Swiss Water Processed or Rainforest certified.
Finally one other concern to consider is the level of smoke tolerance you or others around you have. If you live in an apartment or have people will sensitivities to smoke you will have to roast outside. My last pan roasted coffee was pretty smoke free, however it did fill the house with a wonderful yet acrid coffee smell.
Unfortunately none of the consumer grade machines (or industrial machines either) are truly smokeless and most recommended venting outside. If you have access to a nice yard or outside area it’s not a problem. Apartment dwellers will need to carefully consider the roasting methods and machines to choose. Spoiler alert if you’re an apartment dweller the Ikawa is probably the machine for you but the most expensive!
Coffee roaster considerations
One of the biggest decisions to make in home roasting is what machine to buy. There are many many machines and methods out there and all have very different processes and characteristics as well as limitations. While I was searching for the right machine I found it so hard to choose because they all have limitations or nuances to them.
Coffee roasters in general are somewhat expensive. The lowest cost ones are generally about $200. The top of the line prosumer models generally cost around $1500-2000.
If you decide you want to try this out for fun, all you need is a $20 cast iron pan or a simple air popcorn popper. WIth the air popper there are a lot of people on the internet that claim you can’t use modern roasters as the wattage is too low. This is simply not true. Some of the coffee roasters I’ll detail have the same wattage or less as my cheap air popper. Check out my detailed article on using an air popper to roast coffee here.
The Contenders!
Cast iron pan-
Coming in at 0 watts and approximately 2 pounds is the simple cast iron pan! The simplest and most basic coffee roasting method you can use. Fun fact, before we had modern roasters most people just roasted their beans in cast iron pans or in a steel drum rotated over a fire!
Air popper (cheap Amazon)
I detailed this method in a previous article here I won’t go into much detail at all. I’ll just leave it at it gave me a great roast in not much time at all! Simple and easy with no real effort other then to monitor the beans for doneness.
Fresh Roast SR500 and SR700
These two are the fluid air roaster tag team world champions! Probably the most bought starter roasters on the internet due to the low cost and good roasting volumes! The SR500 and 700 are basically twins but the SR700 has smarts and controls built in.
Both units are identical in specs but the SR700 offers roasting software. It may be possible to use Artisan or another software like it to control the unit but not without extensive tinkering. If you want to get into the world of digital roast control you could start with the SR700 as a budget alternative to the much higher prices prosumer/sampling roaster territory of the Hottop or Ikawa roasters.
I learned that in May 2019 an updated line of these roasters will be coming out. I suspect the prices will also be increasing as well on these units. So if you need the latest and greatest wait a couple of months. If not these might be going on sale soon to make room for the new models.
Kelvin (will it ever ship!)
If the SR500 and 700 are brothers the Kelvin is their hipster younger cousin who likes dubstep and wears glasses for fashion. I really like this roasters overall operation because it was kept simple. Basically you just set the time and the roaster does the rest. Some may criticizes this as far too basic and simplifying too much for such a complex process. I think this roaster has been optimized for a wide range of beans to give you very consistent and flavorful roasts. THhs is also a very aesthetic roaster reminding me of a MAc Pro, so you can roast and look good doing it.
I have one major complaint about this roaster and it’s the fact its kickstarter was fully funded and its still not shipping! The blog lists it as being in UL testing at the time of this article. Once it starts shipping I intend to review one in detail!
Kelvin offers a pretty decent capacity of approximately 120 gram batches. Also Kelvin lists on their website in the FAQ possible expansion to include roasting software in future products. I for one and excited about that possibility. After all engineers like specifications not speculations 😉
Nesco CR 10 10(its out of production so ignore it)
Ok I’m going to be really honest here. I wanted badly to get one of these to try it out because everyone who writes about home roasting lists this one.
But please if you read another article talking about this immediately leave because you have been suckered. This is out of production with no plans to bring it back. I have seen many websites talk about the best roasters of 2019 even though this has been discontinued for some time.
It maybe a great roaster but you can’t find one, even used on ebay!
Ikawa(the heavy weight in the room)
The ikawa is the lightest heavyweight in the room. This is definitely the smartest roaster around with its own app that you can use to load roasts into your machine and monitor progress. I really like the design and style of this roaster. The two big limitations are the staggering cost of almost $2000 USD and the small 60 gm capacity.
Addressing the capacity Ikawa says that due to the very repeatable roasting software its no issue to reload and roast again. I would think based on the price and quality of this roaster that’s an accurate statement. This roaster was designed with professional sampling in mind so consistency and repeatability is king.
Some minor considerations with this roaster. There are actually two versions the Home and the Professional. The main difference is the software and cost reduction changes like using a lower cost thermocouple. Overall unless you are a professional roaster I would suggest the home roaster. Pricing for the professional wasn’t listed on the website which means it’s probably a substantially more!
Software between the two is different with the professional capturing more intricate parameters and allowing more control like preheating the roasting chamber. I don’t think for a hobbyist this is needed unless you already have maxed out your current roaster and really want much more control.
Gene cafe CBR-101 Roaster
The Gene Cafe is one of the most unique roasters on this list as it features an off axis spinning drum fluidized bed roasting technique. It’s not a drum roaster in the technical sense but looks like one. The main benefit is said to be a very even roast.
This roaster is very comparable to the Hottop 2K+ but slightly smaller and lighter as well about a third of the cost. The big disadvantage is lack of computer control capability. You can adjust the time and temperature manually but for this price point I would have liked to see some software integrated.
The integrated chaff collector is a nice feature but people did mention that this roaster still produces a significant amount of smoke for darker roasts requiring some ventilation.
Behmor 1600 AB+
This is the only other drum roaster on the market at the consumer level. Not that a drum roaster should matter a whole lot to hobbyists (or pros either by the way). This roaster is the king of ring in pure capacity. At a massive 454 grams roasting capacity this one blows all the others out of the water. But there is a catch the manufacturer states that this roaster cannot do dark roasts!
Being the second lowest wattage roaster on the list I find it strange as the Hottop 2k+ is 740 watts and is able to roast to dark roast levels. I suspect this may have to do more with other limitations like chaff collection or smoke levels than actual roasting temperature.
As a dark roast fan this roaster wouldn’t work for me. There is a newer version coming out with its own app so perhaps that one might address this dark roast deficiency.
Hottop KN-8828B-2K (intro to prosumer roasting)
The Hottop is the MIke Tyson of home coffee roasting. Weighing in at almost 19 lbs and roasting up to 250 gms of coffee this one maxes out the scales. As well this roaster can be run with open source software like Artisan to monitor and control roasts out of the box. The catch it’s also almost $2000 USD to get this bad boy in your kitchen.
Like many people this one is slightly too expensive to jump right into. The features on this are perfect if you want to repeatedly roast coffee for friends and family. This roaster is the only one on the list to fit the bill of being high volume and having roasting software built in. As well this is one of the few drum roasters on the market in this size.
One thing that did surprise me was the fact this roaster is only 740W! Given the large number of snobs that say you can’t roast coffee in a 1250W popcorn popper, I was really surprised at this. That said there are many factors that could make wattage not really important. The primary reason being a drum roaster there may not be such a loss of heat during the roasting process it may take less wattage to roast the beans. This roaster would be less costly to run then a higher wattage model and do more beans at once. I doubt that fact offsets the price tag though but it might be worth a try on a reluctant spouse 😉
Programmable and overall control
One of the biggest decisions to make is how much control do you want? SOme roasters like the SR500 are a manual process. You monitor the roast with your eyes and nose and adjust a few switches and time as the roast progresses. Roasters like the Ikawa have a fully programmable roast profile so you can probably go sit and read the news while your roaster does all the work.
Choosing one over the other really comes down to preference and budget. Budget is probably the main motivator as there is a huge difference in price between and SR500 and an Ikawa, like 10X!!
The other most typical trade off is size. The Ikawa may be computer controlled to reproduce roasts consistently but it does so at 60 grams at a time. Where as something like the Hot Top is less controllable then the Ikawa out of the box but offers much larger roasting volumes of YY ounces.
The Hot Top machine is a great programmable one capable of being used with many roasting softwares like Artisan. At about the same price as the Ikawa but much larger and has bigger batch size of approximately 250 gm vs Ikawa of 60 gm (they say that you can replicat in minutes for greater volume). Control is likely as good with the software but lacks an app to directly share and access recipes (ikawa pro only?).
Can you use them inside?
One of the most common questions people ask about any of these roasters is can you use them inside? Each roaster is going to generate different amounts of smoke as well as what type of roaster you are creating. If you have sensitivities to smoke then a more sophisticated roaster like the Behmor 1600 might be the one for you. If you have a good ventilation fan on your stove then any roaster will work.
From using my pop corn roaster and cast iron pan I did not have much of a smoke problem. I did get a pretty heavy coffee smell in the house but that’s not necessarily a bad thing for a coffee lover! I targeted mostly a medium dark roast but dark roasts will have more smoke.
Which did I buy?
I bought an SR500 because of price and the fact I can do some manual control and play with the roasting process (stay tuned for a detailed review). I considered the SR700 for its software based control but spending an extra $100 didn’t seem worth it as I plan to upgrade again later. The current version also seems a bit limited so it wasn’t a big benefit to me.
I really wanted the Hottop 2K+ but at $1600 I couldn’t make the leap there yet. The SR500 will allow me to do a lot of trials instead of stirring my cast iron pan constantly in a trance or not having much process control like in my air popper.
If I do stick with roasting, I will definitely upgrade to something like the Hottop 2K that I can computer control and roast a larger volume in more in a sampling style manner. I have dreams of becoming a superstar coffee roaster but let’s keep that between us 😉
To wrap up which is the best to buy?
Honestly I wouldn’t buy any for now. But why you ask!? During my research on coffee roasters, the main players are all due for upgrades.
Both Behmor and the SR500 are getting significant upgrades soon. The Behmor will have its own app. The SR500 is upgrading to better controls. With the Kelvin slowly making its way to the finish line there is a lot to be excited about coming out for home roasters. None are perfect but everyone will have different needs, wants and constraints. Happy roasting!!