IRoast2 40011 5-2/7-Ounce Coffee-Bean Roaster, Black
by IBC - Hearthware, INC
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List Price: Category: Kitchen See more product details |
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Kitchen and Housewares Reviews of IRoast2 40011 5-2/7-Ounce Coffee-Bean Roaster, Black
Customer Review: Good Quality Roaster
Summary: 5 Stars
Awesome roaster. For apartment dwellers, the dryer vent attachment makes this well worth the price. Very configurable, and durable. I have not one complaint in regards to this model.Customer Review: Better than turning a crank for 10 minutes
Summary: 4 Stars
Update - 06/08
Well, it's 2-1/2 years since replacing the I-Roast with version 2, and I've now put about 150 lbs of coffee through it. I've watched its behavior over many seasons. Recently, I thought the unit was dying... the motor seemed to be balking, so I went to the sweetmarias website to look at the array of coffee roasters that might replace the unit. I found a note in their comparison chart about I-Roast 2 being sensitive to ambient temperature and variations in line voltage. The motor was balking in the middle of a heat wave, and I knew from the line voltage measure on our PC's APC that all the air-conditioning was bringing the voltage down to 109. The unit was not dying. This week, with the heat-wave over, and line voltage back up to 120, it was back to its normal jet engine sound.
So, I reiterate that you cannot just find a profile setting that works once, and then just walk away. The following items change the roasting profile without warning:
1) Coffee variety. Large dense beans take longer than small or less dense beans
2) Ambient temperature. If it's late autumn, and you haven't turned your heat on yet, the roast will take longer.
3) Line voltage. If your voltage drops (even from 120 to 118) it will lengthen the roast time.
4) Cleaning. You must keep the screen and trap at the top of the unit clean. (I use a brass brush) If the screen gets dirty, the airflow slows through the machine and it gets hotter than expected, shortening roasting time, and causing "tipping" or uneven roasting.
One final item. The handle on the top chamber is meant only to bear the weight of the top chamber. Do not use this to carry the whole machine. That bit of abuse may be responsible for some of the breakage reported in this series of reviews.
Update- 04/06
Replaced the original with the I-Roast 2. Fantastic improvement. Will store several different user defined profiles. Roasting chamber has been re-engineered and is solid.
As other users have pointed out, it does sound like a jet engine, and it is smokey.... but then smoke is just part of roasting coffee. For those who imagine the smell of roasting coffee wafting through their homes, you need to know that while roasted coffee smells good, roasting coffee is pretty nasty, and you need to vent the smoke.
Update- 10/05
Some of the metal parts on the roasting chamber were under-engineered, and the chamber started leaking air and coming apart. Temperature sensors seem to have gone, and with them, any notion of a roasting profile.
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I used to use a stove-top corn-popper for roasting, which was pretty dull and burned my fingers. The iRoast is pretty good compared to that. The roast is very even, cleaning is easy, and you can watch the roast.
The down-side is that you need to watch the roast towards the end. You cannot program the machine, walk away, and expect it to finish the job all by itself. Slight variation in ambient temperature, (summer/winter, oven on recently, morning/afternoon) can result in notable changes in roast time. You must always program it for longer than the roast should take, and watch the last few minutes to stop the roast at the right time.
It would be nice if the machine remembered the program from one roast to the next.
Customer Review: Wonderful gadget for the coffee buff
Summary: 4 Stars
Warning! Roasting coffee produces smoke! Definitely read up on the process thoroughly before buying. The first batch I made with this machine I over roasted due to my ignorance. It was darker than a French roast and had little body or flavor and smoked the house up. After reading some more I adjusted the program and kept a closer eye on it and roasted an amazing Sumatran coffee with FAR less smoke. I am drinking a cup of said batch right now and it is wonderfully clean and delightful. One newbie to newbie note; coffee roasting is not a "set it and forget it" kind of process. This is more or less like cooking. It requires your attention or every smoke alarm in the house will be going off; no, seriously! It does have a safety feature so that it will not run longer than 15 min and will shut off if it overheats, so fire risk is minuscule even for the most scatter brained of us. Check out this website for details on the roasting process to get a feel if it is right for you. [...] Sweet Maria's also has an amazing assortment of green beans of very high quality from what I can tell. The machine does come with a vent pipe adapter if any smoke in the house bothers you. If you have a hood that vents to the outside then smoke is a non issue. A full city roast produces about the same amount of smoke as a cigarette, obliviously without the nasty cig smell. It's kind of funny because the green beans don't smell particularly good nor does the roasting process. Not bad but not good. Yet the finished product is so, so good! Now that you know it produces smoke ... this machine works great and produces a very even roast. It has a commercial grade motor which is about as loud as a vacuum cleaner, certainly not enough to wake the neighbors. The programming functionality is great and I look forward to tweaking it for that perfect roast. The user interface could definitely be improved and is a bit cumbersome, but I did not find it to be very difficult to program at all. Also the LCD screen is kind of cheap and angled poorly so you basically got to flip it on its side under good light to program it. However this is one of only a few programmable machines on the market, the only one for this price. It roasts around 6oz which is quite a bit unless you drink two pots a day. ... pauses to take a sip of smashingly good coffee ... If you are a coffee buff who leans toward the creative side you will probably like this machine. I give it 4 stars because wholesale electronic parts are cheap and they could have put better LCD screen on it and angled it so you can read it standing up. Other than that this thing rocks!Customer Review: After two weeks, I'm learning to roast coffee with I-Roast 2
Summary: 4 Stars
After a few hours on the Internet reading reviews and learning about roasting, I purchased the I-Roast 2. I've done at least 15 batches so far. The machine is functioning fine, but I'm learning something with each new batch. I'll tell you my impressions so far.
1. The machine is attractive and quite easy to learn how to use.
2. It is a bit noisy, but I knew that before I bought it.
3. It has a round wire ring above it which makes it quite easy to vent off any smoke. I got a metal 90 degree "elbow" made for clothes dryers and vent right out a window by attaching this elbow to the top of the machine.
4. I've learned the key to roasting is watching the beans while roasting. Look for the color you want. This machine is glass-sided, so it's easy to see the beans. If you can't monitor the color, each batch would be a guess at the product. You'll learn which color beans you like the most.
5. There's a button you push to see the roasting temp at any given time. It seemed to read low for what I had set. I've since read on the Net that this machine's inner temps might be hotter than the number reads. It's not too important if you're getting the roast you like, but you have to watch it and guage results.
6. Cleaning the chaf afterwords only takes a few seconds. It's really easy and no work at all.
7. As I get the roasts I like, the programable option is really nice. I can repeat it later if I want to.
8. The I-Roast 2 cooling cycle is automatic and easy. From what I've read, this is really important. After this 4 minutes cycle, the beans are almost room temperature and easy to remove from the glass drum. I put the beans into an open glass container for breathing for a day before grinding.
9. Overall performance is great. I can't comment on long term durability, but so far I'm really pleased. I'd recommend this machine to others.
W.B.
Customer Review: Great roaster, but burned out after 2 years
Summary: 4 Stars
This is a fantastic home coffee roaster. It does a great job of roasting coffee with a minimum of smoke and mess. Put it on top of the stove with the exhaust fan on, and you will have no smoke at all in the house. The chaff collector does a superb job of collecting the "skins" that peel off when roasting, so you don't have any mess to clean up. You can program your own roast profiles, which makes it very customizable. There are several coffee lover sites on the web that have many suggested custom programming settings.
The coffee is produces is delicious, and since you can buy green coffee beans for less than 1/2 of what roasted beans cost, you will recoup your investment easily, and have better tasting coffee to boot.
On the bad side, the roaster finally burned up yesterday, and won't work any more. I roasted about 3 batches per week since I got it. From reading other people's experiences with this and other roasters, 2 years is about the average life expectancy for an air roaster, so I'm not particularly miffed that it died - it served me well for 2 years.
Will I buy the same unit to replace this one? No. Not because there is anything wrong with it - but there are newer roasters on the market which roast a much bigger batch of coffee at once, which means only one batch a week instead of 3. I plan to invest in a Behmor drum coffee roaster which is $100 more.