IRoast2 40011 5-2/7-Ounce Coffee-Bean Roaster, Black
by IBC - Hearthware, INC
|
List Price: Category: Kitchen See more product details |
|---|
(Click here)
Kitchen and Housewares Reviews of IRoast2 40011 5-2/7-Ounce Coffee-Bean Roaster, Black
Customer Review: Best roaster I've used
Summary: 5 Stars
I have been roasting my own coffee for six or seven years. I have used many different roasters (heartware something, alpenroast, many others i can't well remember and most recently a freshroast ). My wife (dosen't drink coffee) has always complained about the smell of roasting and brewing coffee. She says it smells like burnt seeds. The iroast is the first time she has said it smells like coffee(even tasted some). By puttting in my own times and temps I was able to roast coffee that was as good as when I used to use a cast iron pot and spoon over open flame, only much easier now. Not only is the coffee better tasting than the others buy cleaning the unit is quicker and easier. I'm impressed and would highly recommend the iroast to anyone who roasts or wants to roast coffee.Customer Review: Better than Turning a Crank for 10 minutes
Summary: 5 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.
Original (Original I-Roast as well)-----
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: 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.
Original-----
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: Coffee geeks - you need this, but it's not perfect
Summary: 5 Stars
After years of fancy equipment and special mail-order beans, I never expected a serious jump in the quality of my coffee drinking, but I-Roast provides it. Invite your geeky friends over; you will impress them immensely. Just make sure you roast the beans and clear the smoke out of the kitchen before the tasting party arrives.
Anyone coffee geek, or someone needing a gift for a coffee geek, could hardly make a better investment in the quality of their future coffee-drinking than the Hearthware I-Roast 2, a home coffee roaster. It's about the size and shape of a blender and roasts about a cup of beans at a time. Rookies can roast simply by pushing a button for one of two pre-set roasts (a moderate cinnamon-colored roast and a much darker one). In 10-12 minutes or so, you will have the world's freshest coffee. Although sophisticated roasters would look down their noses at the pushbutton experience, if you have not had genuinely fresh-roasted beans before, you will be cosmically impressed.
As you continue to use the machine, you will work up a wishlist of features you wish were just a little different. For example, different beans will naturally give different results - I roasted a Costa Rican bean on the dark pre-set resulting in a dark, oily, Starbucks-y roast (some like that, some dont); but an Ethiopian bean on the same roast setting gave a lighter result.
You can easily address this issue by programming up 10 roasts manually, but it will be tricky to learn this....a traditional way to time a roast is to listen for "first crack" - you can actually hear the beans start to crack, kinda like microwave popcorn. But the machine is VERY noisy, so it's hard to heard this happen. You'll just have to get used to staring at the beans and making the judgment visually.
Other issues: 1) You will also stink up the kitchen with smoke - you will DEFINITELY set off a smoke alarm even if you set it under a range hood. It doesn't smell as nice as you might think. 2) The capacity will be fine for people that make a pot or two of brewed coffee a day, but heavy-duty espresso buffs or households with many coffee addicts may find it difficult to keep up with demand, particularly since you're not supposed to use it more than once in a two-hour period. 3) Finally, I can't speak yet as to the durability of the machine.
With these caveats, the best coffee-related gift we've ever given or received around my house (and that's saying a lot!).
Customer Review: Customer services issues -- UPDATE
Summary: 1 Stars
This is a re-write to a scathing review I wrote regarding my experience with truly terrible customer service at Hearthware. What I needed was a chaff collector lid, which HW had in stock but which was not delivered and which HW customer service reps did not seem to feel inclined to do anything about.
Here is the update:
I sent copies of my frustrations to the president of HW. Within a few days, I received not only a letter of apology and a promise to look into the customer service problems I experienced, but also a complete lid assembly along with complementary coffee beans. He also included a name and phone number to contact with any further issues.
So it does appear the "the company" DOES care about it's customers and that the problem is down in the trenches. Which should give potential buyers hope that their issues will eventually be addressed, albeit possibly with a great deal of effort and frustration along the way. Perhaps in this new economy, with legions of newly unemployed, qualified workers waiting in the wings to work, the customer service problems will abate at HW. We'll see.
In this light and because I do like the product, I would recommend the product with a warning that customer service could be a hassle but there are people at Hearthware that do care, so keep trying.