I have had the Behmor 1600 Roaster for about 9 months now, and roasted maybe 60-80 batches of 1/4 to 1 pounds, mostly 1/2 pound batches. This one comes from Sweet Maria's, who really supports this roaster with lots of good info.
This is a good roaster, gives very consistent results, and is pretty easy to use once you learn the basics.
So here is this brief review in case you are thinking about buying or upgrading to this roaster.
First, all roasting produces smoke.
Second, you want to roast in an ambient temperature of no less than 50-60 degrees F.
Third, coffee and its chaff can catch on fire, since you are roastng at over 400 degrees F, so you have to babysit the roasting process. All this means you will want to roast in a warm garage, or the kitchen with a vent hood. These are the facts of roasting coffee for freshness and optimum single-source flavor. The words of home roasters are "Brave the smoke!"
The Behmor does make life easier than many other roasters - it controls the rate and amount of smoke so you can get most of it up the vent hood. Yes you will smell the aroma of roasted coffee, but unless you do a lot of dark roasts, probably not too much more than frying fish or baking things, IF you have a good vent hood over the roaster. This means you will roast on the cook top, for about 25 minutes per batch. Roasting is about 12 minutes, cooling another 12 for 1/2 pound batch. You can walk away for a minute after you have cooled for a few minutes but you need to come back to it even then.
Most of the heavy smoke comes at the end of the roast cycle right as the cooling cycle begins. There is a catalytic converter that minimizes smoke, but at that point some smoke is visibly released into the air.
Coffee roasting produces smoke, and some oils are in the smoke, so you will need to maintain the roaster by cleaning it after every 3-5 roasts This may mean every 3-5 weeks or every week or every day if you are roasting a lot of coffee for Christmas gifts.
There is a self clean cycle you run every 3-5 cycles. Also you need to clean the glass and some surfaces with Simple Green or some other citrus cleaner. Particularly important are the sensor bolts on the right side of the interior, so you get proper temperature control.
Also you will need to occaisionally clean the exhaust fan which requires minor disassembly.
So, coffee roasting is not for everyone, but if you really like a great variety of fresh roasted coffee this roaster is worth the effort, compared to the two air roasters I have used. The air roasters were worth the effort, but more cumbersome, fragile, and harder to control.
This is a drum roaster: the drum is a chromed mesh metal cage which turns like a spit on a grill. It is probably a similar motor, although it can turn very fast during the cooling cycle. The drum sits inside a unit like a toaster-oven, although it is more complex than a toaster-oven. I has three sensors and a silicone gasket. It also has a chaff tray to catch the papery chaff which floats around as you roast the beans. This tray makes clean up fairly easy with your
small wet vac which you will use after every roast.
I have roasted 60-80 batches and i have only under-roasted a couple and over-roasted a couple. 1/2 pound is the optimum roast batch. You will need some practice, and yes this is somewhat of an art, like cooking.
Behmore warns you not to use extension cords, lest you do not get enough power to the roaster. And we all understand that concept don't we? This roaster is about the largest you would use in the home - it pulls up to 1600 watts.
Also Sweet Maria's warns: "You can safely roast only 20 seconds into second crack. Darker roasts are possible - see the section on the Using the Behmor page called "Breakin' the Law" "
Roasting coffee is done primarily by ear - you listen for first crack (like popcorn) and second crack (like a bowl of rice krispies). Lighter roasts fall between the two, darker roasts approach very rapidly after second crack has begun. By the time first crack approaches you are smelling the roasted coffee smell. After first crack starts you have to be 100% focused on listening, because within 30 seconds you can have burned coffee.
A nice thing about this roaster is that you can add seconds to the roast if you know you need a little more time, or end the roast at any time, with just the push of a button. Seconds are crucial when roasting at home, because the difference between the perfect roast and a fire can be less than a minute!
Fires tend to be limited to inside the roaster, and are usually small flames of burning chaff, like burning small amounts of tissue paper. I have only had 2 small fires for just a few seconds. Opening the door only flames the fire so you basically just push the button for the cooling cycle and the flames will go out. The more beans and the darker the roast, the greater the possible fire if you do not manage your roast, so YMMV. A fire is not automatically the ruination of your darker roasts, but is not a normal thing. The key here is you are roasting inside, not on an outdoor grill, so you have to really manage that roast.
I tend to do the lighter roasts, stopping just as first crack ends. This is where you get the optimum flavor of the source. If you roast too dark, you lose the character of the source bean, and get into a more of a lowest common denominator of coffee flavor, more the flavor of dark roasted coffee, much less distinguishing between differnt types of coffee is possible. As the Sweet Maria's site says about roasting into second crack, "The roast character starts to eclipse the origin character of the beans at this point". There are some beans that you want to roast into second crack and beyond, but most coffees follow this rule. The thing i like about Sweet Maria's over the last ten years is that they go into great detail about every bean crop, every season, from every origin all over the world that you may buy from them, to give you insight into how to roast to get which flavors you like. Every bag of green beans you can roast is different from farm to farm, from year to year. Again, if you pick the right coffees, you can enjoy good dark roasted flavors. I just enjoy the multitude of subtle flavors you can typically get with lighter roasts. This, to me, is the whole point of roasting at home.
If you think you might consider this roaster or are just curious I would check out this page on sweet Maria's site with a very good little video illustrating the basic roasting and cleaning process:
http://www.sweetmarias.com/prod.details-behmor.phpThis is a $300 drum roaster, and I expect to get many years out of it. If you want to get more serious, as in coffee shop serious, you can get a $500, $800, $1000 roaster from Sweet Maria's or other suppliers, on up to the huge commercial roasters.
If you also have this roaster, please feel free to add your comments!
