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Home Coffee Roasting Options
There are several options available to the home roaster, ranging from about $2.00 up to several hundred dollars.
Popcorn Poppers
I'm not sure who first discovered that you could roast coffee in a hot air popcorn popper, but I'd like to thank him (or her). Many of us who roast coffee at home got started using a popcorn popper. They work well and are cheap (you can find them at Goodwill/thrift stores for $2.00 - $3.00 or on eBay; or new ones cost only $20-30). This allows you to try roasting before you spend any real money. There are several pages on the Internet that show you how to roast coffee with a popcorn popper - see our "Links" section. These poppers tend to put out some smoke during the roasting process, so they should be used under the exhaust fan on your stove, or outside.
There are several poppers you can roast with - I have had great luck with the Westbend Poppery and Poppery II, the Proctor-Silex Popcorn Pumper and the Hamilton Beach Popaire. There are others sold under different names which will work also - the important feature to look for is that the roasting chamber has a solid bottom inside and slotted air vents like the photo below. Do not use a popper which has a screen in the bottom - the chaff from the coffee could get stuck in the screen and present a fire hazard.
If you look inside the chamber and it looks like this:
then it's probably perfect for coffee roasting!
Since you will usually find these in used condition, sometimes you will get one which doesn't produce enough heat to roast well. But at $2.00 each you don't have much to lose! Of the 7-8 poppers I've had, only one didn't work well.
There are a few "geekier" methods of roasting beans which some hobbyists swear by, which utilize such items as heat guns and dog-food bowls, converted convection ovens, etc. We aren't going to cover those here as our goal is to show you the easiest, most approachable ways to get into home roasting. For those curious about some of the more off-beat roasting methods, check out the excellent "CoffeeGeek" website listed in our "Links" section.
"Real" Home Roasters
Up until a few years ago, there was no reasonably priced commercially-produced coffee roaster made for the home market. I used a collection of popcorn poppers for a few years (total investment $10 at Goodwill) with great results, but finally decided to get a "real" coffee roaster. There are several good ones available, listed here by price from lowest to highest:
FreshRoast Plus
The FreshRoast Plus is a great first roaster, as it's easy to use, quiet, fast and inexpensive. For someone just getting into coffee roasting, it's perfect. This unit roasts about 2-1/2 ounces of coffee per batch (or about 12 cups of coffee). It takes 5-7 minutes for the average roast, and only costs around $75. The beans produce some smoke when roasting - so use it under the exhaust fan on your stove.
Nesco Home Coffee Roaster
Recently renamed from 'Zach and Danis', this roaster can process a larger batch of coffee at once (about 4 ounces) than the FreshRoast. It has a unique catalytic converter that eliminates much of the smoke that coffee produces when it roasts. This roaster takes longer than some others (15-20 minutes) and it is best for light to medium roasts. This unit sells for around $150.
Hearthware i-Roast
The i-Roast is a very advanced air roaster. It roasts twice as much coffee at once as the FreshRoast (5 ounces), and adds the ability to program and save multiple roast profiles. This means you can experiment more with different temperatures and roast times, and save those combinations in the machine to use over again. It takes approximately 10 minutes to roast a batch. This is the machine we used to use and we loved it, but they tend to last only about 2 years. It sells for about $179.
Behmor Drum Roaster
The new Behmor Drum Roaster is the talk of the town - coffee town, that is! It is the first drum roaster to break the $300 price point, and is 1/2 the price of the competition. It can roast a full pound of coffee, which means once a week for the average person. We just bought one recently and absolutely love it. It's QUIET and the longer roast times really bring out the individual subtle tastes in all the beans we have tried. I think this is the ultimate roaster, at least so far. It sells for $299.
HotTop Drum Roaster
Some people call the HotTop Drum Roaster the ultimate home roaster. It's like a miniature version of the large drum roasters used by professional coffee roasters. It roasts up to 9 ounces at once, over a half-pound. It also costs significantly more than other home roasters - $595 for the analog model, and $695 for the digital model.
All of the roasters listed here can be purchased at Sweet Maria's or other web sites (see our "Links" section) .
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