Product Description

The popular i-Roast coffee roaster has been improved in the new i-Roast 2. This new version has some great features. It has features found in only the most sophisticated machines that can cost thousands of dollars. Features: Roasts any bean for any brewing system in less than 15 minutes. Full range of roasting capability (Cinnamon to dark French). 2 Preset Automatic Roasting Curves for slower and faster roasts. Patented temperature control to give you consistent personalized roasting performance. Roasts enough beans to produce up to 24 cups of coffee. Chaff collector system that removes all of the chaff. Hi-visibility roasting pot for easy monitoring. Compact - requires minimal counter space. Interlocking parts for excellent product stability. Built in 4 minute cooling cycle. Up to 10 memory functions. Up to 5 stages.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8331 in Kitchen & Housewares
• Color: Black
• Brand: Iroast
• Model: 40011
• Dimensions: 12.00" h x 7.00" w x 12.00" l, 6.00 pounds

Features

• Versatile appliance roasts coffee beans for any brewing system
• Roasts up to 5-2/7 ounces of green beans; built-in 4-minute cooling cycle
• Automatic or programmable roasting profiles; adjustable time and temperature
• Save up to 10 profiles; LCD display; wind-tunnel and thermoflector technology
• Measures approximately 7 by 7 by 12-1/4 inches

Amazon.com Product Description
Roast coffee beans for any brewing system, including espresso, press, drip, or perk, with this versatile roaster. The unit accommodates up to 5-2/7 ounces of green beans--enough to produce up to 24 cups of coffee, plus it delivers professional results in just 15 minutes with its built-in four-minute cooling cycle. Enjoy the purest, freshest, and most aromatic coffee for less than 10 cents a cup. For the casual roaster, the unit offers automatic roasting profiles from light to French and anything in between. For the roasting aficionado, program the time and temperature for each of the five roast stages to create and adjust personal roast profiles. Roasting times can be increased or decreased up to a maximum of 15 minutes, and the roasting temperature can be adjusted by increments of 5 degrees F. Save up to 10 programmable roast profiles in the roaster's memory for future use.

For accurately monitoring the roast process, the appliance comes equipped with an easy-to-read LCD display that shows the time, temperature, roast stage, and more. Other highlights include a glass roasting chamber that provides clear visibility during every stage, two present automatic roasting curves for slower and faster roasts, patented wind-tunnel and thermoflector technology to ensure even roasting, and a locking mechanism, which securely holds the chaff base and pot stable during the roasting process. Even more, the unit's double filtration chaff collection disassembles for simple cleaning. The coffee-bean roaster measures approximately 7 by 7 by 12-1/4 inches.

Customer Reviews

Great roaster---it has flaws, but it is still more than worth it
If you read this, you probably already know that roasting your own coffee is likely the single largest improvement you can make to the quality of the coffee you drink at home, so I won't belabor that point.

I owned one for about two years before it broke (like another reviewer here), and I am going to get another one. So I obviously like it a lot. Nonetheless, I'll start with the downsides of this roaster:
1. It is noisy.
2. It requires attention to cleaning to function properly.
3. It produces quite a bit of smoke (but then again, it's coffee roasting we talk about).
4. It has a limited half-life (as mentioned, about two years of pretty heavy, almost daily, use in my case).
5. It's for small batch sizes (this might actually be a good thing in terms of coffee freshness, if you don't mind roasting a little more frequently).
6. It's user interface could be improved: more buttons, better display.

Now the upsides:
1. It's fast. Takes about 13-15 min to roast a batch.
2. Easy and fast to use, once you have figured out the buttons (not rocket science).
3. It's programmable---you can punch in your own roasting "curves" (step functions, really), tuned to particular beans or roasts. You can get as nerdy as you like about this, and people have...

From this it would seem that there are a lot more problems than good things to report about this roaster, but the bottom line is that this little device transforms coffee roasting into an activity that you can do on the side almost like boiling an egg, or you can invest a lot of time and attention in, sticking thermo sensors into the roast chamber and plotting temperature profiles.

The one thing to pay attention to is the flow of air through the chamber. Air is used to transport heat to the beans, and also to move them around. This makes the roaster mechanically simple (and hence cheap), but it also means that it needs to be kept clean enough to avoid any obstruction to the air flow. I let cleaning slide for some time, which resulted in the exhaust getting clogged, and the roaster overheating. In that case it does switch itself off, but I doubt it's a healthy thing for the machine, and I would not be surprised if those events hastened its demise.

It's relatively inexpensive, and it will provide you with many batches of deliciously fresh coffee. If you think about home roasting coffee, I recommend getting one of these.

Better than Turning a Crank for 10 minutes

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.

Great tasting coffee, flimsy product
I bought the iRoast2 as an upgrade for the Fresh Roast Plus that we had used for years. At first, I appreciated the more sophisticated roasting results we could get with the iRoast, and the fact that we could roast over double the amount of coffee per batch. However, after less than a year of moderate use, the glass roasting carafe cracked during the roasting process. I bit the bullet and ordered a replacement carafe from Hearthware. Now, less than 2 months later, the motor on the iRoast has given out. The fan stopped working mid-roast, causing the beans to overheat and a smoke disaster in the kitchen. So after just over 1 year of use, the product is shot.

Combining my experience and those of other reviewers here, obviously this product is not made to endure the test of time. This is an expensive product to provide just one year of use, not to mention the extra carafe I had to purchase. The Fresh Roast Plus, at half the price, is still going strong. I would not waste my money on another iRoast.