Product Description

The I-Roast2 allows you to personalize your own roast curvees. Program your own time and tempurature for each of the 5 roast stages. You can achieve professional results in just 15 minutes with built-in 4 minute cooling cycle. Whether you prefer Cinnamon, French, or anything in between, the choice is yours. You can roast up to 150g/5.3 oz of green beans enough to brew 24 cups of coffee. Enjoy purest, freshest, and most aromatic coffee for less than 10 cents per cup. Easy to read LCD display shows time, temperature, and roast stage for accurately monitoring the roast process. You can now save and recall 10 roast curves from memory. The I-Roast2 allows for the freshest taste and aroma. It's also healthy, versatile, economical, and fun. With the I-Roast2, you can control when, where, and how much fresh roasted coffee you want every time!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #23956 in Kitchen & Housewares
• Color: Black
• Brand: Iroast
• Model: 40011
• Dimensions: 12.00" h x 7.00" w x 12.00" l,

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

Perfect for a couple of coffee lovers
Home roasting is one of the most rewarding activities I've gotten into, and the i-Roast is one of the funnest "toys" I've bought in a long time, though this sophisticated appliance is in no way a toy; I call it that because it's so much fun to use.

The i-Roast roasts about 5 - 6 oz. of green coffee beans at a time. This is a perfect amount for a couple of coffee drinkers who, like me, want to brew their coffee (we make espresso) using fresh roasted beans (within the last 12 - 36 hours) and ground just prior to brewing.

The i-Roast lets you adjust the roasting cycle (11 - 15 min.) to get exactly the roast you like though you would probably be perfectly happy with the medium-dark roast already programmed into it. Honestly, you wouldn't have to mess with the roasting cycle at all, unless you start to feel more curious, adventurous, or are finicky about the subtle taste differences obtained.

Minor negative feature: typically, fluid (air-driven) coffee roasters are inevitably louder while in operation than are the drum-type roasters. Even so, the i-Roast is far less noisy than our blender, which would drive me nuts if I had to run it for 15 minutes. Maybe it's just so much fun to smell that unspeakably attractive aroma (roasting coffee) and to study the beans as they slowly change from yellow-green to dark brown that I haven't paid much attention to the sound of the motor.

A little LED window displays some useful information while the i-Roast is underway (e.g. it tells you what stage of the roasting cycle it's in), but I've found that it's a little hard to read the LED without bending down close by. It would've been nicer if they'd made that a backlit display, but they didn't and it's truly a minor thing.

Roasting coffee beans inevitably generates some smoke, so at some point in your roasting cycle all your household smoke alarms will go off if you try to do this indoors. Handily, the i-Roast comes with a nifty little gizmo that lets you attach one of those aluminum dryer vents to its exhaust (in the lid). This makes it easy to direct the smoke to an open window or to your range exhaust vent.

Coffee geeks - you need this, but it's not perfect
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!).

Excellent equipment for coffee fans
A few months ago, I reviewed the FreshRoast coffee roaster, which costs under a hundred bucks and includes a few pounds of green coffee beans. That was a great purchase, when I got it, especially for someone who wasn't sure if this was a personal fad. (You know: the things you think are WayCool, but somehow don't continue using after three or four months.) As it happens, we literally wore out the FreshRoast -- after several years of dedicated use -- and decided to replace it with an I-Roast.

I'm glad we did. The I-Roast has better heat control, so the beans come out evenly roasted. (You might not think that matters, all that much, but experience has taught me it does!) It has two settings that you can program for your preferred roasting and cooling times, which is a boon if you're trying to roast coffee while getting the rest of the meal put together. (Not that I ever walked away for "just a minute" and ended up with a darker roast than I intended. But ::cough:: it might happen to SOMEone.) Plus, you can roast a much larger batch of beans at one time; in practical terms, it means we roast once every 3-4 days instead of every other day. That's an appreciated convenience, too.

In other words: the I-Roast has better quality, better control, and better taste results.

It *does* smoke up the kitchen a little more than did the FreshRoast; that's not a problem for us but it might be an irritation for you (especially if you don't have good air circulation in the kitchen). We have friends who do their roasting on the back patio.

If you already know you're serious about this roasting business, the I-Roast would be a great choice. If you can afford the extra cost, I assure you that the quality justifies it.

If, on the other hand, this feels like a REALLY expensive toy that you aren't sure you'll keep using, then I'd suggest you get the FreshRoast instead. Financially, that's a better deal -- at least in the short run. If you find that you want more than the FreshRoast can deliver, I assure you that you won't have ANY problem finding a friend to take the FreshRoast off your hands. (Having a coffee roaster in your house gets guaranteed "Oh wow!" responses from dinner guests.)