Fresh Roast SR300 Home Coffee Roaster

This is our first professional roaster, after using popcorn poppers previously. What an improvement! It gives a nice, even roast, and the cooling cycle is adequate enough so you could leave the beans in the roaster until the next morning. We like a lighter roast, which also preserves the caffeine. The adjustments to the roasting time were easy, and it defaults to our preferred roast after setting it up the way we like it. The chaff collector doesn't need to be emptied for each batch, but I do have one complaint. The collector is so heavy, it is rather precarious on top of the roasting chamber, with no locking mechanism to keep someone from knocking it off. Fortunately, when aforementioned person dropped the chaff collector, the bits that broke off did not affect the use of the roaster. (Yeah, clumsy me.) Also, there is some smoke that escapes the roaster; enough that if you do a couple of batches back to back, it can set off your smoke alarm....even the one that never goes off when you burn the toast. Funny, but it didn't seem that smoky and nobody complained of the lovely smell coming from this roaster. Overall, I highly recommend it. We considered the 500 model, but chose this for the lower price point.

A friend turned me on to home roasting last year. I must say, I enjoy it very much. Who knew home roasting could be so much fun and that I was, in fact, a closet "coffee geek" all these years without my even knowing it?And yet, after a while, continuously hand-cranking away on the Whirley-Pop popcorn popper for 10-15 minutes over the stove and then 3-5 minutes outside cooling the beans and removing the separated chaff just wasn't so much fun anymore. I needed to automate. So, I did research all over the Web.Sweet Marias (Google them) has been good to me. Besides having great green coffee beans from around the world, the owner responded to several emails from me about selecting the highest quality beans based on the "Upgraded Coffee" principles (Google "Upgraded Coffee" by the "Bulletproof Executive"). The guy from Sweet Marias actually debunked a lot of what was taught by the guy who came up with the "Bulletproof Coffee" concept and gave me the essentials to look for in a quality bean. What an awesome guy!Anyway, his Sweet Marias site listed the Fresh Roast SR300 and SR500 as good options for home roasting. The site had some great tips and suggestions on how to use the units for best results, which I applied; such as keeping the chaff collector off the top for the first 30 seconds to a minute of roasting, as you take a wooden spoon and stir the beans.The weight of the beans may (depending on variety of bean) be too heavy at first for the roaster until some of the moisture roasts out of the bean, and so some beans could remain stuck on the bottom and get overly roasted by the forced hot air -- or even scorched. This causes an uneven roast to the entire batch and will ruin it. The simple solution is to stir the beans with a wooden spoon (I use the top of the handle) for a bit, then put the chaff collector back on just as the chaff starts flying off the beans. Works like a charm every time.After that, you just listen for the first "crack." When I hear the first crack, I usually wait about 45 seconds to 1 minute and then press the Cool button and let it finish its 3 minute cooling cycle. It sometimes then hits that second crack during the cooling cycle, but it's perfect even if I don't hear that second crack.The second crack is a "Starbucks' roast" (we have a regional manager from Starbucks living next door who told us); and provides a rich, full-bodied flavor, though feel free to roast it for less time if you prefer a milder-tasting -- yet higher caffeine content -- cup of coffee. If you push Cool after you've heard the second crack, it may get overly roasted because it doesn't cool instantly.This has been a great time-saver. It's much faster than roasting on the stove manually, has been far more consistent, and no more mess cooling and de-chaffing (takes me 30 seconds now to get off last few bits outside by pouring them from container to container), and it's just plain fun.I enjoy home roasting much more now, and my coffee ("Bulletproof"-style with extra virgin coconut oil, grass fed butter, pure stevia extract) has never tasted so good. It's like drinking Starbucks on Steroids every morning -- only always extremely fresh, organic, and free trade with "clean", non-toxic beans. It's the perfect brain-body boost to kick-start my day and give me solid energy and mental clarity throughout.As a side note, I actually stopped drinking coffee for years as moldy beans made me highly allergic and extremely irritable, and I'd crash shortly after drinking a cup. Clean beans, I later learned, I have no problems with at all. No more crankiness, edginess, jitters, energy let-downs or other allergic symptoms. I just feel great all day long with my new, "healthy coffee." This is almost certainly why it seems that about 50% of coffee studies suggest that coffee is incredible for your health, and the other 50% say it's awful. Always so contradictory. It's all about the quality of bean used in the study. Mycotoxins on beans (i.e. Ochratoxin A) are extremely toxic to the brain and body.Also, one more secret I discovered is that if you like that creamy froth at the top of a cup of cappuccino, but don't want the milk, here's what I do. I take a tiny bit -- perhaps 1/5th of a teaspoon -- of "Now" brand eggwhite powder and add it to the top of the mix of butter, oil and stevia -- after all that's melted in a Ninja Pulse Blender mixer cup. I then blend it for a few seconds. And, voila! A perfectly delicious and frothy cup of Joe that looks and tastes even better than a cappuccino. I call it the eggpaccinno and it's awesome.Oh, and if you're really (I mean REALLY) adventurous and are a health freak, you can even add spirulina powder (we get ours from the "Nuts" website, but they probably sell through Amazon, too). I add 1/2 to 1 tsp. of spirulina; it turns it totally green (perfect for St. Patty's Day) and adds a ton of extra nutrition. I happen to love the taste of spirulina, so it's an added treat for me, but I know some may not care for green coffee or the taste of spirulina. So, it's definitely a personal preference and not even remotely traditional -- but I still like it :)Bottom line -- this is a GREAT COFFEE ROASTER, and there's no need to get the more expensive SR500. The 300 should be just fine for anyone. The extra dials and what-not on the 500 are simply not needed in my opinion, and add no real benefit to outweigh the added cost.And I opted for the Square Trade warranty for 2 years. It didn't cost much and I wanted to make sure my investment was covered. I read in different places online that this unit is said to last about 2-3 years with frequent use, so it might be worth getting the warranty on this if you plan to use it a lot like I do.Feel free to ask me any questions in comments to this post and I'll try to answer.Happy Roasting!And if you're on the fence -- just get it. You'll love it.

Just got this a few days ago as a step up from using hot air popcorn poppers to roast beans and wanted to get a more even roast with less hassle. This roasts the beans fairly evenly and they appear to circulate well in the roaster, but it is hard to hear the cracks. I only do a light roast, so this isn't an issue for me since the beans are easily visible. I started with 2 oz. and spent nearly 12 minutes to get to a light roast, I was alarmed at this time because I always spent lest than 5 minutes with a popper. Immediately after this, I got another 2 oz. light roasted in less than 4 minutes. This morning I used the rated capacity of 4.5 oz and they were roasted to just the start of the first crack in around 4 minutes. The chaff catcher worked well for a small amount of beans, but when I tried a 4.5 oz. load, much chaff didn't get trapped in the catcher and dropped back onto the beans when I was done or onto the counter when I lifted the catcher up. Cleaning the chaff catcher and running on air for a bit got rid of most chaff in the beans, but there was extra chaff to cleans up on the counter. The unit doesn't connect together securely, and too easily comes apart into 4 pieces, so I move it a piece or 2 at a time to avoid dropping parts. I have used $25 air poppers for years, being mostly satisfied if I do it outside and don't have to worry about the chaff. This unit helps control the chaff and my roasting level doesn't create a lot of smoke. So my overall satisfaction with this unit will depend on how long it lasts. Right now it's OK.