Customer Reviews

IRoast2 40011 5-2/7-Ounce Coffee-Bean Roaster, Black

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(15)

 

 

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.

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!).

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.)

I have had my I-Roast for almost a year now. After reading so many rave reviews about this product, I have to wonder if I got a defective one. I've used it at least a hundred times; up to 5 times a week whenever I have green beans. Before I had the I-Roast, I roasted beans by stirring them in a big cast-iron skillet. That process took at least 20 minutes, 30 if I wanted coffee that was roasted evenly. I could roast over 1/2 pound at a time in the skillet. The I-Roast takes just a bit longer than 8 minutes, start to finish, to roast my beans to medium-dark. I have to rotate the thing manually the whole time, to ensure even roasting, but it's better than stirring for half an hour! The amount of coffee beans it roasts is (irritatingly) about 1.5 days worth, so I have to roast two days in a row, then I get a day off. Obviously, since I do still use the thing, I like it better than the skillet.

First of all, I must make a quick note about the instruction booklet. Really, all they would have had to write is "Quick Start Guide - press a "preset" button, then press the "roast" button." The instructions don't actually state those steps. Instead, they explain all the parts and features of the machine, then leave you to figure out how to start it. It took me so long to fool with the buttons, and refer back to the booklet the first few times I roasted, that SOMETHING went wrong and the machine didn't actually start the roasting until the countdown timer had hit about 3:00. I still have that non-starter problem if I leave the roaster plugged in, too. The heat element stays on all the time (also bad for that electricity bill), so we make sure to unplug it when we're done. If the thing is plugged in for more than about 10 seconds before I push the "roast" button, it doesn't start roasting until a random number of minutes have ticked off the countdown. It just sits, counting down silently, while I tear my hair out, hoping my beans have enough time to get roasted when it finally does decide to start. At the beginning, I ended up finishing a few batches in the skillet. Unplugging the machine for any reason during the cycle doesn't seem to help either - it just confuses the I-Roast even more.

We noticed right from the start that during the (hotter) second and third cycles, the beans don't move very much. This problem produces charred black beans at the bottom of the pot, yellow beans at the top, and a kitchen full of smoke. The troubleshooting guide in the instruction booklet said that if the beans don't circulate enough, you should use fewer beans. I have tried to roast JUST the amount for one day's worth of coffee (since I'm "not allowed" to run it more than 7 times a week, that'd be the smallest amount I could get away with) with the same result. I found out that if I constantly tilted the roaster to different angles, to shift the beans, I could get a nice even roast in just a few minutes. The "Preset 1" setting wants the beans to roast for 13 minutes (including "cool" cycle). I choose "Preset 1," gently tilt the machine in a circular motion through the entire cycle (the first and cool cycles don't really move the beans much either), and I've never had it down below 4:00 before pressing "Cool" and waiting the 4 minutes more.

Some internal part of my I-Roast burned out just the other day. At the time, the roaster shut off, and I smelled that nasty buring-electronics smell. Luckily, it seems that the part that fried wasn't that important - the roaster still works. As a bonus, because of damage to the sensors, I can now take the pot off during the cool cycle without the roaster freaking out and playing its old tricks. Now I don't have to be so precise about how dark the beans are when I press cool... I can just take the pot off when they're perfect. Hooray for malfunctions! I do like to use the cool cycle as long as I need to, though... it finishes the beans more uniformly.

I do have a few more things I wanted to comment about. Most importantly - don't lift the pot by the handle while it's attached to the heater base. It's too much weight for the handle to bear. Our handle broke within 3 months (mind you, I was holding it by the handle to rotate the machine while it roasted), and the whole pot fell apart when the handle broke. We tried to epoxy it where the plastic broke (under the handle, at the point of the screw), but the sensors were too smart for that. We had to order a new pot - and they aren't cheap! Now I just hold the machine by the heater base - it doesn't get hot - and that seems to work fine (I make sure to keep my hands away from the air intake on the back). The outer plastic on the heater base feels a little flimsily attached, but so far, so good. Also, there are small holes around the edges of the screen-part of the lid. They get filled with glop, and cleaning them out really helps with air circulation. I think that the lid is poorly designed, in general, although I do like the chaff collecter... it seems like magic! The lid doesn't let enough air OUT, which is the reason the beans don't circulate. As a test, I took the chaff collector out and also I didn't cinch down the lid assembly... it was extremely messy, and it took a bit longer, but the beans were flying around all over the place, and it roasted the coffee without my having to rotate the machine! Finally, the cooling cycle doesn't really cool the beans. In fact, the heat element doesn't turn off and they still go on cooking. You need to press "cool" a few shades lighter than your preferred bean-darkness. It DOES say that in the instruction booklet. I just wanted to stress the point. It's very easy to wind up with black beans.

I can see why drum roasters are so much better, but I HAVE been spoiled by this machine. I wouldn't want to roast in a skillet again. It took me a lot of fooling around to get it right, but now I do like my little troublemaker, while it lasts.

I purchased the machine in December 2006.
I give it 5 stars for roasting. Each machine is different in terms of the temperature produced by the machine. Once you learn the amount of heat it produces, you can set the proper temperature and time for an even roast. It would be a great improvement if IRoast could standardize the amount of heat the unit produces.

The ability to change temperatures and control the amount of time for roasting are great features and has allowed me to produce some nice roasts. Once you find temperatures and times that produce a good roast for a particular type of bean, you can save the profile in the machine.

The machine definitely needs at least a half a day to cool down between roasts because of the high temperatures generated by the machine. After the roast is finished, the cover and glass top are too hot to handle with bare hands.

The BIG downside is the unreliability of the machine. I have had the glass pot crack and the blower in the base unit malfunctioned in the 4 months I have had the roaster. Customer Service is hit and miss.

Most people have NEVER had a cup of coffee made with fresh roasted beans. Roasted coffee is like produce and is best used in the first three days after roasting. Since all coffee is at least three days old by the time it reaches you.... Most of the "gourmet" coffee is over roasted to cover up ho hum green beans. I was shocked when I had my first cup roasted in my I-Roast. It smelled wonderful and tasted even better with no bitter aftertaste. Be warned, you will want to drink more coffee, much more! P.S. I buy my green beans online at http://www.sweetmarias.com/ their Sumatra triple pick is WONDERFUL!

After a few hours on the Internet reading reviews and learning about roasting, I purchased the I-Roast 2. I've done at least 15 batches so far. The machine is functioning fine, but I'm learning something with each new batch. I'll tell you my impressions so far.
1. The machine is attractive and quite easy to learn how to use.
2. It is a bit noisy, but I knew that before I bought it.
3. It has a round wire ring above it which makes it quite easy to vent off any smoke. I got a metal 90 degree "elbow" made for clothes dryers and vent right out a window by attaching this elbow to the top of the machine.
4. I've learned the key to roasting is watching the beans while roasting. Look for the color you want. This machine is glass-sided, so it's easy to see the beans. If you can't monitor the color, each batch would be a guess at the product. You'll learn which color beans you like the most.
5. There's a button you push to see the roasting temp at any given time. It seemed to read low for what I had set. I've since read on the Net that this machine's inner temps might be hotter than the number reads. It's not too important if you're getting the roast you like, but you have to watch it and guage results.
6. Cleaning the chaf afterwords only takes a few seconds. It's really easy and no work at all.
7. As I get the roasts I like, the programable option is really nice. I can repeat it later if I want to.
8. The I-Roast 2 cooling cycle is automatic and easy. From what I've read, this is really important. After this 4 minutes cycle, the beans are almost room temperature and easy to remove from the glass drum. I put the beans into an open glass container for breathing for a day before grinding.
9. Overall performance is great. I can't comment on long term durability, but so far I'm really pleased. I'd recommend this machine to others.
W.B.

I really like this little machine, and have been working with it for about a month now. I've learned a few things along the way, and my roasts are improving as a result. So here are a few "after a month" tips.

1. Keep good notes. Get yourself a little notebook that you keep near the machine and record the kind and amount of beans, the temps and times of each stage in your programs, your initial reaction to the roast (straight out of the machine, before you make coffee). Then record your reactions to the coffee the next day when you start brewing.

2. Vent this puppy. I have a downdraft vent fan in my stovetop, so I spent $8 at the hardware store and bought a length of flexible dryer tubing. I get no smoke whatsoever this way. Maybe because my vent fan pulls the air from the roaster, my temps run almost exactly as programmed. AND, to connect the tubing to the metal ring that fits the top, you get to use duct tape for its intended purpose (!!!) - who'd a' thunk it?

3. Don't overload it. The instructions suggest you can load a full cup of beans. With my beans, 150g is almost exactly 3/4 c of beans. Overloading the machine will result in more char because the beans won't circulate properly. And, after all, the flavor of burnt is just that - burnt.

4. Ramp the roast up. I'm currently using 2 min ea at 330, 360, 390, 405, and setting the fifth stage at 390 for the remaining 7 min. Then I shut the roast down with the COOL button when the roast looks "right".

5. Don't overheat it. When I started, I was using very high temps (440-450), and I've backed way down. In my current profile, which produces a nice full city (dark brown, no oil), the temp reading on the LCD readout never gets above 408, and I get there after about 10 mins.

6. There are some very informational sites on the web on the topic of roasting. Kenneth Davids is a great source, as is Tom Owen at Sweet Maria's. Find 'em, read 'em, but remember, you're going to learn more about roasting from what you do than you will from the web.

Great little machine and you control it. Don't push the "On" button and walk away. Use the machine's "weakness" (small capacity) as a strength - more roasts, more practice, fresher beans.

******

It's now July, 2009, and my little iRoast2 is still going strong. I dropped the chaff cover and a wedge chipped out - I just glued it back in. No problem. Four roasts a week, and still one of the great joys is learning "the" roast for a new, unsampled variety of beans. Two more tips:

7. "Profile" the roast. Ramp it up just like I said in #4 above, peak it at your high temp (mine is 405 for one minute) and then ramp it back down. I set stage five to run 3.5 mins at 375, and this caramelizes the roast you've put into the beans at the high temp. I've found that if you want a darker flavor, you're better off extending the length of the final, cooler stage than extending the length of the high-temp stage. Naturally, YMMV.

8. Wipe the roast canister out with a paper towel after every roast, and wash it with dishwashing detergent and a sponge about every fifth roast.

When this little guy gives up his ghost, he'll be replaced by another iRoast2, 'cuz I couldn't be happier than with what I get from it.

We had one of the orginal Hearthware roasters and wore it out after 3 years of weekly roasting. we looked at several other brands and went back to the newest hearthware, and very glad we did. the programed options are outstanding, its easy to use and makes great coffee, very consistant roasts a friend has another brand and can not get consistant results.

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-----
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.