The Iroast home roaster

This is a quick review of the iroast II roaster.  I got it a number of years ago from my wife as a present.  As such I have very carefully never found out what it costs, but my impression is that relative to most roasters  (that are designed for home roasting – I’ll post about a few cheap options that were not intended for home roasting originally) it is fairly reasonable.  I was given it before I had discovered things like Roaste.com and other mail order ways of buying coffee – this is a very important detail since the truth is the coffee from pro roasters when bought fresh is definitely better that what I have ever produced.




The Iroast is essentially a hot air popcorn popper modified to allow you control over temperature, time and to collect the chaff that comes off when you roast.  The very first time I used it I pressed go and used the default settings and off it went.  I pressed stop when the coffee got to the right color for my taste and ten minutes later I was drinking what I considered great coffee. 




I did not realize at the time that I had never had fresh coffee and all the coffee I’d ever had before had been stale and past its prime.  As a result this coffee was far better than what I was used to drinking (ie Starbucks, Peete’s, etc).




I went online, found recommended ways to set the temperature profile and found myself even happier.




Slowly I realized that the coffee was actually too fresh – that letting it sit for a few days made it even better, but I also found out about mail order coffee as a result of my search for better and better coffee and found out that while the iroast makes good coffee, it is not nearly as good (at least in my hands) as the coffee you can order from high end roasters that will roast to order.




I do recommend it as it is a great way to learn about roasting and about coffee at a reasonable price, but on the other hand I do not in the sense that if you are like me you will never make coffee as good on it as you can order here.