The Behmor 1600 Coffee Roaster

Our old and trusty iRoast 2 coffee roaster has been ailing for a while. It wheezed to life only to stop half way through a roast resulting in very unevenly roasted beans - reminiscent of an old man's shaving - there are simply patches of beans that got too little attention.

So what to do? There are some wonderful machines on the market - with exotic prices to match. I had thought about the Gene cafe roaster but at $495 that seemed too much. Then I saw the Behmor 1600 at sweetmarias.com for $299 and I was hooked. As usual when ordering from sweetmarias, the process was flawless and included an assortment (8 x 1lb bags) of green coffee beans

The device arrived on Thursday night. I was a little startled that it is about the size of a toaster oven - but no matter. Madame was, of course, horrified. Anyhow, I set it up ran its cleaning cycle and roasted my first lb of beans. I used the same beans that we had been using in the iRoast - Sumatram Mandehling so we could do a beans to beans comparison.

Night and day difference. First, of course, the new machine produced a perfectly even roast. Second it didn't go from FC+ to Vienna in the blink of an eye. I found I could control the roast pretty easily. Third is was blissfully quiet. I wasn't getting beat frequencies from its motor and the vent hood. The smoke was less than the iRoast2 for the same degree of roasting as well. So all in all I am happy.

For those contemplating the device, I used 15oz of coffee and did the roast on P3 to get an FC+. I killed the roast with about 30 seconds to go to prevent over roasting.

This may be enough to convince me to drink coffee again!