Home Coffee Roaster, Household Electric Coffee Bean Baker Nut Peanut Cashew Chestnuts Roasting Machine Adjustable Temperature 1.6 Pounds Capacity for Cafe Shop/Home No Stovetop Required Smoke Reduce

I've been using an air roaster for the last six months. It worked well, but dang, less than 4 oz per batch was just too small, and having to roast multiple times back to back was getting old. I needed something that could roast once, and be done. After looking at all of these similar stir-crazy style roasters, I chose this one. I like the handles, I can dump the beans immediately when the roast is done. It's rated at 1200w, and it can supposedly do over 1 1/2 lbs per batch. Although, I think that's an over estimation of its usable capacity. You could probably do 1 lb without issue.With my first roast (12 oz of green beans), I was able to fill my grinder's hopper with the fresh roasted beans, and that's all wanted. It stirred well, didn't bog down, and came to temp really fast. Also, it has the metal bar to level the pile of beans as they pass by it. It was only my first roast, but it came out really well, I basically nailed it on my first roast. I did 20 minutes at 180 °C, then 15 minutes longer at 240 °C. Use a timer and watch your beans when it gets closer to being done. The roast I did was a full city roast. Slightly darker than medium, but not burnt. It smells great, I can't wait to try it. Actually, I did chew up a bean after they cooled, delicious. Surprisingly, there's little smoke compared to my air roaster, but there is some, so I roast in my garage.I want to mention the other device that greatly improves your roasts and makes chaff collection a snap. To roast properly, you have to cool the beans quickly once they've reached the desired roast. I've upped my roasting game by buying one of the bean coolers. There are several that look the same. I went with this one "Boicafe" https://www.amazon.com/dp/B093KR51SM?th=1 Trust me, buying a dedicated bean cooler will improve your roasts. The cooler literally takes just a couple of minutes and the chaff is neatly collected. Take a dustbuster type cordless vacuum to it and the chaff is gone. I keep one just for that purpose. No more mess.In summary, what I like best about this roaster is it gives you full control on how light or dark the roast is. You want to go Sbucks dark, no problem. This roaster does a far better job than my old air roaster, something I didn't expect. The biggest advantage is the aforementioned capacity. Just being able to refill my grinder's hopper in one batch is wonderful. If you need to do large batches at home, this is an excellent choice.

Big reason for buying was capacity and less odor than air popper technique. I roast about 1 cup of beans per session. Takes between 13-17 minutes at 230 C° to med-dark roast. Recommend. No issues, not a five because not sure how long will last. UPDATE. A piece of junk. Should last longer. Quit heating. Don't buy this garbage.

Background info first. I've been roasting my own beans for a couple of years now, using a very sturdy heavy aluminum hand-crank popcorn popper made in Holland, MI (alas, no longer available). I like it, but my wife has now banned me from roasting in the kitchen--while our oven-hood exhaust is pretty heavy duty, the amount of smoke involved was changing the creamy white paint around it to a nice (I thought) coffee-with-cream white paint. So, I bought this self-heating unit and moved the operation to the garage. So, how does it do?PLUS: The automatic stirring feature is very nice and works well. But don't over load the unit. I put in too many beans the first time, and the stirrer just went back and forth a bit instead of around and around. It worked fine when I removed half the beans (leaving maybe 1.5 to 1.75 cups). The beans roasted very evenly (I like mine quite dark, about 18-20 minutes). They do indeed need to be dumped from the roaster for cooling. There is a leveler bar which aids in keeping the beans from piling up, which is good. It also does a nice job of collecting the chaff into a nice pile in the middle, making it easy to blow off. Finally, the non-stick surface, while perhaps not healthy, makes cleaning up the roaster a breeze (for the lid, see below).MINUS: As other reviewers have noted, the instruction booklet is both worthless and inaccurate. It mentions (very briefly) how to set the timer. Well, there is no timer. There is a temperature dial (in Centigrade), and an on-off switch, and that's it. So, for timing you're on your own. Also, while there are four small vents in the glass lid, these are not sufficient. The result is that you get a lot of condensation on the inside of the lid, especially at the end of the cycle, and the condensate has a lot of the oils in it. That results in two issues. One, it's a dirty and not-so-easy clean-up. Two, those oils on the inside of the lid are now no longer a part of the beans. That has to mean a bit less flavor.In sum, in spite of the problems, I'm happy with this roaster and, based on what one gets for the money, I will give it 5 stars. I'll report back after I've used it for 6 months or so and have some evidence of durability.