Hot top

[mrgreenbean]

I have been roasting my own beans for over a dozen years now, I first started with an I Roast, have had two Behmors which still work, but I like the HotTop best, seems to roast a good bean. Definitely small scale, but has worked the best for me.

[brianmch]

Don't hear much about the Hot top so this is good info.

Thks for the heads up.

Have you modified it any with computer connectivity? Roast by time, temp, etc?

[mrgreenbean]

I have not, but you can connect it if you want.

[mrgreenbean]

Also over time and usage parts can wear out, every part is readily available online at their website.

[ptrmorton]

My neighbor has my old Hottop (which I bought from JohnF in 2015 so I have no idea how old it really is.) and it is still going strong.  The heating element needed to be replaced, but was readily available.

[brianmch]

It's nice when parts are available to keep these machines running.  Especially in regard to the rest of our seemingly disposable world.

2 year old cell phone anyone?

[Ascholten]

That's one thing about the hot top, they were expensive, but were built to last, and the parts are readily available when yo do need them.

Ive been thru the I roast, I got probably half a dozen of them here, and most of them work!  I should do a nostalgia video one day and fire one up, put a noise dampener on and do a video heh.

The Behmor, they started out like tanks but well.. not a big fan of them anymore.  I used to roast almost exclusively with one however over time, the quirks and issues just got to be too much and customer service was essentially non existent so I moved on.  Now I just use my Artisan commercial roaster.  It can roast down to half a pound of coffee w/o any difficulties.  It's electric, very reliable, clean and no worries about gas leaks and keeping propane in the house / garage etc.  I have solar panels all of the place, so will never run out of electricity here!

Aaron

[mrgreenbean]

Same here for the Behmor, it’s still useful but have become less impressed with performance over time.

[mrgreenbean]

I think everyone is right on three mentioned in the past, Artisan, Huky. Or the Bullet, however need more information on the Bullet, havent seen much feedback on the Bullet.

[brianmch]

I have a Bullet. I've learned to like it more over time.

There are several positive attributes:
Footprint
Fully inclusive (roast thru cooling)
Can be used stand alone or with computer monitoring
Capacity
Longevity (so far anyway)
Pretty decent repeatability
Easy to get basic roasts

Con's
Electric/induction heating isn't constant source heat: it cycles making it a different process than gas.

Personally, I think it's pretty little hard to get refined roasts

There is some weirdness between their IR temp and their probe temps

Chaff build up in the roast chamber during the roast can be an issue

Folks think that their roast world community and roast sharing will/can lead to identical roasts. It doesn't work that way because there are too many variables. They might be similar but they won't be the same.

Like I said, I'm learning to like it more over time.  I may have different requirements than others though.  Like I said, it's easy to use to get large, decent roasts. 

I think everyone is right on three mentioned in the past, Artisan, Huky. Or the Bullet, however need more information on the Bullet, havent seen much feedback on the Bullet.

[Ascholten]

brian that is the biggest thing that turned me off from that super expensive basically 3 thousand dollar 2 ounce sample roaster.  they kept pushing so hard, oh but you can SHARE your profiles !!  basically doing the z tard thing, hey lookie another attention look at MEEE device using your phone!!  Trying to explain to them that just because the 'recipe' is the same, the environments wont be,  different room temps, different voltages, many things to basically guarantee that you may NOT have identical coffee's,  but you can like mentally see the eyes dim when you start talking tech to the 'sales people'.  I was going to get a used refurbed one, for a nice price but then the bait and switch games started and the 'well we can get you XX today' but act FAST. started and I just ended up walking away from it when the price kept jumping every time you mentioned it.

I figured out a way to get reliable 4 oz roasts on my artisan 6, and it will out of the box do 8 oz, so why would I want a 1  oz roaster for 3 g's   that's what I originally paid for my 5 lb roaster that with a little careful attention on the other side, YEs you CAN do 10 lb roasts on it!  Like holy crap, I can literally throw in 10 lbs of greens and huff it with 10 KW of electricity and it turns out perfect.  (you DO need to babysit it though, any stalling can be very bad with that much power /heat running through a bean bed a foot deep!! )

THe morre I think on it, The more I want to bust out an I roar just for nostaligia and fire one up

aaron

[brianmch]

I think you may have mistaken the Bullet for the Ikawa Aaron. 

Those pain meds must be primo!   

brian that is the biggest thing that turned me off from that super expensive basically 3 thousand dollar 2 ounce sample roaster.  they kept pushing so hard, oh but you can SHARE your profiles !!  basically doing the z tard thing, hey lookie another attention look at MEEE device using your phone!!  Trying to explain to them that just because the 'recipe' is the same, the environments wont be,  different room temps, different voltages, many things to basically guarantee that you may NOT have identical coffee's,  but you can like mentally see the eyes dim when you start talking tech to the 'sales people'.  I was going to get a used refurbed one, for a nice price but then the bait and switch games started and the 'well we can get you XX today' but act FAST. started and I just ended up walking away from it when the price kept jumping every time you mentioned it.

I figured out a way to get reliable 4 oz roasts on my artisan 6, and it will out of the box do 8 oz, so why would I want a 1  oz roaster for 3 g's   that's what I originally paid for my 5 lb roaster that with a little careful attention on the other side, YEs you CAN do 10 lb roasts on it!  Like holy crap, I can literally throw in 10 lbs of greens and huff it with 10 KW of electricity and it turns out perfect.  (you DO need to babysit it though, any stalling can be very bad with that much power /heat running through a bean bed a foot deep!! )

THe morre I think on it, The more I want to bust out an I roar just for nostaligia and fire one up

aaron

[Ascholten]

I did,  the bullet is the well, smaller one, but I was talking about the Ikawa,  just too much money for a roaster that may literally roast one pot worth of coffee per batch?   No thanks.

The pain meds, I honestly wish they worked better,  they do NOT work on nerve pain and I have a lot of nerve damage in this mess.  Gabapentin is helping a lot for that but still, it's not fun when you spend most the night trying to find a comfortable position to try to get the pain to subside soyou can get some sleep, finally to fall asleep about 5 am, only to have the animals wake you up promptly at 702 am because it's breakfast time and YOU are 2 minutes late you slacker !!

Paco knows better, give him the evil eye and he knows an ass whoopin is coming if he wakes me up but the chickens outside, umm pretty untrainable hehe.

Its getting better though.  I am able to stand on it now and move around a bit so hopefully get some beans going here in a day or so

aaron