Using the i-Roast 2 Home Coffee Bean Roaster

It was some time ago that I posted this article in anticipation of getting my own "Heathware i-Roast 2" home coffee roaster - Roasting Coffee Beans at Home. I have taken to ordering a couple of pounds of green beans with my orders for the Vita roast from Vivace Coffee in Seattle.

Not being all that experienced with home roasting, I have up till now used one or other of the two delivered presets. The roast is "OK" but an interesting observation is that while the beans are a mid-dark color on the outside, when I grind them, they are a much lighter brown.

So I did some research on the web and found a couple of very useful posts about using your i-Roast 2. This one from Coffee Geeks gives a very positive review of the i-Roaster, but also has some interesting information about roasting, and they mention the observation I made above about the color of the bean on the outside being different from the color inside. A consistent darkish color inside and out is referred to as a "City Roast" and that's what I'm after. The Coffee Geeks post mentions that the i-Roast 2 is difficult to program the customized settings, but gave no specifics. I couldn't lay my hands on my user manual, so I did some further searching, and came across this post at Coffee Bean Corral which has very easy to follow instructions on setting a custom profile.

I just tried using the temperatures and times mentioned in the Coffee Geeks post for a "city roast". The beans are still cooling, but I'll let you know how it goes. The details of the profile are:

• An even ramp up to 385F, held there for a minute (no timing info is given for "the even ramp up", so for this first try I went for the first 6 minutes at 385


• Ramp up to 430, hold for 3 minutes (again, I just set the second cycle to temp 430 and time of 3 minutes)


• Then finished off at 465F for 2 minutes

The green beans came out of the fridge, which is where I have been keeping them once I open the vacuum bag. I'm presuming that while they are green, it is not necessary to store them in the same manner and roasted beans. (Here's my post of how to store roasted coffee beans). I do my roasting outside since the roaster sets off my smoke alarms, which is too bad, as what better smell could you ask for in your home other than the smell of roasting coffee beans or baking bread! Being late afternoon this winter's day in Southern California, the ambient air temperature was 52 degrees.

Get your own i-Roast 2 at Amazon.com