A home roaster's point of view
ROEST started as a home roasting project by Sverre many years ago. We are therefore extra excited when home roasters decide to go for a ROEST. During development, we thought 100 grams would be too little for home roasters, but after spending 5 years roasting small batches, we actually think it’s ideal. Especially if you roast high quality coffee. You can play around and experiment more without too much risk. And then, when the profile is nailed; just replicate. One of our home roasters has written a few words about his experience.
Thomas with his ROEST s100
Me and my “Snorre”
I have been roasting for 10 years, using Quest M3 and Ikawa Pro V2. I´m roasting specialty coffees only, 85-93 points, and I am always looking for really good greens. I take roasting seriously, and from from time to time I buy roasted coffee to compare with mine, from roasteries such as Tim Wendelboe, La Cabra, Square Mile, Coffee Collective, Lippe etc.
After considering my next step, I decided to go for ROEST. In this blog post I’ll go through my impressions of the machine so far.
Easy to use
I am very impressed by how easy it is to use. I do not need to prepare much before I start roasting. I just turn on the machine, preheat for 5 minutes, and in the meantime, I connect to the roaster’s website for live view of the roasting profile, maybe I’ll upload some profiles, weigh the coffee and I can start roasting.
Easy to understand
I am very impressed by how easy it is to understand the machine. The probes are extremely sensitive. In manual mode, every small change of power, fan or drum speed is visible instantly in the live view. It took me no more than 10 roasts on ROEST to feel comfortable with the machine.
The roast
The beans are roasting unbelievable uniform, the whole batch changes from green to yellow as if it was one single piece. For my style of roasting, light roast around Agtron Gourmet 90-100, measured with a Lighttells CM-100, time frame in first crack is between 40-55 seconds, depending on the bean. Total roast time of 6:30-7:30 minutes, and the beans are completely developed. The VST Refractometer indicates high solubility, as espresso, the beans are very easy to extract.
If someone prefers roast times around 5 minutes, or also 10 minutes, that is no problem at all. During cooling I start roasting the next batch. After completing one roast it takes about 30 seconds and the roaster reaches the given starting temperature, ready for the next batch.
I like to roast 5 batches à 100 g in a row, enough coffee for one week. The whole sessions takes 45 minutes, including preheat, cool down and a short clean-up including emptying the chaff collector. Unfortunately it’s a fast process, as I really want to use this machine more!
I use an exhaust hose out the window and there is no smoke or roasting odours in the room. Trying several profiles, manually or self-created ones is a real pleasure, nothing can go wrong. It feels easy, like having done nothing other in the last years.
In my personal opinion, I do not understand how one is home roasting on a 500 g or 1 kg roaster, you must drink a lot of coffee then, or have a lot of coffee drinkers in the house :-)
I like to have 3-5 different varieties roasted and ready to enjoy, so the batch size of 100-120 g is more than enough.
The whole system, the machine, handling, ease of use, the team behind the product, with great and fast response to every (more or less reasonable) questions, and at least and most importantly: the result in the cup, makes ROEST the best home roasting machine I have ever owned.
Thomas uses a power profile (percentage power is adjusted automatically during the roast) to evaluate new coffee. He then uses this to tune in profiles that can be both power profiles or temperature based. His profile for evaluation is on the left. He roasts 110 g coffee with these profiles and reach yellowing around 4 minutes and first crack around 7:45-8:00 minutes. Below on the right you will find one of his temperature based profiles.
Assessment profile
Used to evaluate new coffee
Temperature profile
Temperature profile