You Shouldn't Have To Be An Electrical Engineer to Roast Coffee (a rant)

For the last day or two, an interesting topic has been under discussion on the Sweet Maria's home coffee roasting mailing list. It seems that a number of people who recently got iRoast 2 roasters find themselves struggling to get the great coffee they were hoping for when they bought the machines,

I really like my IR2. It's my go-to roaster when it is just too cold to roast outdoors. Its smaller capacity makes it ideal for testing a new green bean, perhaps at several different roast levels, before roasting a big batch with my bread machine/heat gun combination.

Many people new to roasting, after reading about the IR2 decide that it seems like the perfect roasting appliance for them. A certain percentage of folks begin using it with the expectation that they will be able to develop highly nuanced custom roast profiles. I know the custom profile feature was important to me when I was in the market for my first roaster.

Unfortunately, some of the people who buy the IR2 are finding that their particular machines are running so hot, that rather than being able to design custom profiles, they simply can't get a good roast out of the little buggers at all. Now, we roasters, even roasting noobs, are a strange bunch. Instead of saying, "Whoops, I got a defective machine," and returning it for one that delivers what Hearthstone, the manufacturer, promised, the people saddled with the bad ones have succumbed to that inner drive almost all homeroasters seem to have to fiddle around or modify them.

The iRoast is nothing more than a kitchen appliance developed to make homeroasting of relatively small amounts of coffee easy for just about anyone. It should work as advertised out of the box.

That means that you should be able to get a decent roast using one of the preset profiles without any fiddling around. Customizing profiles so that you roast beans that are denser a bit differently than beans that are less dense, or beans grown at lower altitudes differently than beans that are grown higher up, can't happen if your IR2 is turning perfectly good green beans to charcoal in six minutes flat.

I'm trying to imagine this compulsion to make silk purses out of sows ears being applied to other small kitchen appliances. Can you picture mailing lists and bulletin boards devoted to discussions of how to adjust/fix/modify brand new toasters with a propensity to burn bread every single time they are used?  How about adding on a $150 variac to a stand mixer to fine tune the electrical output of the outlet it is plugged into?

Stop the madness.

posted by taming at 22:46 | link | comments (3)|
motimers subscribe to taming
  Del.icio.us  Mo'Tags: coffee, roasting, iroast

Comments:

#1  22 January 2007 - 15:57

 

Customer satisfaction is becoming a lost art. Rant on!

InMyLife

#2  25 January 2007 - 14:02

 

I got a new IR2 for christmas along with a friend of mine. and like all coffee roasters, they have to be monitored for the best, consistant roast.
The IR2 can be viewed clearly so you can see exactly what is going on with the roast at all times. I developed a few programs of my own and presto, the easyest and fastest roast around. Just takes a little practice.
And by the way, read Sweet Marias web page and you can see what to expect. They didn't hide anything in the review.

Anonymous

#3  15 December 2007 - 18:08

 

If my experience is anything to go by, getting one that works out of the box by
returning defective units would end up
costing as much as the machine in postage !!

Anonymous

Comments:

Home   Blog   Roasting/Brewing   Resources/Links   About   Site Map 

Copyright © 2007 4cats2much