Hottop Home Coffee Roaster Review

The Best Home Coffee Roaster

A while back, I purchased a Hottop home coffee roaster for use in my roastery as a sample roaster. I had investigated quite a number of home roasters including the Iroast, Alpen, the Gene Cafe and many others. For my purposes, the Hottop was the one I picked.

Wth the Hottop being a drum roaster, and my production roaster being a drum roaster as well, the hottop seemed a good choice in creating roast profiles that I could easily transfer to my Probat L5. Profile roasting is very important in specialty coffee, and the Hottop was just the ticket!

Once I had the sample roaster in my hands, the total bill was around $720. It may seem a little pricey, but well worth the associated cost!

The roaster has a nifty, sleek design to it. A stainless steel body, large viewing window and the front, easily accessible controls on the side and a large cooling tray are the main features. I usually roast a 1/2 pound at a time in the hottop to maintain control over time and temperature variables. I’m sure you could load it with a little more, possibly pushing it to the 3/4lb mark. The limitation may be in the size of the cooling tray.

The controls feature 7 temperature settings allowing for a wide range of roast degrees. When you set to your desired number, you also have the option of adding several seconds on to the roast as it approaches is finishing temperature. So, if you are roasting to setting ‘4′, and the coffee isn’t quite as dark as you’d like it, by pushing the ‘plus’ button you can add several seconds on to the final roast time. There is also the option of ejecting the roast before it hits the setting you have selected. Once you terminate the roast, the cooling tray kicks in with a fan and stirrers that agitate the beans as they fall into the tray.

Two Hottop models are available:

• HotTop Basic Coffee Roaster which includes a panel which allows you to view temperature and time through a colour LCD digital display. This model replaces the older analog model which did not incorporate any real display whatsoever.

• HotTop Programmable Coffee Roaster which includes the ability to create and monitor roast profiles. This is where things get really interesting. You can become very scientific and have exact results each time you roast a given coffee…just like a professional specialty coffee Roast Master.

This machine has been very useful to me, especially as a micro roaster of fine gourmet coffees. I’d recommend it to anyone who has a passion for roasting great arabica coffees on a small scale!