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!

Gourmet Restaurants and Gourmet Coffee?

I absolutely hate it!! That bitter, rubbery, burnt, watered down swill they serve….well, just about everywhere! Honest to god, how does one make it in this world when dish water is the main caffeinated beverage available. You know the kind, you pay $35 bucks for a great dinner, medium-rare steak, fresh asparagus and portabello mushrooms. Then, to finish things off you figure a nice cup of coffee would greatly compliment the almond torte you are about to eat. Tapping your fingers on the table, finally a steaming mug arrives. You raise it to your nose and what did you get? A nice hot cup of……brown water? Wait a minute here. I’m in one of the nicest restaurants around, paying good money for a meal, and the last thing that is going to hit my tongue is this?? Jeez…..that wasn’t in any of the reviews I read. Why not?

Classic! How many times has this happened to you? Or maybe you just aren’t that picky? I don’t know, but it sure leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and its the sort of thing that keeps me from spreading any good word about restaurants where I experience this sort of thing. I mean really, if I can say that the coffee at McDonalds is better than the coffee at the gourmet restaurant downtown, there is clearly a problem.

Is it that the owners of the restaurant are cheap? Probably not. They’re spending good money on the food they sell, and the decor is usually top notch. The problem is that most likely, they like many others today have been raised drinking stale, cheap coffee. They don’t know the difference.

Fresh Roasted Coffee – The Only Coffee

One thing they do know is that when it comes to bread, its gotta be fresh. Well let me tell ya….Coffee goes the same way. If you haven’t popped your tongue into the world of fresh roasted coffee yet you may be forgiven….but I’d still ask why you haven’t popped your head into that realm yet. Coffee is huge. Its a massive industry, and if you are in the food service industry there is no way you haven’t heard people talking about the benefits of fresh roasted coffee.

So……..its been said now……Gourmet Restaurateurs……take this to heart and seek out some great fresh roasted fair trade organic gourmet coffee so your customers don’t suffer through the last bit of flavour they get before leaving your shop!

Now..gimme some coffee!