Ive been roasting on a pop corn roaster for a couple years and have gone back to buying beans because of the time it takes to roast a pound. Im looking for a good roaster for close to $1000 dollars that can roast more than a 1/4 pound at a time. I'd love to hear you guys' suggestions.

I had a Hottop before my 1KG roaster and liked it much more than my Behmor
http://www.roastmasters.com/hottop.html

I have not owned or tried a Quest M3
http://www.coffeeshrub.com/shrub/content/quest

I started off in a popcorn popper then went to the Hottop B -2K. It works great right out of the box. If you are handy and want to dive deeper into roasting insanity, there are well documented mods to improve your already great hottop.

I have read a lot of rave for the Quest.

You would be happy with either of these roasters.

You are obviously talking about the price of a HotTop, and they are well made with a good reputation. For less money, the Behmor does a satisfactory job and a new upgrade to the control panel is available. I have also owned a Gene Café and roasted many pounds of coffee with it. A good design, and a higher level of roast control than the Behmor. Seems to me the question is not what you can buy for $1000, but whether you need to spend $1000 for the results you desire.

Looks like your two most important requirements are, cost ($1000.00) and amount of roast at one time (1 pound). The Behmor can be had for well under $1000 (I paid $300 for mine three or four years ago), and, it is rated for and can roast one pound at a time (although most people tell you that you get better results at around 13 ounces rather than one pound). I don't know anything about the other roasters mentioned.

Three additional important questions that need to be concidered.

1) How much control of the roast do you want?
2) How do you desire to control your roast?
3) Will you want to modify your roaster down the road? (If you are handy and like to tinker)

Each roaster mentioned here provides different levels of control, differenter style of control, and different possibilities/limitations for modification.

Just in case you are not aware, a great resource for information http://www.homeroasters.org/php/forum/index.php

I've been roasting my own for about 15 years, and thought I had gotten pretty good at it. That was until I built me one of the TC4 PID controllers and learned how to use it. Being able to precisely control all different phases of the roast has put me in a whole different world of what home roasted coffee can taste like.

With what I have learned since learning how to use a PID, I think it boils do to what was asked previously, how much control do you want. I think The more control you have, the better results you will get.

A HotTop with a TC4 PID controller conversion would probably make an awesome roaster, but that won't happen for $1,000, and there would be a fairly healthy learning curve.

BenKeith wrote: A HotTop with a TC4 PID controller conversion would probably make an awesome roaster, but that won't happen for $1,000, and there would be a fairly healthy learning curve.

I added the TC4C to my HT, this allows me to monitor, graph, and control roasts on my computer. As mentioned, there is a learning curve but well worth it. The quality increased dramatically since I was able to assess my roasts with graphs. This also helps a lot to achieve better consistency from roast to roast.

To add the TC4C was roughly $300 for the materials, $200 of it being the TC4C. Could be more or less whether you have the materials and tools around the house. I did not have the majority of the materials. It was well worth money and effort.

I have an almost brand new Hot Top B listed for sale at the Yard Sale at Green Coffee Buyers Club
http://www.greencoffeebuyingclub.com
10% of the proceeds will go to Grounds for Health. http://www.groundsforhealth.org/
It is within your budget.