I got to speak with Joseph (I think) from Behmor about their new roaster. The big advance is the connected mobile application. He explained it as having three levels: a newbie, intermediate and advanced. They also had some video playing where I saw the newbie mode.

In newbie mode, you pick the coffee's origin and a starting "darkness" and go. You can tweak from there. In advanced mode, they will let you control everything you want.

You'll be able to upload, download/import roast profiles via their website. These should hopefully provide for reproducible results, across users.

As someone with no roasting experience, I am very interested in this. I've been thinking about getting into roasting, particularly as a means to learn more about coffee, and this roaster/app seem like great training wheels for someone like me. (I could also imagine growing with it for a bit, but that is just speculation?)

Availability is hopefully around September.

I also spoke to Joe about the connected roaster. He explained that there'd be three modes, a beginner mode for someone who want's a hands-off type roaster, a mode the mirrors the current functionality of the Behmor Plus roaster, and a more advanced mode where you can take full control of the roaster and after accepting the terms and conditions roast as dark as you like. Joe mentioned that they'll use the Bluetooth connection to the phone as a sort of "dead man's switch" to prevent calamities if you walk away from the roaster. He also said he'll be adding thermocouples to the roaster and will be looking for feedback on the kind of profile displays that users would want to see. Also, if you lost your phone, you'd be able to replay your last roast using the buttons on the connected roaster.