Personally, if you are only roasting for yourself, then Freshroast or normally powered popper may work fine for you. But if you drink a lb or more of coffee a week, then those options are going to be too small. Also, IMO if you want to roast well, regardless of batch size, then you need full control of heater and fan. In my experience, you are likely to quickly outgrow a machine that doesn't provide that. Consider also that some options are better for indoors than others. IMO popper is NOT a good choice to roast indoors. I am not sure about Freshroast.

If you like projects, you can put together a 250g roaster like this for about $150-$160, including misc supplies. Can actually get the Stinger for $30 at home depot and save a few bucks. FYI, Stinger makes awesome blower for small size air roaster, only requires around 2.3 amps for 250g of greens and can turn down during roast, so really quiet (well, quiet for air roaster anyway ). As video shows you can hear everything going on with the roast.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SocltulzVu4 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6487az59gw You can make yours look prettier if you really want to.



You can add datalogging for $30 more. To do that, ditch the thermometer, add arduino, max chip, and second thermocouple.

If you want to spend the big bucks, you can go full arduino control of fan and heater, all in around $250, depending on what you do. It didn't seem necessary to me.

I started with a normal popper then modified it with a 10 amp diode is series with the popper heater coil, added a SPST switch across the diode. This enabled me to slow the roast down to meet my desired profile by flicking the switch on and off trying for a 20 degree/minute profile to first crack then 10 degree/minute after.

Then tried a router controller from Harbor Freight to fine tune the heat. Always left the fan alone to run anytime the popper was turned on.

With these two modifications, it was success, success, success. Everyone went nuts for the coffee. The big drawback was I could only roast 1/3 cup at a time.

My next step was a Stir Crazy popcorn popper with modified SC shaft, a turbo oven and 1 ½ inch spacer . Best move I ever made. Now roasting almost 1 pound batches. Search sites and YouTube for "Stir Crazy Turbo".

My basic profile is charge to 350F, 1 crack around 9 minutes and pull a start of 2nd crack. Most all of the profiles I have studied have first crack from 8 - 12 minutes. Seldom shorter or longer.

Total cost around $60 after finding the SC and turbo at thrift stores.

Outstanding results and I never looked back!