I'm considering buying a fluid-bed home roaster to play around with, and it feels like there's really only one option in my price range. I know there's actually some other options out there, but the vast majority of info and recommendations I see point to the FreshRoast as a starting place. Before I pull the trigger, I'd love to hear any other suggestions in the sub $1k USD price range (50g+ capacity is fine for my purposes). I'm sure this is a rehash, so if someone could point me to older similar discussions, I'd appreciate that was well. I did use search but didn't see a lot of specifically relevant threads to purchasing decisions, although I did see a few pretty cool DIY heat gun things that I would also consider.

This may have already caught your eye, New 100g $89 "Popper" roaster at Sweet Maria's [VIDEO]

If you're willing to DIY, heat gun-dog bowl or heat gun-bread machines are popular and are not difficult to make.

Among inexpensive fluid-beds, used iRoast2's were good, but resale prices are getting ridiculously high and the heat-resistant plastic used in the roaster gets brittle with age so I'd say that they are quite fragile now. Thus, I can't recommend them (although I do have four - two running and two for parts).

There's an iRoast2 rip-off that is selling for around $300 (on ebay) but it appears to be missing a key element of the iRoast's (patented) roast chamber design so I would avoid it.

Sivetz (yes, that Sivetz) sold heavily-modified popcorn poppers years ago, but those seem to be rare; I've only seen one.

I have no experience with the FreshRoast. I did buy a popcorn popper a few years ago, but ended up using it for ... popcorn .

If I was starting today I'd try the "Popper" that Jeff linked too. The price is low enough that I wouldn't bother with fiddling with my heat gun, but I'm not good at DIY stuff.

Kaffelogic should be coming out with a roaster for the US market later this year. It will probably be priced at about US$1,000. They currently make 220v models for the New Zealand, Australian, and European markets, and are waiting for approval on a 110v model for the US. It roasts about 100g of coffee at a time.

Also, there are many options from China if you search AliExpress and Alibaba. Here are a few but most are 220v. I like that some of them have temperature probes in the roasting chamber. Let us know how they work out if you try any of these.

$130 Roaster
$165 Roaster
$170 Cafemasy
$408 Roaster
$436 - $590 Roaster
$470 - $588 Roaster
$1,250 Roaster

Check out this DIY that Sweet Maria's just posted.
https://library.sweetmarias.com/drogo-coffee-roaster/

He did put quite a bit of thought into that build, but using such a limited heat gun wouldn't cut it for my use. A simple HI/LO heat selection doesn't let you fine tune the process. The agitation method is pretty neat, but definitely appears faster than I would use for even heat saturation. Yes he can slow things down, just mentioning what is shown in the video... Seems to work fine for him which is what counts, but it never hurts to nitpick a bit as that's what we tend to do.

According to the latest email I received from Ikawa, they are about to launch a new version of their Home Roaster. I presume it will have 100g capacity and more sophisticated software/hardware than the current Home model.

Or, if you're looking for a bargain, they are selling off the last of their original Home models. Here's some more information about the sale that I just found on their site:

https://ikawahome.com/products/ikawa-ho ... %3D.MtDtBE

Jeff wrote:This may have already caught your eye, New 100g $89 "Popper" roaster at Sweet Maria's [VIDEO]

My first roaster was $29 popcorn popper with just an on-off switch, that with the simple addition of a digital thermometer actually allowed me to get decent roasts. This one from SM looks like basically the same type of roaster but on steroids. I'm sure that the timer, fan (two speeds apparently) and temperature adjustments make it a very capable small batch roaster. I've got an i-Roast 2 that I rarely use any more because the programming, which is admittedly quite capable, was a bit of a PITA to use and frankly not particularly useful to me. This one, however, looks so simple to use I think I'll get one from SM, which is less than 2 miles from me.

Wow! That is such a cool design. Thanks for sharing