I was previously looking at getting a Behmor because of its advertised 1lbs capacity, but the more I've looked into it, the more it seams it can't really do 1lbs so I'm thinking I might be better to go with a hot top, and just know I'm going to run two batches back to back to get my weeks worth of coffee. With the programmable profiles, this seems like it'll be a breeze to do once I find a profile I like. Is this a reasonable expectation?

My other question is with the + model, is it really $500 just to be able to connect to artisan? Is artisan something you can access without connectivity, ( like as an app?) and then just manually log profiles into artisan, or manually program profiles from artisan into the hot top?

I know a hot top might be a big jump for a first roster, but I much prefer the once cry once mentality.

Thanks for any help

I started off with a Behmor, and eventually moved to a Hottop. I did a LOT of learning about coffee roasting on the Behmor. I feel it was an excellent place to start, and I wasn't comfortable spending $$$ for a Hottop.

I became frustrated by my inability to improve my roasts on the Behmor. I would carefully try to do everything the same as a prior roast, and my results would be worse than the last time.

Using artisan, you can save a roast profile, and refer to it as a guide. This is the manual approach using the older Hottop. Using the B-2K+, you can control the roaster, and have the fan and heat change automatically based on the profile. This makes it fairly simple to consistently reproduce prior roast results.

Now I own both an older Hottop and the newer B-2K+ model. The newer model roasts a bit faster, and is a bit easier to use.