I have backed the Beanbon Kickstarter and I completely regret it. One of the main reasons for backing is the claim of partnering with the Taiwan roasting champion. Well... I basically have a hunk of scrap taking up space at this point. I will also have to pay for return shipping to get them to look at it which I am not willing to spend anymore on. Do not back any Kickstarter unless you can accept being disappointed, especially when the support will be overseas which will equate to minimal (or costly) or non-existent support. Many coffee bean roasters have been appearing on Kickstarter and the only success I am aware of is Ikawa. Better to save your money and start with any of the other suggestions mentioned here that have a proven track record. It should also be easier to resell if you end up not liking it.

My biggest issue with the simple manual solutions is that the result will not be good due to me not having experience and/or that it is more difficult to get a good result. That is why I kind of aim for something a little bit more easy to use- then I certainly want to learn more but preferably shorten the time of undrinkable, miserable coffee

Here in North America, I consider the FreshRoast 800 as somewhat disposable.. not a lot of money.. and was pleasantly surprised that the beans I roasted weren't half-bad and will likely get better with some experience and more knowledge.. I started with the PopCorn makers.. but don't do that.. you need independent fan and heat controls to get anything decent.

It's very reasonable to be concerned about inexperience leading to crappy tasting coffee. I can tell you that if you prefer darker roasts, the Gene Cafe is not difficult to use. I roasted with it for years using a simple process of preheat, add beans, listen for first crack, one temperature adjustment, and dump the beans when you hear the first snap of second crack. Buy beans with a lot of "chocolate" in their taste descriptions and bingo, nice cup. Pretty quickly you'll learn to anticipate the cracks based on temperature, and you start to fine tune your process to get different flavors from the same bean. Then you really feel the joy of roasting. I never did try roasting light, and avoided natural process coffees due to excessive chaff, but even these issues can probably be overcome with experience.

The Aillio Bullet sounds like it's perfectly targeted at your situation with it's ability to share and replay roasting profiles. But that's a substantial investment especially if you're not sure you'll enjoy the hobby.

HTH.

This is a bit of a mystery to me. It seems to be very expensive IMO. Why wouldn't someone go with a Behmor for less money on a proven product with a larger batch size?

To the OP that would be my recommendation.

I agree that the Fresh Roast 800 is inexpensive and easy to get good results within reason. I'd recommend not even trying to hook it up to Artisan, just roast as is with a bean others on here recommend (don't go too cheap). Someday I'll upgrade for sure, but in part that's because the FR has shown me roasting is easy enough but also has a lot of room for improvement and play.

I'd add... until some guru says, "this can be made better" (like the Cafelat Robot) or some real tinkerer comes on with lots of transparency who says, "I think we can do things differently, hey everybody, am I on the right track here..." (like the Decent), then I'll wait and go with proven devices.

MNate wrote:I agree that the Fresh Roast 800 is inexpensive and easy to get good results within reason. I'd recommend not even trying to hook it up to Artisan, just roast as is with a bean others on here recommend (don't go too cheap). Someday I'll upgrade for sure, but in part that's because the FR has shown me roasting is easy enough but also has a lot of room for improvement and play.

I'd add... until some guru says, "this can be made better" (like the Cafelat Robot) or some real tinkerer comes on with lots of transparency who says, "I think we can do things differently, hey everybody, am I on the right track here..." (like the Decent), then I'll wait and go with proven devices.

Yes.. 100% agree with this.. I'm waiting for the $300 IKAWA that roasts about 100-200g, can use stored profiles, and can be remotely controlled from iOS . .. From reading, it seems that using artisan on basic an air roasters is not that useful as you can't really get accurate bean temps like you can on a drum roaster.. I think 'smell' is your best instrument. But the FR800 does have a temp probe in the inlet air which is surprisingly useful once you roast a bit and see how it compares to the beans' progress through the roast.

To the popcorn method.. I tried that for quite a while.. You are really stuck with the temp that happens when you turn it on. I found my roasts went way too fast.. Since the fan and heat come on together, you can't keep the beans from getting too hot too quickly. I would get some good roasts with some beans.. but very hit and miss. I was going to add a switch to separately control the heat and fan and I think that would work fairly well with experience.. but then the FR800 wasn't really that expensive for what it was.. On my popcorn roaster I could only do about 60g, which gave an output of about 50g.. and that was only about 3 shots.. If I did multiple batches, the roast level changed slightly between batches which meant dialing in (for espresso) would waste more. But I certainly encourage anyone to use the popcorn maker just to get used to the process of roasting.. and to see that when you do roast your own beans you can get something that can taste really good.. Now I'd also recommend learning to 'cup'.. That was a whole new topic for me.. I thought my popcorn beans were pretty good at one point, but I always made lattes.. When I cupped a pro roast bean against mine.. it was surprising how much mine were like charcoal!.

What do you mean by subscription model, I might have missed something!