Nuvo Eco Ceramic Handy Coffee Bean Roaster

I got this to roast green coffee beans at home for fun. After about 3 tries I am still working out how to get a good even roast. I recommend this highly. It is a lot of fun to roast your own. I notice the details of the coffee more and appreciate it more because I worked for it. And the roaster allows you to customize the coffee to your own liking so the quality is much better than what you get at a cafe.The roaster itself works pretty much as one would expect it to work. It is simple to use. No surprises. The open ended handle allows you to dump all the beans out quickly into a cold container and stop the roasting process very quickly. A lighter roast keeps more of the subtle acid flavor. A dark roast takes off all the acid and brings out a caramel like sweetness. With this roaster and some trial and error, you can stop the roasting pretty suddenly, thereby locking in the flavor that you like most.The handle does get pretty hot. I wear heat resistant gloves when I do the roast. Watch out for small sparks lit by oily beans rubbing against the hot ceramic. Finally, yes, you do need to be shaking the roaster all the time. But if you are only roasting enough for what you need today, it will not take very long. The way I do it, it takes 5 minutes to roast 3 tablespoons of green beans up to half-city (i.e. light roast, or in horrid Starbuck speak "blonde").Even if you do shake the roaster all the time, a few of the green beans inevitably pop early and become quite dark. That is fine. Wait until you hear a lot of popping all at once. At that point you might want to turn the heat up a bit to quickly wrap up the process. I usually start at medium low because I like to be cautious and end on medium high for about 30, 45 seconds. Once the beans have popped, roast a little longer for half-city , more for medium, and even longer for dark.Once roasted, the coffee beans lose their flavor very quickly so there is not much point in roasting a lot. (If you have to roast a lot at once, store the roasted beans in the freezer. I find that helps.) Green coffee beans keep well and may even improve (depending on the variety) during storage.

I got into roasting a number of years ago. Instead of going the simple route first I decided to purchase a $500 roaster and was happy to be roasting my own beans and controlling the quality. The roaster I bought was a made from a mixture of glass, metal and heat resistant plastics. I always wonder about the plastics in that equation and thought they were imparting a odor into the beans as the temperature rose, but I had no choice but to continue since roasting is better than not roasting. After about three years I decided to let go of that roaster and wen't back to store bought, over roasted, nearly carcinogenic whole coffee beans again. After nearly two years of this I decided to look for another roaster.It amazes me that it is almost impossible to get anything but black coffee beans and that people actually think they are better. First thing that most people don't know is that color has nothing to do with caffeine. If you ask people which has more caffeine, Espresso or regular drip coffee they will most likely answer espresso which is wrong. Of all the preparation types espresso is nearly at the bottom when it comes to caffeine. The preparation types that require a soak have the most caffeine and those old percolating coffee pots of old had the most since they ran the water over the coffee over and over and extracted the caffeine better. I like French press which requires a three minute soak and then press. An espresso forces a small amount of water once through the ground coffee and does a great job with flavor but when it comes to caffeine fails. Espresso roast is very dark because of this, it has to be, but it also creates the illusion of more caffeine which is not true. The espresso roast is bitter, try biting into a bean and see what I mean. To compensate for this bitter many people find it necessary to add different flavors. The most simple can be a twist of lemon zest or a concoction of mostly artificial ingredients and frosted milk to make it palatable. The success of some coffee shops not dictates what coffee is all about, but this couldn't be more further from the truth. Dark roast is the new standard and it is a tragedy because the fine art of coffee is becoming a thing of the past.The only way to see through the illusion is to roast your own coffee and open your mind to the possibilities that coffee beans don't have to taste bitter or resemble something closer to charcoal to be good. I was going to purchase another electric roaster and was waiting for my next choice to be released but the memory of the plastic taste be imparted into the roast made me wonder if there was another choice that wouldn't cost $5000 dollars and be all metal. I was happy to find the answer here with this coffee roaster. I have been a big fan of ceramic cookware from Korea and seeing this model made me wonder if it would work as good as previous roaster. The answer is yes, don't get me wrong, the quantity is smaller but it roast as good and even better than roasters that cost much more. I love this thing! I can use it almost anywhere, it is small and the quality of my roast has never been better. Even when I went a little longer in the roast, where the bears were dark and sweating it still tasted good. The quick discharge is brilliant for cooling as is the design which is more like an oven. The taste is sooo smooth and after grinding with hand grinder made with ceramic it doesn't get any better. No more store bought, I am back in control and glad I took a chance in this. It requires little effort to keep clean, I never wash, just use my finger and simple brush to remove chaff. I roast over portable 8000 btu gas stove and I believe that gas is best for roasting. I use a oven mitten for heat issues and roast every other day. Couldn't be happier.