Nice roaster - our first one. Roasts evenly, and the coffee that came in the kit was GREAT. Read more

Awesome kit. Loved that it came with a nice scale, some green coffee samples, the extender tube. Tried their beans in the roaster as soon as I got it and they were outstanding. So smooth and delicious. This roaster is infinately better than my previous setup (the one that looks like a round hot plate with a spinning metal blade). Love that it's completely automatic (roasts, then cools and then turns off). Couldn't be happier. Read more

I roasted a few pounds of coffee, can’t get much fresher. The roaster is easy to use and seems to produce great results. Can’t wait to roast some more coffee Read more

Product came properly packaged, mitigating any breakages. Set up is sturdy and everything that was described for a new/ beginner coffee roaster. Instructions are included and give detailed points on how to roast, and get started. This is great in leading you to develop your own practices and way of roasting the beans to suit you. Obviously it takes some practice to get the beans to your liking so take your time, be patient, be safe as the process gets very hot, and ultimately enjoy the journey you are on in roasting your own beans. Read more

I've been roasting beans off and on for 20 years using an old Orville Redenbacher modified popcorn air popper. Some batches were really good, some were unimpressive, but could only ever roast 80-90 g of green beans. The FR 800 is a much more powerful roaster, with independent controls for fan speed and heat. It was a well researched purchase and I did get the extension tube, which has allowed me to roast at temperatures as low as 42°F. In addition to the more powerful fan and individual controls, the built-in thermometer is useful for monitoring conditions inside the roast chamber, and the clear glass extension tube allows perfect visualization of roast and roast levels. I have been getting consistently excellent results from all the beans that I've roasted so far. (A surprise treat was how excellent the Colombian beans that shipped with this package were!) There are a number of websites with good roast advice that provide refinements to the provided instructions, which gets you started off nicely. I'm about 12 pounds in, and have found the roaster easy to learn and control. I am using a separate cooler, as I really like to be able to stop my roast quickly and due to the thermal mass of the machine, even though the cooling cycle shuts off the heat, there is a certain amount of retained heat to account for. As I become more comfortable with the roaster and with specific beans, I may use the cooling cycle to cool the beans, but at this point I don't trust myself to end the roast where I want it, given how slowly they cooled the couple of times I've tried to let the cooling cycle cool them. So far, I've roasted some African and central American beans from City- to City+ and some South American, African, and Indonesian coffees at varying levels up to FC+ with fine control of roast level. I've had no trouble hearing first or second crack. The extension tube and the chaff-trapping lid work quite well together. I'm drinking the best coffee of my life these days, in large part because of this roaster! Read more