The HotTop is a great roaster, but as with all coffee roasters, it has it's pros and cons. This roaster isn't for everyone - the smoke and the high cost will put off most, but for the serious home roaster, this machine is perfect. You pay around $100 dollars less for the analogue unit, but if you are going to put the money out, the digital unit is probably the way to go. HotTop will soon discontinue the analogue unit, so if you do decide on it, snap one up quick. As I mentioned in the pros and cons table, there are both good and bad things about this roaster - but the pros by far outweigh the cons. The literature I've read suggests that drum roasters like this will emphasize the deeper aspects of a coffee, along with the body, and an air roaster will emphasize the brighter and more acidy notes. For a beginner, the differences will probably so slight that you wouldn't notice. I do notice quite a difference between an i-Roast and the HotTop, but they both make great coffee. I especially like how quite the HotTop is. You can hear the cracking stages of the beans exceptionally well - even decafs, which are notoriously difficult to roast. And this roaster doesn't make a mess. It's the cleanest I've ever seen any roaster. It does produce quite a bit of smoke though. As I mentioned, you will need to either roast in your fireplace or in the garage unless you have a pretty powerful stovetop range.
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Pros: |
Cons: |
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The roaster has a preheat cycle before every roast which allows you to produce consistent roasts every time. With other roasters, you will notice a difference between a roasted started with a cold roaster and a just-used roaster. |
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This roaster duplicates the results of a professional $5000+ roaster at a fraction of the cost. |
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Easily accessible viewing window for gauging roast progress. |
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Digital unit has a timer readout and temperature display. |
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Cooling cycle thoroughly cools beans each time by sucking heat from below and allowing extra heat to rise while agitating beans, and does so outside of the roasting chamber. No other home roaster does this. |
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Able to handle up to 8.9 ounces of green beans, but works well with smaller batches as well. |
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Looks really slick :) |
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Allows you to do back to back roasts without any problems. |
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Is VERY quiet, allowing you to hear the first and second cracks very easily (a huge advantage over most other home roasting machines). |
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Not messy at all. Chaff removal is quick, simple and clean. |
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It's larger and more expensive when compared to many other home roasters on the market. |
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Produces a fair bit of smoke during the roast (mostly due to the fact that you are simply roasting more beans), which cannot be filtered out. You would need to either roast this in your fireplace (an idea of one of my customers), under a range hood, or in the garage. One plus is that the smoke merely drifts up - it isn't blasted like with air roasters. A stovetop range should easily be able to suck up the smoke. |
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You will need to replace this filter every 50-60 roasts (if you clean it out in the sink when it gets dirty) from what I've read and each new roaster comes with a replacement filter. |
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Learn more about the roasting process with our MoreCoffee! Home Roasting Tutorial.
HotTop Tutorial |
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I've got everything set out and ready - the HotTop ready to go, I've read the manual and am ready to weigh out 8.9 ounces of beans with my fancy scale before roasting. It's important to keep in mind that this roaster will go through a warm-up cycle before you add the beans. For the digital unit, you hit "start", set the roast time you want by repeatedly hitting the "time" button until you get to the time you want. I always set it to the max (21:59) and just hit "eject" to stop the roasting based on the first and second cracks, but once you become familiar with a particular lot, you will know about how long it will take and can set your roast accordingly. Make sure that you clean the chaff tray before each roast (you don't want your expensive HotTop catching on fire, do you?). The manual says that the HotTop won't start until you have cleaned out the chaff collector. |
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You will need to wait nearly 19 minutes to get to the first crack if you roast the full 8.82 ounces (250 grams) that this roaster can do. Keep in mind that you can always roast less than that and the roast time will be much quicker. Make sure you document the weight, though. A different mass of beans in the roast chamber will lead to a different roast profile - and a slightly different tasting bean. |
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After the warm-up cycle has completed, the HotTop will start beeping and the roast time countdown will start. Pour your beans into the removable funnel, then take off the funnel and replace the metal top (to prevent heat loss during the roast). The roast is very quiet and all you can really hear is the sound of the beans churning around. |
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As the beans roast, you can watch the action through the viewing window. You can easily gauge the progress of your roast via color and bean texture - or listen for the first and second cracks (due to the fact that you hear pretty much nothing else except beans calmly moving around). In this picture, you can barely make out the heating elements that surround the roasting drum - glowing red-hot! |
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When the timer has counted down, or you hit the "eject" button (you deem the roast ready before the cycle has completed), the beans will come pouring through a chute in the roasting drum down into the cooling tray where they are agitated by two arms. If the arms get stuck by a bean, they switch direction. The beauty of this system is that 1) the beans are cooled outside the roasting chamber, making for quicker cooling, 2) the heat is allowed to rise, creating a natural fan, as it were, 3) two electric fans suck the heat through vents in the bottom of the cooling tray, and 4) the cooling tray pops right off so you can pour the beans into a bag. It's awesome! |
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Once the beans are done, you simply pop the cooling tray off the roaster and dump the cooled beans into a bag or container. The excess chaff is easily removed by blowing on the cooling tray outside, or running a vacuum over the tray (keeping far enough away so your beans don't get sucked up, obviously). |
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The chaff collector tray will fill up during a normal roast (oftentimes, decaf coffee and some aged or polished coffees will produce no chaff). It is important to empty this tray after every roast. Once you replace the cooling tray, you are ready to begin another roast. A quick note: If you do another roast right after the first, the warm-up phase will still take place - with one difference...it will become a cool-down phase. The roaster will not start the roasting process until the roaster is at a certain temperature (roughly 163F). If it's warmer than this, it will kick on the fan until the unit has cooled down. If it's cooler than this, it will heat up until it is at this point. So, if you want to do another roast, pull out the filter at the rear of the roaster and take off the metal cover on the top of the roaster (the one you remove to insert the beans) so that the heat can escape quicker and the fan can run faster. This will cool down your roaster about 4 times quicker, I've found. Make sure you replace the filter when the fan starts, which means that the roaster has cooled sufficiently and will start to heat back up to the right temperature. |
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You will notice that the roast takes longer than do many other home roasters out there. Longer roasts are said to emphasize body and complexity whereas shorter roasts emphasize acidity and brighter notes. The quick drop in temperature at the beginning of the roast marks the addition of the beans to the roaster after the pre-heat cycle (when the room temperature beans are added, they cool the roaster accordingly). The drop at the end of the climb is from the cooling cycle, which is remarkably efficient.
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