Banished Home-Roaster? Meet the Behmor.
Posted by deCadmus on 14 May 2007 at 2:03 am | Category: Coffee
The toaster-oven dimensions would remain… that was a reasonable kitchen-counter footprint. The heating element would need to be positioned optimally for tumbling beans, and a cylinder designed to keep the beans near the heat. Then there’s the issue of collecting chaff — the papery stuff that flies off coffee while it’s roasting — and, of course, the big one. Smoke.
Make no mistake about it… a coffee roaster aggressively attacks coffee beans with heat, and lots of it. At the beginning of a roast cycle beans are introduced into an environment where temperatures quickly ramp past 400 °F. and over the course of a roast cycle those temperatures will reach more than 450 °F. Beans (rather violently) vent their free moisture in the form of steam. Then the silvery chaff begins to fly, and it can scorch and burn if it touches heating elements in the roaster. But the real culprit — the real cause of smokey roasts — are the oils that migrate to the surface of the bean in latter stages of the roast, and the complex sugars that caramelize. And at temperatures of 450 °F, these components smoke. Liberally.
If I roast coffee in my kitchen and my wife comes home an hour later, she doesn’t know I’ve been roasting coffee. — Joe Behm
“I wouldn’t say there’s no smoke at all,” says Joe… “and we don’t market it as smokeless. If you want to roast a pound of coffee and plan to explore the dark side, there’s going to be smoke. But with the smoke abatement system I’ve designed it’s manageable… especially if you’ve got a vent hood.”
James Vaughn at The Coffee Project agrees. He’s been testing the Behmor 1600, and reports that at payloads of 1/4 to 1/2 pounds the system is “virtually smokeless,” and adds, “If you tend to roast on the light side you will be able to roast a whole pound right in your kitchen.”
In the course of eight years of development, the feature list of the Behmor has grown. Manual controls turned into electronic controls with a number of options for roast profiling, as well as a quick-start feature and a self-cleaning cycle. A simple drive motor became a multi-stage affair to better accommodate its cooling cycle. An interior light was added to provide a better view on roasting beans. And not so long ago, Joe Behm got himself a partner…
“One day the phone rings, and it’s Ronco. They were calling to maybe pick up the coffee roasting adapter I’d designed for the Showtime Rotisserie. And I said, ‘That old thing? How about a complete home coffee roasting system, instead?’”
The last few months have been a whirlwind. Finalizing designs, tweaking the code, working out the details of the Ronco agreement. And trying to keep the project under wraps as much as possible until all the details were finalized, the last no small feat in a market where home-roasting enthusiasts are voracious consumers of not only coffee, but information… much of it shared far and wide on Web forums and Usenet newsgroups.
Today, however, the wraps are off. Production should begin in the next week or two, and the first machines off the line should be available at home-roasting retailers within 45 days. If the requests for pre-production test units is any indication (Joe reports a figure of 1000 requests or more) there’s a ready market for a kitchen-friendly, one pound coffee roaster that retails for less than $400.
And maybe come next winter I’ll get my hands of one of these roasters, myself. It gets cold out there, ya know.
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I wonder how it compares smoke-wise with the Zach & Dani. I don’t have a hood and am stuck to the basement when it is cold (with window fan on exhaust). And the Z&D was only about $100. Of course, though, it doesn’t roast anything near 1lb.
Can’t say for certain ’cause I haven’t been hands-on with the Behmor myself. But to take James’ comments at face value, any batch size less than a pound is going to be virtually smoke-free. Z&D does a quarter pound, right? So you could double your batch size… and probably enjoy better coffee what with a profiled roast and all.
Yeah, though we’ll have to see about that price tag before I can broach the subject with the spouse :)
Which reminds me… I’m told the list price is slated to be $399. I’d anticipate retailers to start pricing at $350 or thereabouts, and eventually migrating to a price point more like $300 as initial demand and on-hand inventory levels out.
That’s a pretty good price, and surely not what I would have expected to see on any one-pound capacity roaster unless (until) the home-roasting market expands quite a lot. Which, I think, is something that Ronco intends to do… open up the market, and take home-roasting to places it’s never been before.
A ’set it and forget it’ kind of roaster that plays nice in the kitchen is just the ticket.
One thing I thought of this morning is that the Z&D doesn’t produce visible smoke, but you can smell it and can still set off the smoke alarms. So I hope when they say it is smokeless, they’re including the “invisible” smoke.
And the set it and forget it is so perfect for me, which is why I wouldn’t have gotten into home roasting if it weren’t for the Z&D. I can’t use my nose to control the roast as my nose REALLY doesn’t like the coffee roasting smell (even with the Z&D).
And the 1/4 lb lasts me about a week, but roasting every week can become a chore, so the idea of doing a 1/2 lb and vacuum sealing what I don’t need sounds really good.
OK, I’m getting excited about it. Guess what I’m getting myself as a present? :)
Or should I wait and let them work out the kinks? (I know first gen Z&D wasn’t as good, as is with most new products….decisions decisions).
I know Joe is very careful to say its not smokeless but smoke reduced there is some smoke still. And the aroma is still there too, but I think thats a good thing, as I cant roast without my nose :)
Looks very imrpessive, the more I see read and hear makes me more exited about this roaster.
Hey, Stephen!
You visisted Joe’s setup at SCAA in Long Beach, right? Any thoughts about the machine you’d care to add… notes on build quality, for example?
I did drop by, and had a bite to eat with Joe afterwards, he’s a really nice guy, and this roaster has been his dream for eight years, so getting it to the show he was really psyched.
Its not the best looking roaster, but its well built well thought out. The one bonus to all the other home roasters is I think it can sit on top on a kitchen counter without the wife wanting a divorce.
One thing to note is I saw prototypes and they looked very close to the finished article. With Ronco its an interesting partnership and I think there will be good back up and the final piece will be well built.
For me the best part is its price point. The hottop and the café gene are good but very expensive. The Iroast well priced but not so good. So this should really shake up the roaster world.
Thanks Stephen!
Though I’m the wife and have trouble with the husband wanting it off the counter :) Luckily the Z&D is black and blends well so he doesn’t mind, but this one is real good too (mmmm, stainless steel finish).
And let that be a lesson to us all… women roast coffee, too. ;)
You know as I wrote that I knew it would come back to bite me and still I fell for it. It was more of a personal observation and my wife not likeing roasters on the counter, not a swipe at women roasters at all :)
Please dont hit me :)
OK, I’ll spare you….THIS time :)
I’ve seen that complaint more than once on the coffeegeek boards when I was researching machines. So it is a pretty safe thing to say!