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.

Quickly and handily roasts green coffee beans to your desired roast level judged by the audible crack through the opening in the roaster. You will be listening for 1st crack and then roast to 2nd rapid cracking for strong roast. All the chaff can be blown away through the opening in the handle in a suitable location. It comes with a scoop for placing the beans in the roaster. (Attention Rufus) Two full scoops is roughly 30 grams which will give you a nice single layer in the roaster for even roasting. The leather wrap laced to the handle is nice and necessary as the handle gets warm during roasting. The aroma of freshly roasted beans is awesome.

I have really enjoyed this roasting device. This is definitely not a fire-and-forget kind of contraption. It takes some trial and error to develop the skills to use it, but that's part of what makes it fun. Having fresh coffee is amazing and I can't imagine going back to the stale old beans from the store. It's easy to find good, inexpensive green beans, with a variety of flavors and that can be stored for a long time before roasting. I've used this roaster almost every day for the last few months with a gas stove. The process takes 15 minutes. This is what I do: * Use about 3 scoops of beans exactly. * After turning on the heat, swish the beans around in circle-like patterns over the flame and do not stop moving, not even for a second, or else they will burn. I'll turn the temperature down a little after I hear a first crack. * The roaster body stays hot even after the stove is off and it'll keep roasting the beans for a minute or two after, so even after the stove is off, keep the circular motions going and plan the roasting cycle with that in mind * I find it easy to watch the beans change color in this roaster, despite what some other reviews say. The smell is also great. * The temperature matters a lot. It's possible to adjust the stove temperature or to move the roaster different distances from the flame also. * After roasting I dump them into a glass jar and rotate the jar around a bit to keep them moving. A lot of chaff sticks to the glass of the jar, which is good. * After they cool off a bit I put them into a colander and dump them back and forth into another colander. Blowing on them lightly also easily blows away some of the light chaff. One time I accidentally left the roaster on the stove while cooking something else and accidentally burned away the leather handle cover thing. Even without the leather handle it doesn't get very hot to touch, even over a gas flame, and I now prefer it without the leather. I also added a small folded metal screen piece that I cut for this purpose, that i put inside the tube part of the handle (a "Hard and Heat Resisting Screen Mesh" on amazon). Before adding this screen, sometimes a few hot beans would blast out through the tubular handle. With this screen, now they don't fly out, and the hot air can still vent out through the handle.

I've been drinking coffee for most of my 70 years, but I really didn't know much about it. My first surprising discovery was how limited roasted coffee's shelf life is. I was buying my coffee at the grocery store where there is no way to determine how old the coffee really is. So I went to a local roaster, saw that they listed the date of roasting, and purchased 12oz. of 1 week old medium roast coffee for $18. Ouch! However, it was the best cup of coffee I had ever brewed at home. Being a retired chemist, home beer brewer, and cook, I decided I wanted to try roasting coffee. Further research identified several home roasting methods, from using my kitchen oven (slow and too smelly with larger quantities) to an inexpensive air popcorn popper (no real temperature control). I didn't want to spend more than $50 for my first roasting attempt. Then I saw several YouTube videos featuring the Nuvo ceramic roaster, one showing the use of an infrared temperature gauge to provide some temperature feedback and control. I have a gas stove with a hood which I heard was a was plus. So for $30 and the minimal cost of a couple lbs of green premium coffee, I started my coffee roasting learning curve. What I like about using the Nuvo is that it's clean (very little chafe escapes), smell is minimal (I have a hood but rarely use it unless producing a dark roast), roasting is quick (about ten+/- two minutes depending on roast) and you can visually see the beans which provides important feedback. I don't like that I have to swirl the beans while roasting. It's tiring and probably difficult for people with carpal tunnel. I usually make three 60 gram roasts back to back to back. FYI, I have found that weight loss during roasting can reach 10% or more for darker roasts, water and chafe mostly. Oils are released too and can be seen on the surface of darker roasts. I presume these can burn off if left at high temperatures long enough. I find the larger the amount of beans I try to roast, the less uniform the bean color. This is probably technique dependant, 60 grams being my upper limit at this point. The roaster is ceramic and can break if banged, dropped, or temperature shocked. Be careful. While temperature monitoring and control is limited, by using a quick response meat thermometer, I can ballpark drying and roasting temperatures. The beautiful thing about coffee is that it speaks to you. During the drying phase, the green beans turn yellow. Roasting starts at the "first crack", sounds similar to popping corn. The longer you wait thereafter, the darker the coffee gets. Also, during the 1st crack, coffee becomes exothermic, producing its own heat. As temperature increases, there's a "second crack" that sounds deeper. At this point you are at a darker colored roast. I prefer a medium/light to medium/dark roast so I try not to hit temperatures producing the second crack. I'd recommend you take your first batch into the second crack so you can experience the whole roasting process and the feedback the beans provide. When you hit your desired roast, you need to cool the beans quickly. So I dump the beans through the hollow handle into a stainless steel colander and walk outside and swirl the beans vigorously. This cools the beans and helps remove the chafe, outer layer, from the bean. You could do this over a fan and blow away the chafe or just blow on it yourself. I put the roasted beans in small jars, loosely covered, for about 24 hours to allow carbon dioxide and monoxide, produced and trapped in the bean during roasting, to be released before grinding and brewing. I have made some really good coffee, but not as good as that $18, twelve oz. bag, from my local roaster, yet. Time to evaluate another source of green beans. While roasted bean's flavor begins to deteriorate after a few weeks storage, I've read that green beans can last up to a year, stored properly. I'm a newbie roaster, a few weeks of research and a week of roasting. So I have much to learn. Good thing I'm retired. Just having fun and drinking my own roasted coffee is a bonus. Best of luck.

I purchased this product back in 2018, when I was first interested in controlling as many variable of my coffee production as possible. I must say, over the past 4 years, this product has really held up. While it is ceramic and therefore fragile, if you take care of it, it should last indefinitely. this means ensuring that you don't shock it with rapid changes in temperature and avoid dropping it. As far as roasting goes, I'm not sure there is any superior method of home roasting. Indeed there are automatic machine roasters capable of doing roasting profiles but these are typically expensive commercial machines and completely automate the process. For me, I got into roasting for the craft aspect of it, using my senses to roast my batches to my preferred roast levels. For $30, you are able to achieve some excellent and replicable results, which you have a very direct hand in controlling. In this way, this product can produce similar results to roasting machines costing several times the price. It should be noted that the batch sizes are fairly small; one can roast between 30-60 grams per batch. This could be considered either a pro or a con, depending on how much coffee one drinks per day. I've found that I get my best results roasting smaller batches, between 30-40 grams, but i can roast several batches back to back. This gives me great control over roasting profiles and allows me to create blends on the fly. However, i could see some taking this as a limitation if they wish to roast more. I have found that exceeding 60 grams in a single batch can lead to uneven roasts. Overall, I think this is an excellent roaster that is probably the best for home roasting so long as one invests the time to get good with it. I had the opportunity to use some mechanical roasters and I couldn't imagine those being used practically in a home setup.

I wasn’t sure what I was getting myself into when I bought this but I am happy did. It was a little bigger than I expected which wasn’t a bad thing. The color was a little off but who cares? I was going for a lighter roast my first go around and didn’t have a great technique. A lot of swirling and back and forth side to side movements. Just trying to keep the beans moving around. I should add that I was dining this on and glad too electric stove. It worked pretty good the first go around. A little inconsistent coloring which I was able to correct by eliminating the swirling motions the next batch. Key here is to keep them off the bottom as much as possible. I also kept the roster on the burner after first crack because I didnt know if I should wait to hear every bean “pop”. The second batch I removed from the heat and kept shaking the roaster and the beans continued popping for a minute or so. The consistency was way better. Definitely a lighter roast which was what I was going for. I use these beans mainly for my moka pot as I believe I get the best extraction that way. I highly recommend this product and I’ll update again after using gas stove to see if there’s a significant difference.

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.

This is a great little roaster. I've seen videos of people roasting in a popcorn popper effectively, but not having tried that myself, I'd say this is the best way to roast beans at home for beginners. I read a bit about this device and watched some videos before trying it out, but I still managed to goof up some things. Here are a few tips: - Find a way to roast outside if possible. This roaster creates a lot of smoke. It is a natural byproduct of roasting beans, so there is no way to avoid it. If you have an awesome vent hood over your stove, you may be able to get away with roasting indoors without causing too much smoke, but you will still get chaff all over the place. To avoid the mess, go outside. I have a side burner on my gas grill that works perfectly. Perfectly! If you have one of these, give it a try. - Don't overfill. You will be tempted to fill it up, but I wouldn't. The most I'd put in there is five scoops. Too many beans in the roaster can lead to an uneven roast and hot beans flying out of the top. Take your time and roast a reasonable amount in each batch. - Experiment and record. I keep track of how long I roast and at what quantities. It's a good way to learn and improve. - Buy a good container to keep your roasted beans. A Mason jar, loosely fitted for the first couple of days, may work fine, but I bought a stainless steel canister that is specifically made to hold beans. It keeps the air out while allowing the CO2 to escape from the beans after roasting. It was not expensive and I bought it here on Amazon. Easy. - While roasting, keep moving the roaster. If you keep your hand on the leather part of the handle, you should be fine. But you may want to wear an oven mitt to protect your hand from the heat of the fire itself. Also, chaff and smoke come out of the handle, so don't panic. One day I'll buy a more expensive device to roast beans in bigger batches, more consistently. Until then, this thing is a great way to get started.