Too Much Coffee

Has anyone used both of these? What were your impressions?

Cheers

Ian

If you want darker roasts for espresso the Behmor is not not the machine of choice.

The Gene is mostly made of plastic, but many people are happy with theirs. It is a hot-air roaster and tends to bring out the bright notes in most beans.

The HotTop is an excellent machine. Having used all three it is my choice, but it wasn't in your list. Sorry.

Yes I agree. Find me a used one please Bruce! I asked Steve quite a while ago to keep an ear out for a secondhand one and I haven't seen any for sale for yonks.

If anyone has one for sale please let me know.

Cheers

Ian

Ian wrote:Yes I agree. Find me a used one please Bruce! I asked Steve quite a while ago to keep an ear out for a secondhand one and I haven't seen any for sale for yonks.

If anyone has one for sale please let me know.

Cheers
Ian

I think most Hottop users are very happy with their roasters and, like me, could not be persuaded to part with them. I have also owned a Gene Cafe and consider it a good home roaster with good controls that is capable of producing very good roasts but it is not as convenient to use as the Hottop and, due to heating element burn out issues, is not as robust.

I have just been looking at your Behmor restoration project on CoffeeGeek. It looks as though a little TLC is required on that roaster.

I have owned all three roasters mentioned (not at the same time). The early Cafe Genies, pre 2007, were a bundle of trouble mostly due to being sold with a 230 v heater instead of 240v. With various home mods they can produce very good results.

The Behmor can also be quite good. Has the advantage of larger capacity and also improves with various mods & control, see 'Roaster Thing'.

However I have the found the Hottop to be far superior to both of these and can be used very successfully straight out of the box.
I understand from Shelly at HT, on the horizon, there is a larger version HT coming along.
I look forward to hearing more about this

Ron

silron1 wrote:I understand from Shelly at HT, on the horizon, there is a larger version HT coming along.
I look forward to hearing more about this

If you get one of those, I would be prepared to look after your old one for you

GreenBean wrote:I have just been looking at your Behmor restoration project on CoffeeGeek. It looks as though a little TLC is required on that roaster.

|f you were a little bit nearer, you'd be welcome to come and have a play (which is code for do some cleaning up)

As my espresso machine is awaitng a bit of restoration I am using my Behmor to roast for press and drip coffee. To my surprise I find it better than the espresso I get from La Valentine. I put this down to the lighter roast from the Behmor, to get a darker roast it tends to remove a lot of the flavour. I do like the Behmor but I tend to try load too much in to it which extends the roasting time. In future I will only load the minimum of greens to get a decent espresso. As it is now, I can stick half a pound in and get the best tasting brew in town.