|
Flowers
Chocolates & Gifts
Vases & Plants
|
|
|
|
| 
 enlarge | Brand: Iroast
Category: Kitchen
List Price: $199.00
Buy New: $179.95
You Save: $19.05 (10%)
New (5) Used (1) from $165.70
Avg. Customer Rating:  43 reviews
Sales Rank: 6595
Color: Black
Shipping Weight (lbs): 6
Dimensions (in): 12 x 7 x 12
MPN: 40011
Model: 40011
UPC: 652185400115
EAN: 0652185400115
ASIN: B000FDN1S0
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
|
| Customer Reviews:
 NO CUSTOMER SERVICE October 10, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
DON'T BUY THIS or any Hearthwear product. My i-roast lasted less than a year with regular weekly use. When it quit heating (burnt out) I was worried that because I didn't have the reciept due to it being a gift that Hearthwear wouldn't honor the waranty. Not to worry, you can't get serviec at all, let alone under waranty.
I emailed Hearthwear repeatedly as stated in the waranty and called repeatedly and was unable to get an answer or leave a message due to the box being full. Bottom line, if you buy their products you're on your own!
Problems with customer service/repair departments October 2, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
I had a previous model of the iRoast and was happy with it, but after 6 years, it finally quit roasting. I bought the i-Roast2 roaster from Amazon in April. It worked very well until September, when I started having problems reading the numbers on the screen (time remaining to roast). Numbers were only visible from an angle, not directly facing the screen. I sent at least three e-mails requesting directions for obtaining an RMA (Return Merchandise Authorization) number. I finally received a reply by sending an e-mail to Janet in the customer service department, who forwarded a message to Maria. Her reply gave me instructions for sending the information and a fax number to use. The fax machine at the number given does not answer. Attempts to call always give the message that I am number 24 in line. This number does not seem to change. Bottom line: The coffee roaster is a good one, but instructions for use are not user-friendly, and service from the so-called service department is completely lacking. You might want to try an alternate brand.
 Great roaster---it has flaws, but it is still more than worth it August 7, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
If you read this, you probably already know that roasting your own coffee is likely the single largest improvement you can make to the quality of the coffee you drink at home, so I won't belabor that point.
I owned one for about two years before it broke (like another reviewer here), and I am going to get another one. So I obviously like it a lot. Nonetheless, I'll start with the downsides of this roaster:
1. It is noisy.
2. It requires attention to cleaning to function properly.
3. It produces quite a bit of smoke (but then again, it's coffee roasting we talk about).
4. It has a limited half-life (as mentioned, about two years of pretty heavy, almost daily, use in my case).
5. It's for small batch sizes (this might actually be a good thing in terms of coffee freshness, if you don't mind roasting a little more frequently).
6. It's user interface could be improved: more buttons, better display.
Now the upsides:
1. It's fast. Takes about 13-15 min to roast a batch.
2. Easy and fast to use, once you have figured out the buttons (not rocket science).
3. It's programmable---you can punch in your own roasting "curves" (step functions, really), tuned to particular beans or roasts. You can get as nerdy as you like about this, and people have...
From this it would seem that there are a lot more problems than good things to report about this roaster, but the bottom line is that this little device transforms coffee roasting into an activity that you can do on the side almost like boiling an egg, or you can invest a lot of time and attention in, sticking thermo sensors into the roast chamber and plotting temperature profiles.
The one thing to pay attention to is the flow of air through the chamber. Air is used to transport heat to the beans, and also to move them around. This makes the roaster mechanically simple (and hence cheap), but it also means that it needs to be kept clean enough to avoid any obstruction to the air flow. I let cleaning slide for some time, which resulted in the exhaust getting clogged, and the roaster overheating. In that case it does switch itself off, but I doubt it's a healthy thing for the machine, and I would not be surprised if those events hastened its demise.
It's relatively inexpensive, and it will provide you with many batches of deliciously fresh coffee. If you think about home roasting coffee, I recommend getting one of these.
Better than Turning a Crank for 10 minutes June 21, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Update - 06/08
Well, it's 2-1/2 years since replacing the I-Roast with version 2, and I've now put about 150 lbs of coffee through it. I've watched its behavior over many seasons. Recently, I thought the unit was dying... the motor seemed to be balking, so I went to the sweetmarias website to look at the array of coffee roasters that might replace the unit. I found a note in their comparison chart about I-Roast 2 being sensitive to ambient temperature and variations in line voltage. The motor was balking in the middle of a heat wave, and I knew from the line voltage measure on our PC's APC that all the air-conditioning was bringing the voltage down to 109. The unit was not dying. This week, with the heat-wave over, and line voltage back up to 120, it was back to its normal jet engine sound.
So, I reiterate that you cannot just find a profile setting that works once, and then just walk away. The following items change the roasting profile without warning:
1) Coffee variety. Large dense beans take longer than small or less dense beans
2) Ambient temperature. If it's late autumn, and you haven't turned your heat on yet, the roast will take longer.
3) Line voltage. If your voltage drops (even from 120 to 118) it will lengthen the roast time.
4) Cleaning. You must keep the screen and trap at the top of the unit clean. (I use a brass brush) If the screen gets dirty, the airflow slows through the machine and it gets hotter than expected, shortening roasting time, and causing "tipping" or uneven roasting.
One final item. The handle on the top chamber is meant only to bear the weight of the top chamber. Do not use this to carry the whole machine. That bit of abuse may be responsible for some of the breakage reported in this series of reviews.
Update- 04/06
Replaced the original with the I-Roast 2. Fantastic improvement. Will store several different user defined profiles. Roasting chamber has been re-engineered and is solid.
As other users have pointed out, it does sound like a jet engine, and it is smokey.... but then smoke is just part of roasting coffee. For those who imagine the smell of roasting coffee wafting through their homes, you need to know that while roasted coffee smells good, roasting coffee is pretty nasty, and you need to vent the smoke.
Update- 10/05
Some of the metal parts on the roasting chamber were under-engineered, and the chamber started leaking air and coming apart. Temperature sensors seem to have gone, and with them, any notion of a roasting profile.
Original (Original I-Roast as well)-----
I used to use a stove-top corn-popper for roasting, which was pretty dull and burned my fingers. The iRoast is pretty good compared to that. The roast is very even, cleaning is easy, and you can watch the roast.
The down-side is that you need to watch the roast towards the end. You cannot program the machine, walk away, and expect it to finish the job all by itself. Slight variation in ambient temperature, (summer/winter, oven on recently, morning/afternoon) can result in notable changes in roast time. You must always program it for longer than the roast should take, and watch the last few minutes to stop the roast at the right time.
It would be nice if the machine remembered the program from one roast to the next.
 Great tasting coffee, flimsy product June 1, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I bought the iRoast2 as an upgrade for the Fresh Roast Plus that we had used for years. At first, I appreciated the more sophisticated roasting results we could get with the iRoast, and the fact that we could roast over double the amount of coffee per batch. However, after less than a year of moderate use, the glass roasting carafe cracked during the roasting process. I bit the bullet and ordered a replacement carafe from Hearthware. Now, less than 2 months later, the motor on the iRoast has given out. The fan stopped working mid-roast, causing the beans to overheat and a smoke disaster in the kitchen. So after just over 1 year of use, the product is shot.
Combining my experience and those of other reviewers here, obviously this product is not made to endure the test of time. This is an expensive product to provide just one year of use, not to mention the extra carafe I had to purchase. The Fresh Roast Plus, at half the price, is still going strong. I would not waste my money on another iRoast.
|
|
|
| |
