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* Both Retail Coffee and Wholesale Coffee Stores
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* All Coffee Equipment is in the Retail Coffee and Equipment Store.
* Specializing in Green Coffee Beans and Home Coffee Roasters
* Yama Coffee Syphons (Siphons) and Chemex Coffee Pots
* Bunn Home and Commercial Coffee Equipment
* Solis, Rancilio, La Pavoni, Saeco and Pasquini Espresso Equipment
* Gene, Hottop and Fresh Roast Home Coffee Roasters
* Cleancaf Cleaner and Descaler
The machine prices a bit under $1000, and that has provided a bit of a mental block for me. But I realised that, putting price aside, this machine has the best user-interface of any roaster.
The screen is big, easy to read, intuitive to use. The alarm tells you when the roaster starts, when to dump the green coffee in, when it nears the end of the roast (so you can make any adjustments), when it starts to cool, and when it shuts itself down. So while you should always attend to a roaster in use, the programmable HotTop doesn’t keep you on a short leash.
Here are some assorted screen shots of the automatic roast process. Unfortunately my Olympus camera battery went kaput and as of yet I have failed to re-shoot the interface during the user-controlled roast. The screen is big - I can read it from 6-10 feet away to see the elapsed time on the roast, and temperature. The buttons work well. As I said, I feel this is the best of the programmable user interfaces of all home roasters, though I do still like the simple Genecafe controls (2 knobs for time and for temperature). Using the preset programs on this machine, the display gives you tons of information about temperature and time remaining so you know exactly where you are in the roast at all times.
I can’t blame HotTop for this, but one annoying thing is limited back-to-back roasting. While it takes the machine a moderate amount of time to heat up to temperature (you get an audible alarm to put the coffee in when pre-heating is done), it takes a LONG time for the roaster to cool down to temperature after doing one batch, so you can start a second batch. While it is good that the HotTop always starts the roast at the same temperature, it does mean you need to do something else for a while (like 20 minutes) while the roaster cools down after doing your first batch. Ultimately, this is for your own good: all roasters should be cooled between batches because it means consistent safe roasting, and a longer lasting machine.
The cup results have been consistently good from the HotTop, whether we are discussing the analog, digital or this new programmable model. The one aspect that continues to distinguish the HotTop from the others is the fact that the roast cools outside the drum. I cannot stress how important rapid, effective cooling is to roast quality. Cooling inside the drum is a design problem with other machines, one you can circumvent by overriding the roaster to stop the drum rotation, and manually remove the coffee. Ouch - those metals/glass parts are hot. This is not an issue with air roasters that have a rapid air movement, but it is with the Genecafe.
HotTop has continued to improve all their roasters, analog, digital and now the programmable, in an admirable way and it is a very solid machine. Another absolute plus for the HotTop roasters is the excellent customer support you get through both the hottopusa.com website and in person from Michael who does their product support. Parts like spare motors, fans, etc are available for the machines so you can keep the roaster running a long time.
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