if you buy one plan on summer roasting or indoor roasting and hunkerdown if you ever need hearthware support.
Positive Product Points
roasts 1 cup of beans at a time -- 24 cups of coffee worth (actually little less for me). seems very engineered and the programming options are very interesting
Negative Product Points
my machine came with wrong left hand control button it was a duplicate of the right hand cool button inserted upside down to fit. outdoor roasting can't make dark roast (ambient temp limits) noisey
Detailed Commentary
The machine works well unless you want dark roast and try and roast outdoors to minimize the mess and it isn't summer time.
Extremely sensitive to ambient temperature... northern california winter trials(machine loaded and kept warm until immediately before operating outside) at about 45 to 50 deg outdoor temp resulted in machine only roasting to city roast or med brown color. indoors at 70 degrees with same program got dark oily roast . But indoors requires venting through pipe or chimney and still makes big time noise, odor and some leakage of smoke.
Hearthware customer support horrible... people who answer phone (called three times) know nothing and put you on hold for simple questions. promised to send shipping label to return for repair/replace.. never did. my machine came with an upside down mislabeled control button...two cool buttons no roast labled button. Internet retailer was very supportive and helpfull but hearthware is useless.
Buying Experience
catescoffee excellent customer attitude and helpfull
