July 15, 2025

Some new comments on using my Fresh Roast SR800 home coffee roaster

I bought one of these in July, 2021 (7-27-2021) and have been using it ever since. I have learned a lot about it over the almost 4 years I have had it, and just this week did something I should have done right at the start. I bought an oven thermometer to use as a bean temperature probe. This little gadget sells for $20 and is worth every penny. I got mine for $16 when they were running a discount, and I am sure there are other such probes that would work fine.

The big discovery when I used it to monitor a roast is that the temperature displayed by the SR800 is low by 80 to 100 degrees F! I had been told that the SR800 was off by 50F, but my experiments show a more drastic difference.

Up to now I have been aiming for a displayed temperature of 480F for the last few minutes of the roast. With my new thermometer I know that I was actually roasting to 380 to 400F.

My old profile

I roast 9.3 ounces (260 grams) of beans, using the extension tube.

Let's call settings fan/heat. I would start at 8/5 for the first 2-3 minutes, then reduce the fan when beans started to jump around a lot. I would reduce to 6/2 or 6/1 and end the roast after 9.5 minutes, never longer than 10. I would hear first crack at 6-7 minutes and take care not to continue to second crack.

I often prop the lid, which reduces temperatures by 20 degrees or so and allows chaff to fly out and be carried away in the wind.

A suggested profile

This profile is for 225 grams of beans and is suggested by someone I correspond with.
Settings are minute by minute. 
1 - 9/1
2 - 9/2
3 - 9/2
4 - 7/3
5 - 7/4
6 - 7/5
7 - 6/7
8 - 6/6
9 - 5/7
10 - 4/5
11 - 4/6
12 - 4/5
13 - 2/0 -- cool
He also tells me that it is recommended to cool beans to room temperature in 4 minutes or less. The SR800 only runs the cooling fan for 3 minutes. So a bean cooler should be used (or a collander with a fan underneath).

An idealized profile

The roast profile below is one idea of what an ideal roast should look like.

Note that the total roast time here is 13 minutes.
I have been stopping at 10 minutes at about 400 degrees.
I want to aim for something like this, but without getting into second crack and dark roast.

Have any comments? Questions? Drop me a line!

Tom's coffee pages / tom@mmto.org