This.

I wrote in 2003 why I selected the Bunn home coffeemaker to make my home-roasted coffee (here’s my post about that).

This week my Bunn died. Okay, it didn’t exactly die, but it was coughing up blood. The Bunn is designed to make a 12-cup pot of coffee in three minutes at 200 degrees. And until recently, it did. Then is slowed way down, taking almost 15 minutes, and the temp was too low. We cleaned it thoroughly, more than once, to no avail. I called Bynn’s customer service line. The rep asked me for the serial number and then informed me it was still under warranty. She said to send it back and they’d either repair or replace it free. I had forgotten that Bunns have a three-year warranty. So off it went.

That left me coffeemaker-less. Were it I alone drinking the brew, I could easily make do with the one-cup-at-a-time Bodum coffee press a friend kindly gave me in 2003. (Presses make fantastic coffee; I longingly looked over an eight-cup press at BB&B yesterday but passed it by.)

Knowing my Bunn would be returning, though perhaps not for a few weeks, I didn’t want to spend a lot of money for a stand-in. And I needed one that day. Wal-Mart was no help; it had only a thin selection of brands I know to be slow. Slow is bad. K-Mart had a much better selection, but the one I wanted was in stock for the display only. It was a Melitta “Take 2” brewer that dripped straight into two travel mugs and was cheap to boot.

I wound up buying another Melitta brewer, this one, based on its relatively speedy brewing time (though still a lot slower than the Bunn) and that is brews at 200 degrees, the optimum temp for coffee. It’s worked great the four days I’ve used it. I also like that its carafe doesn’t sribble water or coffee all over the place as so many Mr. Coffee and Black and Decker machines are wont to do.

Last month I also bought another coffee roaster. I have been using the Zach and Dani’s roaster for almost three years and still use it. But it’s slowed down, too (apparently not heating as much as it used to), which compels me to reduce the amount of coffee per roast. As I explained in my earlier posts, the Z&D is a slow roaster, resulting in a mellower cup. Fast roasters yield a “bright” cup with higher acidity. Nothing wrong with that, it’s a matter of taste and prefer the fuller, slow-roasted body over the bright body.

But I decided to branch out so I bought a FreshRoast Plus-8 roaster. It roasts quickly - six minutes per batch plus a two-minute cooling cycle. It roasts only three ounces per batch, about a third of the Z&D. With a recommended interval between roasts of 20 minutes, the FreshRoast handles only about half the coffee per hour of the Z&D, which has no need of an interval between batches; I can do two per hour. But with both machines running simultaneously I can roast in an hour enough coffee to last most of a week.

Like all machines of its design, though, the FreshRoast generates massive clouds of smoke as the beans heat and crack. All coffee smokes when roasting reasonably dark. The Z&D has a built-in filter that completely removes the smoke before it can escape, but the FreshRoast and its design kin do not. So warning, if you buy one: you must have a way to handle the smoke, either by forcefully venting it to the outside or by roasting outside to begin with, which is where I use my FreshRoast. (When the weather turns cold it’s going to be a problem.)

But the FreshRoast does a very good job. I blend beans from both roasters together. Great stuff!