I don’t own a Behmor, but I’ve read a lot about it. The Behmor is without a doubt one of the best value home roasters. It does allow for a fair bit of control over the roast. You can add time, end a roast early or extend a roast as you see fit.  It seems like such a good little package for doing half kilo roasts!  And it’s probably great for most people, but I have a few reservations…

No thermoprobe

Unfortunately, there is no direct way of controlling or monitoring temperature. There is no temp readout! No thermoprobe. You are stuck with the 5 heat output profiles below, none of which really mirror my typical roast profile. I tend to make small changes along the way, especially towards the end of a roast, depending on the bean and the depth of roast I’m aiming for.

Monitoring temperature is so crucial, I really don’t see the Behmor as an upgrade from a corretto setup where I have a second-by-second readout of the temperature and a direct line of sight to the bean mass.  

With no temp readout on the Behmor you’d essentially not know much about how the roast was progressing until you hit first crack.

Long cooling phase

On a Behmor, cooling takes a long time and the beans remain inside the hot chamber of the roaster. Sure, there are workarounds, but they’re not ideal.  On my roaster, I dump and cool within a minute using a big fan, you can’t beat that!

If I end up picking up a Behmor, it would be for reasons of having a roaster more resembling a drum, as opposed to my corretto which is really more of an air roaster. I’ve read that drum roasting can result in more body, sweetness and a bit less acidity than air roasting. Having a Behmor would allow me to test that theory to some degree.