The vintage Nesco roaster was originally called the Zach & Dani’s Coffee roaster.
It had an innovative design. I like this model, and recommend it highly with a few conditions.
To be exact, I feel there are a couple drawbacks to the machine: dark roasts take long time and the roaster might have trouble attaining a full French roastSugars are heavily caramelized (read as burned) and are degraded; the woody bean structure is carbonizing, the seed continues to expand and loose mass, the body of the... in some situations (namely, on circuits with voltage below 110v – see our extended review below for more details).
It has some great features too, especially the catalytic converter that eliminates the bulk of the smoke associated with home roasting. It truly works – this machine has dramatically less roast smoke than any other home machine.
While the long roast concerns me, the unexpected advantage of this roast profileRoast Profile refers to the relationship between time and temperature in coffee roasting, with the endpoint being the "degree of roast". Roast profiling is the active manipulation of... is the ability to achieve even light and medium roasts (City roasts). It’s easier to target these lighter roasts too: Most home roasters (and popcorn poppers) pass rapidly from first to second crackAfter First Crack, a roast reaction around 440 to 450 degrees that is distinguished by a snapping sound. Second Crack is the second audible clue the roaster-operator receives... without a significant pause, The Nesco Roaster has this long pause between cracks and the hidden benefit of this is there is a lot of time for you, the roaster-operator, to ponder the exact time you want to stop the roast.
The roasts in these City to Full City stages, before 2nd crackAn audible popping sound heard during roasting. In coffee, one refers to "first crack" and "second crack," which come from two different classes of chemical reactions.: An audible..., are very even, and the coffee has not been in the roaster (baking) for as long as the very long dark roasts in this machine. So we are finding some nice cup results in these medium City roasts, and they are easier than other roasters to pinpoint. Please scroll down to read our very extensive review of this roaster below! The Nesco Roaster has been nice enough to chose us as a retailer for their machine, and because of these positive features, we are happy to offer it again.
This is a new, updated Nesco home coffee roasterA machine for roasting coffee. Or the person operating it! The basic requirements for a coffee roaster are a heating element that gets suitably hot and a mechanism... model matches the late ’04 Z& D model, which had some minor (yet thoughtful) changes. The top lid is now hinged to the bodyAssociated with and sensed by mouthfeel, body is sense of weight and thickness of the brew, caused by the percentage of soluble solids in the cup, including all... of the roaster. The roast profiles have been modified slightly but I still use setting #20 as my baseline for a City+City+ roast is an ideal roast level that occurs roughly between 425 and 435 degrees Fahrenheit in many coffee roasters with a responsive bean probe where First Crack... roast. A setting of 20 indicates 15 minute roast time and 5 minute cool time. The digital setting indicator counts down during the roast cycle, so you know where you are at.
Nesco Home Coffee Roaster (formerly known as the Zach and Dani’s Roaster)
Our Extended Review of the Nesco/ Z&D Home Coffee Roaster:
This review is from the original Z&D roaster (hence the pictures of the older-named unit) but is functionally equivalent to the Nesco. My first impression is that this large machine is unique among roasters and probably cost the Nesco / Zach and Dani’s people a lot to develop and to build! It has two fans driven off the same motor, a belt-pulley system to drive the cast metal auger that agitates the coffee, and a sort of catalytic converter to help reduce smoke emissions while roasting. The latter is very effective (granted that smoke released over a long roast cycle – 20 minutes – like the Nesco is going to be less noticeable than a short 6 minute air roast). The converter includes a small heating element and a honeycombed ceramic piece that helps burn off smoke. The result is that a 4 oz. Nesco roast has less smoke than the smallest capacity air popper roast.
The auger spins very fast and agitates the coffee very thoroughly during the roast cycle. There is very little airflow through the roast chamber during the roast cycle (and not much during the cooling either) so there is a lot of chaffChaff is paper-like skin that comes off the coffee in the roasting process. Chaff from roasting is part of the innermost skin (the silverskin) of the coffee fruit... mixed in with the coffee while roasting. Even the smallest pieces of chaff do not leave the roast chamber for the chaff collector. While this may not look good, it really doesn’t hurt the quality of the roast at all. Overall the chaff collection is poor and I would recommend, as with the Alpenrost) that you have a small Shop Vac handy. You can actually suck the chaff right out of the coffee if you don’t hold the Shop Vac nozzle too close, or you can dump the roast into a Stainless Steel mesh colander after the cooling cycle is complete, and shake out the chaff. You will want to get the roasted coffee out of the roast chamber as soon as the machine stops, because the slight air flow does not completely cool the coffee. I measured the beans at 130 degrees after the Nesco cooling cycle. This is not too bad, but what you really want is rapid cooling (best accomplished by massive cool air flow) in the first minute after the roast cycle terminates. Otherwise, the coffee continues to roast well into the cooling cycle, and indeed you need to learn to stop the roast early to take into account the additional roasting that will occur when the heating element is off.
The roast controls are, like an Alpenrost, a bit lacking in that you can only set the roast time, then hit the Roast button. I keep hoping for a roaster with roast curve controls to truly allow custom roasting (the next generation Precision due out in May 2003 boasts this). But I think appliance manufacturers, trying to simplify machines, avoid customer confusion, and limit liability, are uninspired to build more user-programmable controls into machines. With the Nesco, you simply choose the time you want to roast (default is 20, max is 30) and hit the roast button. But what I think is a nice improvement over the Alp is that the roast setting actually does correlate to time, and counts down as the roast progresses: a setting of 26 is a 26 minute roast+cool cycle (cooling is 5 minutes.) Roast batchOne of the most important variables in roasting coffee, the weight or volume of the coffee being put in to the roaster will dramatically affect the outcome of... size is optimally 4 oz. I was able to get an adequately dark roast off a 121.2 volt outlet with 4 oz of coffee, and not with 5 oz. You can also add up to 5 minutes to the roast while its in progress by using the UP arrow, meaning the max roast time is 35 minutes. To roast darker you can reduce the amount of coffee in the batch too (same as the Alpenrost, but opposite of the air roasters, where you get a darker roast by increasing the amount of coffee.)
The roaster is really easy to use except for the chaff collector seal at the top of the unit. You need to pay attention to getting this properly seated or chaff will leak out and the roast heat will be lost. The best way is to push the chaff collector in the top and work your little finger around the seal to seat it, then seat the entire top onto the roast chamber and base.
Overall, the roaster works well for someone who hasn’t been exposed to roasting before. It seems durable and of high quality, and probably low maintenance too. (One topic is the belt that drives the auger; A friend thinks this belt is very well insulated and will last quite a while: I think its going to cause trouble and need replacing or adjustment fairly often. There is a belt drive tensioner in the base of the machine and this needs to be engaged to drive the auger better -the machine may squeal a bit with it engaged but this is better than having the auger jam during the roast.) We haven’t heard of people receiving defective units or having failures after a few uses, but in the long term the roaster is too new to know how it will hold up. The component parts certainly seem to be high quality.
CuppingCupping is a method of tasting coffee by steeping grounds in separate cups for discrete amounts of ground coffee, to reveal good flavors and defects to their fullest.... Comparison: Nesco Roaster; Hearthware Precision; Hearthware Gourmet
We chose a coffee for this test that I felt would be strongly suited to the Nesco roaster; longer roasts might mute dynamic bright notes and acidityAcidity is a positive flavor attribute in coffee, also referred to as brightness or liveliness. It adds a brilliance to the cup, whereas low acid coffees can seem... in coffee but will develop a heavier body in the cup. JavaThere are several types of Abyssinia variety coffee, but they are not from Ethiopia but rather Indonesia. Abyssinia 3 = AB3. PJS Cramer, a Dutch plant researcher, introduced this variety... is all about body, but has interesting other flavors that emerge, as you will see in the HWP notes below. The logistics of including all the roasters, the Alpenrost, the FreshRoast and the Caffe Rosto, in this test were just too much for me. From all the other roasts we have done in the Nesco/Zach and Dani’s, I am getting a good feel for its strengths (mostly its innovative design, quietness and lack of smoke, lighter roasts) and its limits (dullness in the heavier roast’s cup quality). I wanted to get a general feel for the air roast versus the Nesco mechanically agitated roast, and sort of formalize the comparisons forming in my mind between these roasters.
A cupping note: I have found that an unexpected strength of this machine is lighter roasts. Most home roasters (and popcorn poppers) pass rapidly from first to second crack without a significant pause, The Nesco has this long pause between cracks and the hidden benefit of this is there is a lot of time for you, the roaster-operator to ponder the exact time you want to stop the roast. The roasts in these City to Full City stages, before 2nd crack, are very even, and the coffee has not been in the roaster (baking) for as long as the very long dark roasts in this machine. So we are finding some nice cup results in these medium City roasts, and they are easier than other roasters to pinpoint. -Tom 2/8
The roast color is exceptionally even (this is nice visually but does not necessarily relate to cup quality), and bean development early in the roast is uniform. (Early development has been a problem with other roasters, like the Freshroast). The later fact is more critical to good cup quality: the uneven development early in the FreshRoast batches concerns me more than the final roast color. The roast color of the exterior of the bean and the AgtronA machine and a color matching system used for quality analysis generally in the food industry, and specifically in coffee: Agtron spectrophotometers are used in the coffee industry... Number assigned to the grind are closer to a match (2-5 points) than they are in an air roaster (which can differ by 8 or so). The First CrackFirst crack in one of two distinct heat-induced pyrolytic reactions in coffee. It is distinguished by a cracking or popping sound in the coffee, and occurs between 390... and the Second Crack are nearly impossible to hear, not because of machine noise, but because of this “low temperature-low air” roast technique the machine employs. More on that when we talk about roast quality….
The main concern that comes up with the Nesco is the cup quality, especially of the darker roasts. For someone that hasn’t roasted before, the machine will offer a great improvement over store-bought coffee and will probably match some micro-roasted or gourmet chain coffee too. But we have gone through a considerable amount of coffee and have noticed a dullness in the cup. I think the cause might be the inadequate cooling (not the temperature after the 5 minute cycle, but the fact that the low air flow is inadequate to drop the coffee temperature in the first minute or two). Although I removed the coffee from the roast chamber immediately after the cooling cycle each time, the ideal thing to do is to remove it as soon as the roast cycle ends, dump it in an S/S colander and draw high speed fan air through it.
The second possible cause is a function of the long roast time. Roasts of 19-25 minutes are a bit longer than most commercial roasts. In my Diedrich 12K shop roaster, I started out with roast times recommended by Diedrich of around 16 – 18 minutes for City-Full City, and 19-21 for dark roasts. But total length of time is only part of the effect. In drum roasters, the roast finishes fast … it passes promptly from the exothermicA term applied to thermal reactions, referring to one that releases energy. A classic example is burning. Most parts of the coffee roasting process are endothermic, but first... first crack into endothermy (the quiet time between cracks) and back into the exothermy of the physical fracturing of the coffee, also called second crack. A drum roasterA roaster with a rotating drum that provides agitation to the beans, while a heating element (typically either electric or gas) provides heat. The metal drum conducts heat... operator usually struggles to slow this down a bit, partly for control so an exact degree-of-roast can be determined, partly because of roast profile preferences. If you are headed toward 2nd crack on a bid drum roaster with a lot of flame on and the air closed, watch out. One popular technique is to shut down heat and close down dampers to coast into 2nd crack, drawing out the duration of the crack a bit.
But the incredibly slow finishSimilar to aftertaste, but it refers to the impression as the coffee leaves the palate. Aftertaste is the sensations gathered after the coffee has left the mouth. We... of the Nesco roaster is off the traditional “slow finish” scale. It’s incredibly slow, and what amazes me is that it isn’t stalling the roast completely after 1st crack (maybe it is … I can’t put a thermocouple probe into this model I am testing because it’s not mine!) With a first crack finishing 12.5 minutes into the roast and a second crack starting at 19.5 minutes, the lull between them is exceptionally long (note; this was with a smaller batch size, their “french roast” batch size): this does give you a lot of time to determine the “degree of roast” you want but the cost might be the roast quality. This long roast time starting with the first exothermic reaction is unlike any roaster I have used, professional or home roaster. If I could tweak this thing, it would be a burner control to accelerate the roast as the coffee is on the verge of First Crack to prevent a roast stall, then back off a little, then back off a little more as it reaches my target roast temperature. But I think the Z&D is really aimed at someone who isn’t going to worry about these things, or look inside the roaster, and hasn’t heard of roasting before so they don’t have a basis for comparison. My sense is that this company has a lot of money put into this machine, and might change the roast profile on future versions.
Someone told me this is the roaster they would give their grandmother, and after using this a while, I would think so, or at least for your hobby-addicted uncle. 🙂 It does work well and the mechanisms inspire confidence. For someone who wants to open it up and play with the heat coil, and find a good place to insert a temperature probe, the Nesco offers some great possibilities. After all, this is mechanically a unique roaster. I think overall frustration with the limited selection of home roasters out there, and bad experiences people have had with what has been available makes any new roaster a welcome addition. But like all home roasters, it’s a mixture of strengths and weaknesses for me. The Z&D medium roast of the Java in the reviewbelow sums up both.
Recommended Coffees for the Nesco Roaster
We roasted quite a few coffees on this machine… initially thinking that the only the strong suit of this roaster is low-toned coffee with a lot of body. I found later that I could pinpoint the lighter City roasts very easily due to the long pause between 1st and 2nd crack. And these roasts came out very evenly. We have had some very nice cups from the lighter roasts, including the Yirgacheffe, Sidamo, GuatemalaGuatemalan coffee is considered a top quality coffee producer in Central America. Due to our proximity to Guatemala, some of the nicest coffees from this origin come to... Arte de Maya, El Injerto, and La Minita
To serve to the Z&D’s strengths, you want to explore the Indonesians. If the idea of an earthyEarthy is a flavor term with some ambivalence, used positively in some cases, negatively in others.: Sumatra coffees can have a positive earthy flavor, sometimes described as "wet..., pungentRefers to an aggressive, intense aroma or flavor, often related to spices (pepper) or roast tastes. Pungent foods are often called "spicy", meaning a sharp or biting character,..., deep coffee with low acidity appeals to you, start with the dry-processed Sulawesi, and the premium Sumatra Iskandar Triple Pick. If you want these qualities without the earthiness, try the wet-processed Indoneisans from Java, Timor or Papua New Guinea.
You can do straight roasts of high-toned coffees, or blend them. For a bright, fruityIn some coffee taster’s lexicon, “fruity” means the coffee is tainted with fruit, and “fruited” means a coffee is graced by positive fruit notes. We don't exactly see... cup with a bit of natural-process character, thy the Ethiopian Harar, or the Yemeni coffees. For a cleaner cup character, try the wet-process Ethiopian Yirgacheffe, or the Kenya Auction Lot coffees. You are going to be loosing the high-end of the cup roasting these coffees, but they still make a nice cup. You can blend the Harar/Yemen with the SulawesiSulawesi coffees are low-acid with great body and that deep, brooding cup profile akin to Sumatra. The coffee is sometimes known as Celebes, which was the Dutch colonial... for a balanced, pungent Mokha-Java, or you can add the brightnessA euphemistic term we use often to describe acidity in coffee. A bright coffee has more high, acidic notes. : A euphemistic term to describe acidity in coffee.... of the KenyaKenya is the East African powerhouse of the coffee world. Both in the cup, and the way they run their trade, everything is topnotch.: Kenya is the East.../Yirgacheffe to a clean Indonesian like the Java or TimorTimor-Leste (East Timor) is a tiny island between Australia and Sulawesi, annexed by Indonesia and liberated in a referendum several years ago. Small scale coffee farming was jump-started....
The Central American coffees make fairly nice roasts … and of these I would recommend the Guatemalans and Nicaraguasover others like Costa Rican. This is based on the cup results I had with the Z&D roasts of the La Minita. The Colombians hold up well, and since we have some exceptional ones to offer it is a shame to pass them up. The Brazils will work well as a blender with this roaster, not as a straight roast.
Coffees that are entirely about their subtle nature will not do well in the Zach & Dani’s roaster. It will be best to roast on the dark side for milder coffees so you can develop the “roast tastes” if the “originIn coffee talk, it refers to a coffee-producing region or country; such as, "I was just at origin." Of course "Origin" for most product we use is not... flavors” in the cup become dulled or lost. (In our Java Blawan test above, note that the darker roast scores much better than the medium roast).
