I bought a new coffee roaster on the weekend. This is a prosumer level home roaster. It can roast 450 gram (1/2 pound) per roast and is a computer controlled drum roaster.
While it is simple to do the first roast, there is a real learning curve to this unit. You can vary fan speed and temperature by time. The basic automatic program just slams on the heater and turns the fan on full as it enters first crack.
One challenge is smoke. While my smaller roaster was fine under the range hood, this unit just puts out too much smoke for that. I placed it beside an open window with a fan between the exhaust and the window. Perfect. I turn on the fan at the same time as the internal fan turns on. Even as the roasted coffee was ejected in this picture, all of the smoke was pushed out of the window. A cheap and simple solution. In the summer I can see just roasting outside but as we are coming up on winter, I needed a kitchen solution.
I modified my roasting log and am going to modify the plotting program to follow not only the temperature but the heater and fan settings on the same graph. This should be interesting.