Just a little contribution from my part regarding the Baby Roaster. After roasting and tasting about >25 roasts, I can now see a few things more clearly. I think most agree that the best part of Baby Roaster is that you can drink the coffee right off the roaster. But what I haven't seen reported is that the beans at this stage can be decidedly super sweet with its characteristic post-roast flavor. This post-roast flavor is rather interesting, and it's not the same post-roast grassiness you get on other roasters. Coupled with enhanced sweetness, it is certainly very enjoyable. However, if you want to evaluate the true coffee potential, that may skew the picture a little and best done with a 3 days rest. For what it's worth, the current Baby Roaster seems to have some new (subtle) design change while sifting through the information on net. For example in the early days, it was reported the pop handle may be difficult to remove. The current version has sort of a looser fit, so it goes in and out with no friction. The caveat is you will observe a looser fitting (see the gap in my post on first page). But no, the gap doesn't lose any beans in my experience (hopefully will try roasting some small Yemen soon). Another change is the wooden vs bakelite(?) handle. I see some of the wooden Babies around (including Gary's), but the newer ones seems to be the smooth bakelite version. The bakelite ones in my opinion, are too smooth and too small for gripping. The result is sore finger & wrist(my early report). So I have since wrapped a thick foam pad around the Baby's handle(taken from bicycle steering handle). That made flicking/turning the roaster so much easier, and I can easily do 2-3 back-to-back roasting(15min each) without feeling tired. Also, I have since made the stirrer arm mod with two hose clamps, because flicking doesn't agitate the smooth big beans like Indian Elephant Hills too well - was getting a few burn spots. Here's what I notice when I did the mod - the turning handle does not come off anymore in the new version and seems to be glued/stuck/weld. I tried using a long allen key to remove the hex nuts but to no avail. The allen key was already distorting but the nut didn't even budge. Compared to the older reports, some had the turning handle coming loose during mid roast. So it's good to see Coffee-Tech does heed to consumer reports and make changes (but no stirrer yet unfortunately). Finally, I'm getting very very good results with the Baby Roasters. It can do light roasts very well, and good for darker roast too. In fact, I find that I prefer to go lighter roast nowadays, because the acidity from baby roaster don't seem to be as harsh (mybe due to the roast profile I used). This is big for me because in the majority, I despise acidity in my espresso. The down side is, I don't seem to enjoy espresso roasted to the start of second crack, at least not as much as I used to. I'm not sure if that's a taste change on my behalf, or the Baby's dark roast is a little more roasty (or due to my roast profile).
