I’m beginning what is probably going to be an adventure; hopefully a good one, possibly a bad one. I just ordered an R2 Pro which won’t be delivered for a good three to four months. I could have gone with an R1-V2, a proven winner; but opted for the as yet unknown instead. I currently roast on a Hottop 2k+ using Artisan and am quite happy with it. Having gone through a learning curve with that unit and finally hitting some good roasts, I began wondering if there is more that can be gotten out of roasting with a different appliance. I’m not expecting drastically better coffee from the Bullet, but once I have it roasting decently I can certainly share roasted beans with others more-so than from the 2k+. The Hottop is built like a tank, but was designed with so many safety features that at times I feel suffocated by it. After roasting a batch of beans there is a requisite cooling down period that must be honored before another roast can begin, something I wouldn’t expect from a machine as heavy duty as that one is. The Bullet has no such requirement and can do roasts one after another, something I will welcome. I will say this about the Hottop: once connected to Artisan, one or two of the safety features go away and won’t bother you. Hopefully some of the inevitable bugs will be worked out of the R2 Pro by the time mine is delivered and there will be semi-smooth sailing after that. I saw on Sweet Maria’s that the new R2 display panel has some bugs that need to be fixed via firmware updates and hopefully that will be a soon remedy. I’ve been reading a lot of articles about the R1, but not sure how much of it will translate over to the new models. I really wanted to buy the roaster from Sweet Maria’s, but I have a delivery window that they couldn’t hope to meet; so I went straight to Aillio America. No free 10 lbs of beans, but delivery on my terms. Once I have my Bullet in operation I will try to keep this thread updated with my progress; both good and bad.
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