5lb seem to run around 23 min, but I am certain that I can get them down a few by pre heating
Thank you for keeping us updated on your discoveries with this unit. I truly have been interested in getting one, but was a little concerned about the roasting time. I had an exchange of e-mails with the TostaCaffe maker and when I questioned if the 30+ minutes for roasting a full capacity batch was possibly baking the coffee beans he went off on a bizarre tangent that my loyalties were with "Big Oil" and that because I was "parroting the Big Oil line", any further e-mails were a waste of time. Probably not the best way to garner business...
I even replied to this one e-mail and offered to send him 5 pounds of a coffee from my stash, have him roast it as a 5# batch and then send me back 1 pound to try. No reply. Just blown off.
So, I truly am glad to have a thorough, objective review of this roaster. As you use it more, would you also please comment on the durability of the parts, wires, electronics, heating elements? I had comments from one owner of an older TostaCaffe that some of the wires became brittle with production use, but perhaps this has been addressed by the manufacturer.
Let me know how the warm-up affects the 5# roast time.
Thanks!