IRoast2 Coffee Roaster Is Discontinued: Here’s What Replaces It

I still get emails from readers hunting for a replacement chaff collector for their iRoast2, more than fifteen years after Hearthware stopped making them. It was a genuinely good little roaster in its day: a clear roasting chamber so you could watch the beans darken in real time, programmable time and temperature, and enough control to satisfy someone well past the casual-roaster stage. That’s exactly why so many people still search for it by name.

Here’s the honest update, though: the iRoast2 has been discontinued since around 2009, and Hearthware never released a direct successor. What you’ll find today searching for one new is either old dead stock or a used unit on eBay, often at a price close to what a new, better-supported roaster would cost you. If yours just died, or you’re shopping from a “best home roasters” list that still has this one on it, here’s what actually replaces it in 2026.

What made it worth owning in the first place

For a casual roaster, the iRoast2 offered one-touch presets like French roast, and for the more particular roaster it let you dial in your own time and temperature curve and save up to ten profiles. The glass chamber meant you could actually watch first crack happen instead of guessing from sound alone, and the double-filtration chaff collection made cleanup less of a chore than most home roasters of that era. Its one consistent complaint was noise, especially right at startup, which lowering the batch size helped with but never fully solved.

What to buy instead

The closest match to what the iRoast2 did well is the Fresh Roast SR540. It’s an air roaster in the same spirit, compact, with real control over time, temperature, and fan speed, and it’s widely considered the best balance of price and quality for a home roaster right now. It’s also easier to find parts and support for than a fifteen-year-discontinued machine.

If you want to step up from what the iRoast2 offered rather than just replace it, the Behmor 1600 Plus is worth the extra money. It roasts up to a full pound per batch instead of the iRoast2’s roughly five ounces, and it gives you real drum-roasting control rather than just air-roasting presets, which produces a noticeably different, often more even roast.

Whichever one you land on, the fundamentals haven’t changed since the iRoast2 days. Our guide to the stages of coffee roasting still applies to any machine you’re using, and if you’re not ready to spend money on a dedicated roaster at all, roasting in a hot air popcorn popper or a plain pan on the stovetop gets you into home roasting for the price of equipment you probably already own.