title_body: Home Roasting with Fresh Roast SR500
upvoted_answer: There is a goodish guide for your roaster here.
  
  I'd also keep in mind that coffee has a cooling period after you "stop" roasting, where it will generally still roast to a darker level (or two). You need to try to finish your roast at a level or so lighter than what you are aiming for and let the coffee "cool" into your desired roast.
  
  I might suggest that you roast at a lower level (lower heat) so that the beans move through the stages more slowly.  This will badly suck up your time, but will also allow you greater chance of stopping the roast at the roast level you are aiming for.
  
  Keep in mind that many of the descriptions you read for green coffee are done by people with extremely refined palates.  No matter what coffee you roast, those fruit type descriptions are still hints and notes in the coffee, not it's overall flavor.  Additionally the quality of the green beans you are roasting will affect the final quality of your roast. It's impossible to make poor green beans great by perfectly roasting them.  You can, however, ruin high quality green beans with a poor roast.  
  
  When I started roasting, I was "lucky" enough to start with a cheap air popper.  The advantage of that is that with a popper it is very easy to hear the "cracks" associated with roasting.  My personal opinion is that the "cracks" are one of the few constants with beans that actually consistently indicate roast level. While there are other gauges out there (darkness and smell), they can vary with different varieties of beans.  Eventually I moved to a machine where I couldn't hear the cracking at all, but by then, I had learned enough of the other cues that it didn't matter as much.