After spending so much time and energy with an entry-level home coffee roaster, here are my takeways
Can it make great coffee?
Absolutely! My preference gravitates towards light roasts or lighter medium roasts. Although the Gene is not very good at light roasts, lighter medium roasts are easily achievable. The coffee you can roast at home may never be as good as what the best artisan roasters can produce, but it will always be 1000x better than commodity supermarket charcoal you can buy everywhere (and cheaper too).
Is it a good machine?
Yes and no.
- It’s easy to use because, apart from time, there is really just a single variable you can influence: maximum temperature. With a decent workflow you can produce excellent coffee, but it lacks everything people obsess about (temperature probes and Artisan integration, airflow control, power control, automation etc.) that makes a high-end home roaster much closer to a professional tool.
- Ambient temperature (and I suspect humidity) influence it a lot, making batches hard to replicate. Target temperature and 1C can be as much as 1-1.5 minutes sooner in summer.
- Airflow is everything, and chaff can easily block the chamber’s intake, stalling the internal temperature at 220-230°C and “ruining” (control over) a batch.
- Batch size is kinda small at 250g, so if you wanna roast larger quantities, you must do several small batches in a row. I usually roast 4x250g batches in a single session, and it lasts me about a month.
Are complicated workflows necessary?
No. My personal workflow is much simpler and basically the same for every bean after preheating the machine at 220°C for about 10mins:
- Dry at 180°C for 3 minutes
- Increase temperature to 135-145°C depending on the bean, it should get there around the 7min mark. Hold until 1C.
- Once 1C starts rolling (depending on the bean, around 8-11min mark), reduce temp to 220°C and dump after 1 minute (I built an external cooler that adapts to my vacuum cleaner, do not use the built-in cooling function, it sucks)
Is it worth it?
If your local roasters suck, all you can access is supermarket coffee or your local or online roasters are prohibitively expensive (don’t forget to still support great local businesses once in a while), if you’ve got time and love to experiment, if you love DIY, go for it!
So is your setup in your house? I understand there’s quite a bit of smoke and it can really smell your house out if you do it indoors.
Do you let the coffee degas a bit before you brew with it? What’s your preferred brew method?
You said you do 4x 250g batches per session. I assume that’s 250g of raw green beans going into the roaster… what’s the yield per batch coming out at the end?
How do you source your green beans?
So is your setup in your house? I understand there’s quite a bit of smoke and it can really smell your house out if you do it indoors.
I live in an apartment so I don’t have much choice. There’s indeed a ton of smoke, however with the kitchen window open and the door closed, it’t rather contained.
Do you let the coffee degas a bit before you brew with it? What’s your preferred brew method?
Yes. 24h degas + 1-3 weeks aging. I almost exclusively brew espresso.
You said you do 4x 250g batches per session. I assume that’s 250g of raw green beans going into the roaster… what’s the yield per batch coming out at the end?
Yes. 250g of green beans yield about 215-220g of roasted coffee.
How do you source your green beans?
Online. I might be interested with alternatives in the EU.
Your post and reply to my comment has sent me down a rabbit hole I’ve been down many times but with a new angle. I’ve wanted to try my hand at home roasting for a while, but now I think I want to try it on my grill outside.
Haha what changed?
Well, it’s a practicality thing. I’ve researched all the various roasters out there over the years, and always balked at the price tag. I’ve recently been gifted a nice grill though and had the thought of possibly of using that. After some looking online I found that while not the most common way of doing it, some folks do it frequently.
Interesting, thanks for sharing. I didn’t know these even existed. My old roommate’s routine was to roast a single cup of coffee beans in a small steel pan on our stove every time he made a cup each day. It seemed like a lot of work, but he always said it was totally worth it.
Absolute madman.
(Ok I know it’s super normal and traditional in some places like Ethiopia, but super fresh beans are horrible it’s like licking an ashtray, you need to rest them at least a few days/weeks)
While this sounds superior in most respects to the popcorn popper roasting I have done, I can’t say it sounds a compelling step up for the expense. I periodically wonder about getting a roaster but I think it’s going to take more benefits to finally tempt me.
The popcorn is crude but simple and trouble free. I’ve convinced myself to actually appreciate a few minutes outside gently shaking it while looking at the trees. Perhaps I can fit variable control and get a temp probe and get a bit more sophisticated but retain the cheap simplicity.
Yeah honestly even if it’s objectively better than a popcorn popper, I’m not sure it’s 10x-the-price better 😅
and my popcorn popper was free at the side of the road!
Infinite quality/price ratio!
Nice, I didn’t know these existed.
This is a nice run-down, thanks for sharing.
I’ve considered buying a roaster, but always wondered if it would actually be worth it. By the time I’d sourced good green beans, and put the time/energy into roasting, you’re correct, and I think I probably would be better using my local (lovely) roastery!
Thanks!
TBH I didn’t start roasting because of time or money considerations. It’s just another hobby that aligns with the coffee-obsessive lifestyle. The fact that it might eventually become more cost effective than buying roasted beans was definitely not the highest in my list of priorities :D
Thanks for the great post! This is one element of experimentation I don’t see myself getting into as I have both good local roasters and there are great ones that ship quickly fresh roasted beans online. This would indeed be cost saving, but from a value standpoint I’ve invested so much capital and time in other coffee gear, education etc that I think buying beans that are roasted on equipment I just can’t match at home is worth it to me personally. That being said, I love that people are doing this, and if I had a friend locally that was doing it I would buy roasts from them occasionally if they were halfway decent. Also seems like a really cool gift to be able to give people. I image if ventilated safely and well it likely gives off a rewarding aroma too?
This is a perfectly valid point of view, and for the first few months, I seriously doubted I could ever match a decent roaster. Now I can make exquisite coffee. Meh coffee too, don’t get me wrong. But the more I learn, the more I can trust my instincts, the more I’m able to unlock some potential by tweaking temperature or time into 1C. Some beans still elude me (I had a Sidamo that smelled heavenly when green but that I could never roast properly), but it’s, I think, true for most roasters except the very best. For me it’s the ultimate step into complete coffee obsession. You need to truly know your beans to roast them properly. And then I can still play with grind size and temperature and pressure and time when pulling shots to make the best out of them.
I image if ventilated safely and well it likely gives off a rewarding aroma too?
Once the smoke is gone from the kitchen, the smell of freshly roasted coffee lingering in the house for the rest of the day… Man this is just heaven, makes you crave a nice cup instantly.
