Roast Your Own: The Gene Cafe

This week we got the chance to roast some green coffee on the Gene Cafe home roaster from RYO Coffee! 

The design is very user friendly and it doesn't require anything other than a standard electrical point. The instructions are super simple - just plug in, pour in the green beans, set the timer and push start.

The beautifully packaged beans from RYO Coffee - so many to try!

The dials are really easy to use - One for time and one for temperature.

The off-axis caraffe, tumbles the beans around as the hot air roasts them. 

The first roast - the blend. Slightly underdeveloped, due to starting the roast from a cold start.

The second and third roasts, Nicaragua and Guatemala, came out much better!

The beauty of the Gene Cafe for me is that you can make it as easy or difficult for yourself as you like. You certainly don't have to be a Master Roaster to get some great flavours out of it, it's like all things coffee - your own preference.  There are some simple tools and guidelines to roast to your preference and after just one roast, We got the hang of it and turned out the two single origins really beautifully.

• Clean out the Chaff after every 2-3 roasts.
• Start from a "hot" start - ie let the gene Cafe do a cycle with no beans in it to warm up.
• The digital temperature reader gives the actual and target temp as you go, so you can keep an eye on it as you go. We actually extended the roast time on both single origins slightly as a result.
• You can also easily extend or shorten the time using the time dial - a really great feature!

Check out https://ryocoffee.co.za/collections/roasting-equipment/products/gene-cafe-electric-coffee-roaster-cbr-101 for more info on this cool little home roaster!