Coffee roasting machine for home use

Which home coffee roaster?

All roasters in this category are electric Gene Café machines for home use. The CBR-101 is available on its own or as a starter pack; the CBR 301 adds a Bluetooth connection. The product pages show what comes with each one.

• Gene Café CBR-101E electric coffee roaster (black)
• Gene Café CBR101 coffee roaster (black), starter pack
• Gene Café CBR 301 coffee roaster with Bluetooth

What else you need

• Green beans. Roasting starts with unroasted coffee beans. They keep far longer than roasted coffee, so you can buy a few origins and roast small batches as you go.
• A cooler. Beans keep roasting on their own heat after they leave the drum. The 500 g coffee bean cooler brings them down quickly, so the roast stops where you want it to.
• Fresh air. Roasting gives off smoke and a strong smell, more so with darker roasts. Roast under an extractor hood, by an open window or outside.
• Somewhere for the chaff. The thin silver skin comes off the beans during roasting and needs emptying after every batch.

How a roast develops

Green beans first dry out: they turn pale yellow and smell of grass and hay. Next they brown and start to smell of bread and caramel. Then comes the first crack, an audible popping as the beans expand. From this point the coffee is drinkable, and stopping soon after it gives a light roast with more acidity and fruit. The longer you carry on, the more body and roast flavour you get. A second, quieter crackle marks the start of a dark roast, when oil begins to show on the surface of the beans.

Write down the bean, the batch size and the moment you stopped each time. That makes it easy to repeat a roast you liked, or to change one thing at a time.

Choosing beans to start with

Washed coffees from Central and South America are a forgiving place to start: they roast evenly and show clearly how the flavour changes as you go darker. Naturally processed beans, dried with the fruit still on, scorch more easily and give off more chaff. Roast the same bean a few times before you move on to the next one; that teaches you more than changing bean and roast at once.

After roasting

Freshly roasted coffee releases carbon dioxide for the first few days. Let the beans rest before you brew: around a day is often enough for filter coffee, while espresso usually tastes better after a few days more.

Spare parts

For Gene Café roasters we stock the bump rubber / blade cushion CR73-005A and the motor gear CRA75-016A. Check the part number against your model before you order.