Gene Cafe ULTIMATE Beginner's Guide! | CBR-101 Home Coffee Roasting Tutorial 

David - wanted to comment that I changed to the CBR-101 from the SR-800 based on your tutorial. Couldn't be happier! I also took the opportunity to visit your store and purchased my first coffees from The Captain's Coffee. I truly appreciated the personal message you wrote on the invoice. That's just...not the experience I've had with other coffee distributors. So thanks for all you do to educate and enable the coffee fanatics across the country.

Great video. I've had my Gene for over 15 years and I love it. Initially I went through a couple heating elements before the manufacturer upgraded the element and the last replacement (upgraded) element I installed is still heating just fine. I roast primarily for my espresso machine and I prefer single origin beans. My favorite is washed Ethiopian Yirgacheffe taken to just before 2nd crack or full city (no black oily Starbuck's for me thank you). My recipe for the last 3-4 years after a few years experimenting, is: I dump 230g of beans in the chamber I set the temp to 365ºF and dry the beans for 10 minutes until they reach straw color, then I spin up the heat to 471ºF for 6 minutes and let it run through to the auto cooling cycle. I dump the beans into a chaffing dish and let them come to room temp before placing them in a open storage container to let them degass for at least 48 hours before placing them in the freezer. If I plan to use them right away, I will let them degass for at least 5 days. I usually let the Gene cool back down to near room temp before the next batch. I believe the manual that came with my Gene recommended this and I've almost always done it that way. I have stored beans in the freezer for up to 4 months in airtight containers before I notice any loss of flavor or texture. I use a Profitec Pro 600 for brewing. The only hack I have done on my Gene is gluing a piece of fine mesh over the fan air inlet on the bottom of the machine to prevent sucking in dust. The first time I opened it to replace the heating element there was more dust inside than I thought there should be. The mesh works fine.

Wow best video on RU-vid. Just purchased this roaster and wished I watched this video before the roast. Thanks

Roasted the first batch in my life this day. Thank you for tutorial, it's tremendously helpful!

Coffee bro, thanks for making this video. It's the most helpful video on this device that I've found.

Thanks for the video it was really helpful and instructive

Excellent, I did it well by following what you show, thank you for sharing

Thank you, the video was very helpful. Much appreciated.

Thank you, very informative to those of us shopping for our first roaster!

Awesome video, thank you

Very helpful, i now know why sone of my roasts take a bit to long, i don't pre-heat enough for long enough. Thanks a lot for this video!

Great video and exactly what I needed. We've had the Gene for a little over a year and really have not used it much but plan to do so for sample roast as we have a Diedrick 3 kilo for our larger roast. I was concerned about pre heat but I can see the benefits.

Great starter for me, Captain, I just got lucky and was offered a Gene C from a fellow leaving the country and couldn't take the roaster with him. Now I'll need some beans to start doing my own roasting. Good job, Dave, and see you in the next video for roasting. Thanks!

Great video! ugh , want one!

This is very helpful thanks man 😊

Just got a Gene Cafe roaster from my wife for Christmas - this was the perfect video to get started! I’ve previously used the iRoast & iRoast 2.

I bought the machine today. Amazing video.

Awesome video

I just saw Mike's (Virtual Labs) video on the Gene where he gives you credit for lending him the Gene and giving him some beans. This impressed me, you are a kind soul.

Great and very informative video. I have been thinking about getting into home roasting, this machine seems to be a good beginner/home roaster.

This is a good video for gene cafe users. In the eight years i've had mine, i don't recall hearing any alarms temperaure wise, neither mention of them on the manual. Mine still runs strong, so for the price i paid for it, i'm happy. It isn't perfect though, it would be lovely if the fan could blow more air thus cooling the beans faster. It is true that getting to hear cracks could be tricky, depending on the coffe. Maintaning the chaff colector clean is a good idea, as it seems to me that chaff muffles sound a bit (at least is what it seems to me, i dont have actual evidence).

I just did this roast with the only exception being I went a little longer-18 seconds past your total time-I like my beans a little darker. So I’ll let them rest for a few days and then I’ll try them. I forgot to mention I used a blend of 5 different Guatemalan beans and Indian Peaberry Robusta, so some of the initial drying phase and browning phase was less consistent and FC didn’t happen til just after 9 mins. I cooled externally with GeneCafes cooling unit.

Nice video and I would like to see a dark roast in the future

Excellent video. Very helpful. Been using a FreshRoast SR500 for a few years now and looking to upgrade.

That looks familiar lol great video David

My Gene Cafe is arriving tomorrow. Hoping I can remember all of this process.

Without watching your video I roast the same way... I read it in an article of a roaster (professional). And after messing around with profiles came to the same conclusion

Great info and you are yummy so I'm subscribing!

Wow now i want to know more about coffee roasting

Great video, lately most med roasts seem like dark roasts. Would love to roast my own so i can dial in a bean i like.

The long awaited Gene cafe video! Thanks for the work getting it out. Do you do similar process for lighter roasts? Maybe it's my machine or my roasting environment but typically my machine will always reach my temp setpoint well before 1C. Would this indicate too much heat going in to fast? I'm always afraid of scorching or tipping because of how fast I get to final temp so I tend to set my temp a little lower, but then sometimes get underdevelopment if I try and roast light.

Hola. estaba preocupado porque creí q la maquina no funcionaba. pero gracias a su video, logré tostar luego de un par de intentos. muchas gracias.

Thanks for this. Any chance of doing an Ethiopian natural demonstration?

Wanna see another Demo Roast and Gene Cafe breakdown? Mike @VirtualCoffeeLab has an awesome video! ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-QzJiMS_8An4.html *UPDATE DECEMBER 2022*: Since the release of this video, the manufacturer has clarified their stance regarding pre-heating the CBR-101: "We do not recommend preheating the roast chamber. This will dry out the blade cushions on the swing arm prematurely." - Gene Cafe USA. If you're looking to pick up a Gene Cafe, Unroasted coffee or any other home roasting supplies, support our channel by shopping with us! thecaptainscoffee.com/

Hi David, have a look at a video I did roasting Brazil Natural, on my Gene Cafe Roaster, hope you enjoy it 🙂

I started my roasting journey with a Behmor but went to a Freshroast 500 for its simplicity. That was when I started enjoying roasting! I then got the SR800 with an extension tube. My mind just can't leave the idea of a Gene Cafe alone. I appreciate this video. I had never heard of your website and will for sure consider getting one through you if i decide to pull the trigger!! Are there ever any sales on them? Again...thank you!

I've been happily using my Gene Cafe for 13 years (superb reliability BTW) and since I like what I get I never really considered adding a preheat stage or doing external cooling. I do point a small fan to the outside of the drum from a close range, and that reduces cooling time by about a minute, getting the roaster from 235c to 150c in about 2 minutes. I assume not much roasting is happening below 150c, so at that point I just clamp the fan and let it blow air from a bit more of a distance. Not sure this really makes much of a difference, but it's a habit that doesn't require much effort and prevents the chance of getting a burn if I'm not careful enough moving the beans to external cooling. Do you think preheating and external cooling are worth the effort? Have you had a chance to evaluate their impact in a blind triangle test where roasts of different technique (e.g. with internal vs external cooling) are adjusted to achieve the same roast level?

I'm considering roasting as I'm a long time coffee lover. I have a difficult time keeping coffee I prefer on hand. We have tried store bought coffees and my top 2 choices Starbucks French Toast Dark made from Arabica beans and recently beans sold by My Coffee. So I need to achieve that dark rich flavor to be satisfied. However, in doing that I may experience some new taste along the way. I utilize a Jura Expresso / Coffee maker that utilizes grinding is beans while in the expressing process. So questions are, beans, their cost, availability and shelf life in roasted. Thank you

I roast so differently, I’m sure I’ve read not to pre-heat the chamber because the heating element can blow. Anyway, I usually roast to 240-245c, it takes about 13 minutes, I roast for other people and they all like it so I can’t be too wrong. I’ve decided to experiment so I bought some beans for that and I’ll pre-heat the same as you just to see and learn.

I want to buy one! Is there sales tax to shipping to SC? Thanks for this video.

Could you please help me for trouble shooting E4 error in this machine coz my machine is now having this error. Please kindly help .

I really enjoy your videos im very impressed on your knowledge of the roasting process. I roast coffee as my career for starbucks. We roast on 2 roasters called a train that yield about 500 or more pounds per cycle. Cycle times vary due to roasting curves and flavor profiles we are trying to achieve. We have times and temps we have to achieve at certain times in the roast for each roasting curve to get the desired color we want our beans to be. We have 6 different roasting curves we use. I really want to start roasting my own coffee as a hobby. This machine looks like a lot of fun. It’s so cool to be able to hear the pop of the beans we know about the time and temp in the roast cycle when its supposed to happen but because of the shear volume we can’t hear anything but the the burner and cooling fans running most of the time. Our plant produces an average of 3.1 millions pound per week. That’s green coffee to roasted to packaged . Thanks so much for sharing this video. Im seriously thinking of buying a roaster and if i do ill buy through you guys as well as the green

Hi is the fan speed constant. Does it vary with remperature control Thanks Mark

If you aim for a lighter roast, how much should you weit after first crack?

Is it for roasting filter coffee or is espresso also possible? :) greets from Germany

How do you switch between C and F temperatures? We have been told it is possible.

I use Gene and prefer the SR...more even roast...less baby sitting...I'm looking at your roast at 22:00 to 23:00 and I would call that slightly uneven

How long after the roast do you actually brew the coffee (for espresso) and how would you storage it in the meantime?

I would like to purchase this roaster. I am very much a beginner in roasting, having used a hot air popcorn popper. How easy is this for someone like me?

If anyone needs to vent to outside thru their kitchen window the exhaust is the same size as gas hot water heaters you can pickup that size flex pipe up at Lowe’s and HomeDepot and when it needs cleaned just buy more flex pipe

Is this easy to vent out a window?

Anyone knows how to change Fº to Cº on Gene Cafe?

I had this roast machine for 2 years and I experimented a lot with various settings and coffees There is only one way to roast with gene cafe and have REALLY good results Batch size, 200gr for low medium dense beans and 150 for really high dense Preheat at max temp for 10' and then act quick and put the beans inside Roast at max temp and watch for 1st crack Now, if you want city roast, 15"-30" after finished 1st crack, stop the machine and quickly cool the beans with a fan outside the glass, I had a diy sieve for this

Would it work to start a little business?

You said you like to preheat your device and roasting chamber and I assume you do not have any problems with that. I read the manual and it says Do not preheat chamber without beans in the chamber. The manufacturer must think it is unsafe. Your thoughts.

This roaster is not available in South Africa 😢😢😢

Man, is this dude cheesy. Couldn’t get past the intro.