Does your Gene Roaster make a lot of smoke? One of the main reasons why I hesitate about buying a roaster is that I'm worried about setting off the smoke detectors in my house. Even though I'd be roasting at a medium level, I'm afraid there may still be too much smoke.
Some people I know roast under an externally vented cooker hood and say it takes out most/all of the smoke....personally I find it hard to believe, but then again in the US you do have much better Kitchens and appliances than us.
I read that the Gene roaster now comes with an attachment where you can put a hose on the top and redirect the smoke out of the window. It's an alternative, rather than having to set up the roaster out on my porch in the dead of winter.
I think the large chaff collector is a much better option as it can then be vented out of a Window (I do this in my workshop). It has the added advantage of being able to see the smoke and get even better visual cues (because it's more concentrated at the end of the tube).
I like that it roasts up to 1/2 pound of beans. If I'm going to go through all of the trouble of roasting, I'd want enough roasted beans to last a couple of days.
I completely agree....I always roast minimum 250g (8.8 oz) in the Gene, regardless of the type of coffee (you can ignore the manufacturers warnings). The maximum capacity is stated as 300g (10.5 oz), but you can ignore that also. I don't generally get much success beyond 275g (which I will quite often use in warmer weather.
One of the huge advantages of the Gene is that you can back to back roast. I use the quick cool-down cycle, which takes around 4 minutes _16minutes or so for the roast....total 20 minutes.
As soon as the cool-down finishes, I empty the beans and immediately refill and start roasting another batch. In any 1 roasting session I do 3-5 batches (usually 5), to give me over a Kilo of roasted coffee.
I have used a 25kg commercial Probat, 1kg Toper Cafemino, the original Basic Hottop. In my personal opinion, the roasts from the Gene (if done properly) are far superior to that of the BASIC model hottop (I don't know about the others). The hottop will always turn your beans reliably brown, but there tends to be a baking and convergence of flavour I find not to my taste....with the Gene you can more clearly taste the variatels. With the Gene it's easier to screw up a roast until you get a bit of practice and you have to pay attention to get the best out of it.
With the basic hottop, i found roasts tended to be mediocre and your options to improve them are virtually nil as you don't have the controls. Perhaps the newer model hottops the B and P models are better as they have more control options...I don't know?
I have had my Gene for 18 months and roasted around 65kg (or 260 batches in it), it still works perfectly and still looks almost as new....no filters to buy and very minimal maintenance, no having to unscrew the front plate/drum and prod around for stuck beans like on the hottop (oh and you can't put a vent hose the hottop, no such attachment exists to the best of my knowledge).