Behmor VS Gene Cafe or other....

[Whorl]

Well don't I feel... I saw all the behmor parts and must have missed the gene cafe ones! Well now that's complicating my decision further! Thanks Andy

[Andy]

Consider yourself corrected Whorl

Gene Cafe and Behmor parts in BeanBay (landed with the roasters)
https://beanbay.coffeesnobs.com.au/V...coffee-brewers

[Whorl]

Awesome, that's what I was looking for! It seems the decision is between behmor with the readily available and user serviceable parts, genecafe with no user serviceable parts (correct me if I'm wrong!), and the kaffelogic with fully automated repeatable roasts (and a pricetag to match).
Decisions!

[Barry O'Speedwagon]

Both roasters are capable of producing good quality light and dark roasts.

[YeastNCaffeine]

Whorl My understanding is the Behmor can take your beans at least to second crack and a little beyond - so that's dark enough for me I think. I don't need burnt/oily beans but reasonably dark is where I'm aiming at initially. Lighter roasts are obviously not an issue at all. I just haven't done enough roasts to comment beyond that regarding the Behmor.

[Whorl]

Thanks for the response! And yes, have read enough to understand that I'm not actually going to save money or break even in the long term (my eyes are open on this!)
My goal at least is to spend a larger amount of money now, with perhaps spending a little less on a monthly basis for the beans themselves. More hobby than money saving I suppose, like anything else related to home coffee.
My question is more and whether the equipment in question are capable of producing the results I'm looking for in a roast. So light-ish roast for filter through to a bit darker for espresso.

[NewToEspresso]

Not meaning to hijack another thread, but I'm currently in the same boat considering these (behmor, genecafe, possibly kaffelogic).
My question is on what experience people have trying to roast light to medium roasts (for aeropress/filter). Love a good yirg, and want to cut down a proper on regular expenditure Happy to pay upfront for a roaster if it means regular cost for buying beans is less.

Has probably been mentioned before, but those of us who started out making our own coffees because we thought we'd save money buying them and then onto roasting our own because we wanted to save money rather than buy them inevitably find that we don't save very much (if any) money from these. The reason is because we find as we make our own coffees (which then applies to roasting too), we suddenly discover that we only stumbled onto the tip of the iceberg and that our coffee can get so much better with different equipment (ie. grinders, machines etc..). You may have started out with a basic home setup, say a Sunbeam grinder and Gaggia classic. Shortly after you might find the sunbeam grinder doesn't quite cut it so onto a Compak K3. Then you start entertaining friends (pre-COVID) and the Gaggia Classic can barely keep up if you need to make 6 lattes in a hurry. In comes an E61 blink and out goes $2k-3k.
Then you discover roasting. One thing about home roasting, the Behmor makes it easier but refinement and getting good consistent results still takes experience and lots of practice whereas if you have been buying beans from Andy, you'll have benefitted from his vast experience and get top shelf coffee from the start.

In short, a few things to consider before home roasting. But saving money isn't really one of them. This tends to apply to a lot of other hobbies and interests as well eg. someone buys a boat because he doesn't want to keep paying professional charters to take him out fishing... big money pit, that one!

[Whorl]

Not meaning to hijack another thread, but I'm currently in the same boat considering these (behmor, genecafe, possibly kaffelogic).
My question is on what experience people have trying to roast light to medium roasts (for aeropress/filter). Love a good yirg, and want to cut down a proper on regular expenditure Happy to pay upfront for a roaster if it means regular cost for buying beans is less.

[Barry O'Speedwagon]

I just thought I'd mention I've read the manual for the Behmor and although it's a pretty dry read I did laugh when I read a section that discusses square pegs not fitting into round holes :-) (it's when they talk about inserting the drum basket into the machine).

Wait til you get to the bit that says 'There's no smoke without fire'. Or in the later manual 'You can't start a fire without a spark'.

[YeastNCaffeine]

I just thought I'd mention I've read the manual for the Behmor and although it's a pretty dry read I did laugh when I read a section that discusses square pegs not fitting into round holes :-) (it's when they talk about inserting the drum basket into the machine).

[lemoo]

I roasted on a behmor for 7-8 years (same unit with a couple of parts replaced through the years) and managed to rack up a few golden bean medals
I recently bought a gene cafe to replace the ageing behmor, partly curious partly couldn't wait for the AB anymore

I can without a doubt recommend either one equally. They are just simply both great roasters
I only ever roast 300g of greens at one time so the changeover to the gene was easy
The one thing i did like about the gene was that it was much easier to get the beans out quickly to cool externally vs the behmor. Other than that you're not going to go wrong with either one

[Superman]

Biggest improvement I did to my roasts were to cool the beans outside the Behmor. Dump it onto a bucket with a sieve and ceiling exhaust fan to suck air through the bean mass. This is as close to a commercial cooling process as you'll get in a domestic environment.

[jazzy_boy]

I think no-one buys a roaster because it's economical. We buy one because it's fun to experiment with roasting your own beans. I personally do a combination of roast my own and buy commercial beans. Unless you really want to spend a lot of time learning and perfecting your skills, nothing beats a commercial roast.

Just to throw the spanner in the works... I have used both the Gene Cafe and the HotTop roasters for 12 years. The GeneCafe gives a beautiful even roast and handles the chaff so beautifully. The problem IMO with both the GeneCafe and the Behmor, is the same.. their cooling cycles. On both of them, you have to get good at judging when to press STOP and start the cooling and you have to do this before the beans reach your target roast level... because they are slow to cool and they are cooling in the same space they roasted in. ON the HoTop you press the EJECT button, the moment the beans reach their desired temperature and roast level and they are quickly fan-cooled. This is closer to the commercial technique of roasting and is definitely easier for those of us who roast only a couple times a month.

[Andy]

Westpac business accounts don't have PayID (yet) and when they do it will be our ABN or ACN. PayID is just shorthand for the BSB and Account number, it's nothing more and shouldn't be a requirement for an Osko transfer.

Osko works fine through BSB and Account numbers with most banks.

[YeastNCaffeine]

Yeah too late now - it's done - Andy - it's sent though. I couldn't see your pay ID for Osko on the invoice page?