Let me first start off by saying this was roast #63, so I don't think I am an unexperienced noob.
But at the end of this roast, I did feel like an unexperienced noob.
While trying to determine how to clean the glass carafe of the Gene, I removed the center
metal vane with the swinging chaff deflector. I decided to I needed Cafiza to clean the stains
on the glass properly, replaced the metal vane, and went to the PC to order Cafiza.
Fast forward 3 days. I am roasting 8oz of Ethiopian Sidamo Maduro from Sweet Maria's, marking
down temps at 30 second intervals. The roast profile I was using for this bean was a hot Gene,
dump beans, set temp for 476dgf until FC, then back off to ~467dgf. At the 3:30 minute mark,
I was already at 435dgf, but I heard the clicking of the heater saying it was at requested temperature.
Seeing it was only at 435dgf, instead of 476dgf, I started to look for issues. Yep variac is working
properly, Kill-A-Watt is reading 121v. But heat coming out of the large chaff collector is not as hot as it
should be. A look inside the dirty Gene carafe (Cafiza has not arrived yet) shows huge amount of chaff clogging the out vent of the carafe. And the swinging chaff deflector is indeed swinging, just not over the chaff exit vent.
When I put the metal vane back into the glass carafe, I installed it incorectlye, so the swinging chaff deflector was not over the exit vent. On with the Ove Gloves, "E-Stop" the Gene, make necessary repair, and back on with the Gene to finish the roast. The repair took about 1 minute to diagnose, and ~4 minutes to repair. Instead of an expected FC of ~10 minutes, I had a FC of 16 minutes. Still haven't tried the beans yet, so maybe I was able to save the roast.
The chaff that was cleaned out of the carafe during the repair time, was wet from moisture that was escaping the bean, but not exiting the carafe. My initial fears of "oh crap, my Gene heater is failing since it won't go over 435dgf", quickly turned into "oh crap, what a friggin idiot I am".
So, in keeping with the thread title, a gentle reminder/tip to all Gene owners, make sure to orient the metal vane properly to allow the chaff deflector to swing over the carafe exit vent after removal of the metal vane for cleaning.