IKAWA Home Roasting System Review Discussion

[drgary]

We're now featuring the IKAWA Home Roasting System Review. Here's the discussion thread. We welcome your comments.

[Auctor]

Still reading and digging in, but incredibly well done. Thank you for doing this.

[GDM528]

Pro-class review! I hope this warrants a "Roasters" category entry on the H-B Reviews page.

By the second posting, this review was a top hit on Bing search. I'm hoping Google catches up soon - it's still only showing the H-B review posted on November 2021. Can H-B inform Google there's a more current version now?

[drgary (original poster)]

By the second posting, this review was a top hit on Bing search. I'm hoping Google catches up soon - it's still only showing the H-B review posted on November 2021. Can H-B inform Google there's a more current version now?

Thanks, Gary! Kudos to you for all of your study of this roaster.

[Auctor]

Got a chance to re-read the review, and one question i had was related to roast curve shape. Is there any way to develop [3-5] generic roast curves that are generally recommended for XYZ origins or ABD roast style preference?

Said another way, let's say I buy a Brazil from Sweet Marie that's supposed to benefit from a light roast. Is there a roast curve that I can apply such that I get to an 80% answer, and then can make minor tweaks? Separately, I purchased a Yemen that likes a medium roast with a longer development. How can i use either a cheat sheet, or one of Ikawa's existing roast profiles, to get me in the ballpark of a decent roast?

[drgary (original poster)]

Good question. One way to go about this is to find a similar coffee on sites that post IKAWA Pro profiles, like Royal Crown Jewels. Another is to see what others have contributed in this thread:

IKAWA Home - profiles

A third is to develop your own version and share it. Let's say a bunch of us find a green we like in the roasting forum. If people are comparing roasts of that coffee or similar coffees, you can post there. Over time, we're building a library of shared profiles.

I found it easy to adjust curves in the direction I wanted. These were curves that others had posted, including IKAWA. Eventually, I think you find some curves that are a starting point for certain coffees and you tweak them from there. At these very small batch sizes, you won't waste much green to dial in a roast.

[Auctor]

Thanks Gary. I've owned the Home for quite a while, and am familiar with the current threads. Asked differently, let's assume that there are four basic variables to the curve: 1) initial temp; 2) final temp; 3) slope of the curve as you move from initial to final temp; and 4) development time.

Are there any "basic truths" that would help a novice roaster navigate a natural Ethiopia vs a washed Brazil vs an anaerobic Yemen? Like, and I'm making this up, a long development time and relatively flat slope would bake a coffee, or a steep slope for South Americans tend to yield more acidity vs a flatter curve. Or Africans should peak at xx degrees, vs Indonesians.

[drgary (original poster)]

Auctor, as you've written, you've owned the Home for quite awhile, so you've got more experience with it than I have. I've been roasting awhile but am not an expert roaster. What I liked about the Home offering is that they start you with a sampler pack of coffees and provided recipes and a description of where their roasts should take you.

Let's say you're trying an Ethiopian natural that's different than any of the coffees IKAWA provides. But you find an Ethiopian natural on their site. I would start there and taste it. If it's not quite to my liking, I would try adjusting the parameters in their recipe using the non-subscription interface. Does that get me to the taste I want? If yes, that's a good starter recipe for Ethiopian naturals. No? Is the acidity a bit too sharp? How about stretching the initial heating phase by 15 seconds using the Graph Editor. Now how does it taste? Mellower but a bit lemony? Try stretching development time a bit.

Or, another intermediate place to go would be to find a similarly described coffee on the Royal Crown Jewels site and download their IKAWA Pro profile. Also download the IKAWA Pro app. Open it the way I've described to find the inlet temperatures and input those into an IKAWA Home recipe, save and relabel it. Any of the ways just described will get you a roast that could be close to what you want and probably won't be a complete failure.

I don't think there's a quick way for someone to get to an expert roasting level and the fun of the hobby is working with the roaster to tweak the roasts of different coffees toward your preference.

Variables interrelate. You've got density; natural versus anaerobic versus semi-washed versus washed; bean varietal; bean size. And, if you visit some greens suppliers, they provide choices by flavor descriptors such as chocolate, fruity, floral, acidity, balance, mouthfeel. There's water content, water activity, and so on. There's a lot to learn and compare.

So let's say you have a natural, a coffee dried in the fruit before the fruit is removed. There will be sugars on the surface of the bean that you don't want to burn off. If you roast it too dark, you'll lose its delicate flavors. But maybe there's some ferment from it drying in the fruit. But that coffee is also high-grown and dense, so you want to drive a fair amount of heat into that bean. So, maybe you heat it gradually, roast it long enough to develop the acidity and drop it on the light to medium side of development to mellow some of the funk and bring out chocolates. It's a matter of finding a good balance, which is why I would start with someone else's profile for a similar coffee and adjust from there. You can also view the recipes in Graph Editor or profiles in the Pro app and see how different professional roasters treat that type of coffee.

We have Home-Barista's Greens Alert and Green Coffee Exchange threads, separate threads in the Coffee Roasting forum where people discuss specific coffees, and of course the Coffees forum, where people are trying professional roaster offerings, and some of those roasters offer greens of the coffees they roast. There's lots to explore, starting with what you like and stretching the boundaries.

I had on hand a pound of Haitian Blue Mountain, which would give me one shot at it on my 1 Kg roaster where my standard roast is 750g but I've only got 454g and my lowest controllable small charge so far is about 350g. So I thought, it's a low acid coffee and it isn't likely to be dense. I started with one of their recipes for a Brazil, which is low acid and not dense. To be more systematic about this, I would measure out 100g and measure the volume to help calibrate this coffee, maybe comparing that volume to 100g of a Brazil that I know that isn't dense. I went for the lightest possible roast in that recipe, light roast, short development time, guessing that even a very light roast wouldn't be very sour and could maximize its intensity of flavor. With my educated guess, that first roast was so rounded and nice when pulled as espresso that I stuck with it and roasted the rest of the pound of that recipe for later consumption. If I'd owned the IKAWA, I would have used that recipe again for that result. If I wanted to try a more developed version of that coffee, I'd still start it with the same initial heat settings but might stretch the development time and end at higher temperature. Maybe I'd exaggerate that last part in my profile adjustment but would sniff the exhaust and when I'm smelling what I want, hit the Go button to start the Cooling cycle. If liked that roast, it would be a good place to start for more developed low density coffees, like a Brazil or Maui Mokka, maybe, although there you've got tiny beans, so I'd start that experiment lighter again.

So, I'll throw the question back to you. What parameters would you choose to generalize roasting approaches on the IKAWA Home? You can suggest those and share recipes where you've gotten close to the desired result, modified the recipe and nailed it. Then, that recipe is a good starting point for a coffee with that description.

Doing the review and looking at some of the current Home-Barista threads intrigues me to try some new things on my 1 Kg propane, drum roaster. I want to try some higher airflow roasts where I'm better controlling inlet temperature and not exceeding some exhaust or environmental temperatures. I'd like to review some of my probe placement, especially the bean temperature probe and the hottest point high up in the fire box. I may want to specially drill that BT probe holder to steady that probe and point it to the lowest practical point in the bean mass a bit back from the release door. That might help me track BT in even smaller batch sizes. Or, I could do smaller batches with lower inlet and exhaust temps, relying on the tryer and exhaust smells. And, I might sell some gear and get my own IKAWA Home. But I'm not in a hurry, because I already have a very nice roaster and people who share most of that coffee while I experiment.

If I'm not quite addressing what you want, let's continue the discussion here.

[mariowar]

Gary, what a great and detailed review.

I have roasting on the 100g version since December 2021 after roasting with a Behmor for about 7 years.

I have had a great roasting experience during this time to the point that I ended up purchasing one for my brother who got the coffee itch as well.

In my experience, most of the Ikawa beans do not match their roasting profiles in the app. Frequently, I would end up with under roasted (grassy beans). Therefore, the graphic editor is a must my humble option. Sometimes, the additional profiles in the app work but at the expense of something that you might not want. In my particular case I love medium/medium light roasts and just extending the development time, I would end up with darker roasts and this is not what I was aiming for.
With the graphic editor, what I do is trying to adjust the initial phase to match the 1st crack on the app, this way I get the development phase recommended by Ikawa. This is my starting point.

Since I live in Texas, I usually get my green beans from either Sweet Marias and Roastmasters. I tried Green Coffee Buying Club, with no luck.....

I need to try some Ikawa Pro recipes !

[drgary (original poster)]

Gary, what a great and detailed review.

Thanks!

Mario, could you say more about this, maybe with screen shots?

With the graphic editor, what I do is trying to adjust the initial phase to match the 1st crack on the app, this way I get the development phase recommended by Ikawa.