How Do You Land Your Roasts? - Page 2

Discuss roast levels and profiles for espresso, equipment for roasting coffee.
DavidZ
Posts: 80
Joined: 5 years ago

#11: Post by DavidZ »

crunchybean wrote:Maybe this might help your understanding of the Ikawa At Home http://www.vimeo.com/126287904
I buy my greens from SM and create my own profiles. I cannot make adjustments during the roast and with the Home model my charge (I consider) is the profile at 1-2minute mark. In the pro Ikawa the charge is like a normal drum roaster.

The Ikawa is simply a machine that sets a consistent temperature. I'm sure I can roast just as well on any machine that is able to reliably control temperature.
crunchybean,

Have you seen this Ikawa Home Roaster video/review? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtezESKJsLY

It's a long video, but I think it's great. If you click on "SHOW MORE", you'll see he's bookmarked sections of the video. Check out the last section called "Advanced Roasting and Conclusion," in which he gives tips on roasting profiles and how he does it. Also, he gives you a link to download the baseline profile that he starts with as a template when he gets a new type of coffee greens.

Lastly, there's a community for Ikawa coffee roasters. Do they have a library of roast profiles you can download as starting templates?

crunchybean (original poster)
Posts: 463
Joined: 7 years ago

#12: Post by crunchybean (original poster) »

I just checked out the video, seems good, I skipped over the other stuff and watched the "AR and C" segment, also good. He is correct that getting drinkable coffee is easy but that perfect roast is actually fairly hard. I'm still learning like the rest of us. Yes there are premade profiles that come from Ikawa that are already on the app, the forum has profiles posted by users. I do a search of "share.ika" which is part of the profile link, and that is an ok way to search the forum. There is no library yet of member made profiles, besides the one you keep on the app. A library is probably in the works, but we aren't too fussy of a community. I'll prob roast some coffee tomorrow and give his profile a whirl.

false1001
Posts: 279
Joined: 6 years ago

#13: Post by false1001 »

FWIW, RoR is the "speed" of the roast.

I always try to aim to enter FC with as high of an RoR as possible while still maintaining a downward trajectory. As long as my RoR is constantly declining (decelerating) I haven't been able to burn beans, no matter how high my RoR is. The higher your RoR in absolute terms as you enter FC the more you will highlight sweetness and acidity as well, in my experience.

DavidZ
Posts: 80
Joined: 5 years ago

#14: Post by DavidZ »

crunchybean wrote:I just checked out the video, seems good, I skipped over the other stuff and watched the "AR and C" segment, also good. He is correct that getting drinkable coffee is easy but that perfect roast is actually fairly hard. I'm still learning like the rest of us. Yes there are premade profiles that come from Ikawa that are already on the app, the forum has profiles posted by users. I do a search of "share.ika" which is part of the profile link, and that is an ok way to search the forum. There is no library yet of member made profiles, besides the one you keep on the app. A library is probably in the works, but we aren't too fussy of a community. I'll prob roast some coffee tomorrow and give his profile a whirl.
I have been researching the Ikawa Home Roaster over the last few days. Other than the small batch size (50g to 60g max), the biggest issue I have with this roaster is the proprietary roast curves. I'm not talking about the proprietary app, which it does have. I'm talking about the fact that the roast curves are based on the inlet air temperature rather than the bean temperature. The result is that the roast curves are essentially in a foreign language for which there is no Rosetta stone. You can't take a standard roast curve of bean temperature and convert it to a roast curve for the Ikawa Home Roaster. Unless you're a very experienced roaster, I don't see how you can make corrections to improve your roasts. You're working in the dark. Unless the beans you're roasting have a roast profile developed by a professional roaster, seems to me that you're working at a significant disadvantage.

Is that what you're finding? Or is the fine tuning process easier than I'm concluding from my research?

crunchybean (original poster)
Posts: 463
Joined: 7 years ago

#15: Post by crunchybean (original poster) »

BT is just another probe, it may matter what language you speak in the beginning but triangulating from a different point is still part of the triangle. So speaking the "Ikawa" language is no different than going from English to Kirundi. I can still call 1C at a specific temp (consistently), mark color transitions, etc and go from there. I think the only lack for want on this roaster, is to make real time adjustments. The roaster is great but also for the same reason very unforgiving. The inside is made of aluminum and the cyclone creates a very even temp distribution. This all leads (in my belief) for a more uneven roast, any errors or lack in compensation in a profile results in the cup clearly. Thankfully at a low risk/cost. There isn't a large thermal mass nor thermal capacity that can build up and release into beans unevenly, which would result in a more even roast. Beans are also not spherical. Anybody who knows how lift is created understands in turn, that energy will be applied unevenly on a bean in this wind tunnel. With this roaster, knowlege and understanding is truly power. Able to create some mind bending roasts but also at a high difficultly level. On the other side of the coin, I could just roast to charbucks level, and doing it well, will require experience and blending knowledge. With all due credit Starbucks to me, is a style of roasting worth learning how to replicate. Lastly, like in the video I can find a great roast but I'll take the next 30+ roasts of my 5lb bag of whatever bean to probe more into (what seems like) the endless amount of questions and hypotheses I have. It certainly will be throusands or more roasts until I have truly feel comfortable saying, "I know how to roast coffee".

Full disclosure I bought my Ikawa during the Kickstarter so I paid less. Also to me I bought the Ikawa because it was a smaller batch size because I knew I wanted to explore and a low cost threshold. I was also aware of the lack of information available on how to roast either communally or scientifically, and knew I would be carving my own understanding either way. To this day nobody can tell me the thermal pathway of diacetal, what it's precursors are or threshold potentials etc etc yada yada yada.

DavidZ
Posts: 80
Joined: 5 years ago

#16: Post by DavidZ »

OK, but here's what I don't understand. When you look at some of the roast curves that professional roasters came up with for their prepackaged coffees you'll see these big spikes in some of them. In your experimentation, would you ever think to design a curve like that? From what cupping result would you think to go in a direction like that?

crunchybean (original poster)
Posts: 463
Joined: 7 years ago

#17: Post by crunchybean (original poster) »

Can you list an example, I am generally against the "Spike", no doubt alienating myself from the cerebrally challenged community members who lord it as something delicious. Jk. But seriously it causes tipping for me in my climate (warm to hot always humid, generally).

DavidZ
Posts: 80
Joined: 5 years ago

#18: Post by DavidZ »

Look at the long video I posted for you. Watch the first few minutes of the next to last section called "Roasting with the App" and you'll see an example of a preprogrammed profile with a large spike.

Post Reply