Thanks all, I got mine and have done two sample 1 roasts with Sweet Maria's Tanzania Nitin Estate Peaberry and it is okay. I compared one roast waiting two days and one drinking the next day and did not notice much difference. Does anyone know how I can access the thousands of Ikawa profiles shared or if there is an existing Ikawa profile really close to what I should be using with these beans?

LidoGirl wrote:I compared one roast waiting two days and one drinking the next day and did not notice much difference.

You will usually be advised to allow at least five days for off-gassing before brewing freshly roasted beans.

LidoGirl wrote:Thanks all, I got mine and have done two sample 1 roasts with Sweet Maria's Tanzania Nitin Estate Peaberry and it is okay. I compared one roast waiting two days and one drinking the next day and did not notice much difference.

mathof wrote:You will usually be advised to allow at least five days for off-gassing before brewing freshly roasted beans.

Yes, though it depends on the coffee, roast level and brew method. Roasting produces CO2 in the beans. If there's too much CO when you brew, it can block contact between the water and the grounds, reducing extraction. This is more of a problem for light and some medium roasts, which are harder to extract to begin with, less of a problem with darker roasts. Generally speaking, espresso will be more sensitive to rest time than brewed coffee.

You can get around the rest time to some extent by grinding the coffee and allowing it to sit for an hour or more before brewing (see below for more on this trick.)

If you pull down the "hamburger" menu in the upper left corner of the Ikawa app, one of the selections will take you to Ikawa's online library. It doesn't have thousands of profiles, but it does have many useful ones. A lot of them are quite short -- on the order of five minutes -- and are designed for cupping. They may or may not work for brew, and very likely won't work for espresso, but can be edited to lengthen the roast time. I haven't done that because I'm still learning about the roaster (and have had great results with the Espresso Roast 1 profile so far, where all I have to do is drop the roast when the target DT has elapsed.) Look for somewhat longer profiles, say at least seven minutes in length, and also try some that run 9-10 minutes.

It sounds like you uses Sample Roast 1, which I'm virtually certain is designed for cupping. This likely won't be the best profile for brewed coffee. You'll need to lengthen it or try a profile with longer roast time.

You might try the Patrick Rolf WBrC 2019 profile in the Ikawa Online Library. It was the highest scoring cup in 2019 WBrC. He roasted it only six hours before the competition. Pretty sure I read somewhere that he ground it and let it sit for a few hours before the competition, which is the trick I described above. Ikawa's description says it's "more of a production roast than a sample roast", whatever that means, but I believe it'll be more suitable for drinking than Sample Roast 1. It's an 11-minute roast, which is pretty long by Ikawa standards (my espresso roasts only run about 8:30), but you can always manually drop the roast earlier if the profile is too dark for you (mark 1C when you hear the first pop, then push the upper button when DT or DTR get to the value you want.)

I haven't looked around for other profiles yet, though I've looked at some profiles on the Royal Coffee site. They publish profiles for several different roasters for every Crown Jewel they sell, and usually publish three different Ikawa profiles for each coffee. However, these appear to be sample roasts for cupping. I tried one of them for a Crown Jewel that I obtained from a fellow HB member, and it didn't work at all for espresso. It was drinkable for brew, but I felt it needed more development time.

I don't know where other profiles might be found. If anyone knows, please chime in. I imagine that some professional roasters, who make up the largest group of Pro owners, might consider their profiles proprietary. Still, there are plenty of profiles in the Ikawa library to explore all sorts of ways to roast the coffee. That should keep us busy for quite some time.

FWIW, I tend to roast two coffees per session. Usually one of them will be a coffee for which I have a good profile (i.e., have previously roasted and found a profile and DT that I like), and that'll be my "production" roast. Then I'll do two or three roasts of a coffee I haven't roasted before, using the Espresso Roast 1 profile. I like light and medium-light roasts, so I'll roast one to 1:00 DT and they other to, say, 1:15 DT or 1:30 DT (or all three.) After resting the coffee for at least five days, I'll pull my daily shot with one of the experimental roasts and add some tasting notes to the Ikawa Roast Log for that coffee. Once I find a DT that I like, I'll use it for "production" roasts of that coffee. If none of the roasts works for me, I'll try some of the other espresso profiles. But so far, I've found that the beans that don't work for the Espresso Roast 1 profile don't work well for other espresso profiles. I was never able to get good roasts with these beans in my Quest M3, either, so I'm pretty sure it's the beans, not the roast or roaster.

I don't believe I've roasted a peaberry. My understanding is that you have to be careful with heat with peaberry beans because they're small and easy to over-develop or bake.

I think I said in an earlier post that I've not bought any beans from SM that impressed me (and many that did not.) No aspersions on SM (bought those beans mostly when I was new to roasting), but I'd recommend trying beans from other top-notch roasters, especially Royal, Burman, Roastmaster, Klatch and Aida Batlle before coming to any conclusions about the Ikawa Pro. The beans will be more expensive than SM's, but given your investment in the Pro 100, it's worth a few extra dollars to get the best greens you can buy to make sure the results reflect the profile, not the quality of the bean.

If you haven't already, visit or subscribe to the Greens Alert thread here on HB. There's another thread devoted to splitting large greens purchases, like the boxes of Crown Jewels from Royal (Royal also sells 1lb bags of some Crown Jewels, but not all. I can't recall the name of that thread offhand, but maybe someone here will. There's also a thread devoted to Aida Batlle's coffee, which is superb.

So three recommendations: 1) Find profiles suitable for brew (not cupping), 2) let the roasted beans rest for at least five days or use the grind/rest trick, and 3) buy some top-quality beans.

Maybe this helps:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxiNW1d4bos
https://www.ikawacoffee.com/pro-sample- ... -profiles/

Cheers!

Btw...for a good cup of coffee, you just need a grinder that matches the high criteria of Ikawa roaster

Espressoman007 wrote:Maybe this helps:

video
https://www.ikawacoffee.com/pro-sample- ... -profiles/

Cheers!

LidoGirl is doing pourover, so maybe not. But there should be plenty of profiles in the library suitable for pourover. One of the great things about the Ikawa is how easy it is to try a bunch of different profiles on the same coffee.

[For espresso fans, so far I've tried only one of those SCA lecture profiles, Tony Querio's, and it didn't work as well for the Ethiopian Shantawene I was roasting as Espresso Roast 1. Jen Apodaca's is very short -- less than five minutes -- but she say's she designed it for max acidity and likes to pull long shots, which I imagine compensates for what looks like a very light espresso roast. Woodley's is somewhat short, too, but the temperature rise curve is steeper than Espresso Roast 1. Bear in mind that the stock Espresso Roast 1 profile is 10 minutes long, which I suspect produces a traditional, medium-to-dark roast. I drop my roasts around 8:00-9:00 with that profile, depending one when I hear the first pop of 1C, for 0:45-1:30 DT. That produces light to medium-light roasts.]

Espressoman007 wrote:Btw...for a good cup of coffee, you just need a grinder that matches the high criteria of Ikawa roaster

+1

Sure, but I also left links for those who might haven't seen them and could be helpful using Pro version. Unfortunately, we, who have Home version are not nearly that lucky with that variety of profiles which are made by professionals for Pro version.

I wonder if Ikawa will manufacture Home 100g version?

Cheers!

Thanks everyone, I am loving the Pro and appreciate all the advice on roast profiles from the app and suggestions on where to buy better beans, etc.

To answer the grinder question, I am using a Lido 3 .

Also, has anyone with the Pro experienced a rattle during the cool down cycle? I know, it is probably the beans, but it started doing it the other day and I hadn't remembered it doing that before, so thought I would ask.

Can't say I've noticed a rattle during cooling, but that doesn't mean it's not there. Can you post a video of it?

I have not noticed a rattle either. If you do post the video @peppersass suggests, I will also have a listen.

I got an email from Ikawa last week offering to set up a 15m meeting to see how things are going. That's pretty sweet support.

I'm presently enjoying Klatch Ethiopia Super Wush ASD Natural roasted with the Ikawa Espresso Roast 1 profile.

Sure, I could probably post a video, it just started doing it Sat, like I mentioned in my previous post, but had not done it before. Now it is also not spinning at all during the actual roast and not blowing any chaffe. It just sort of burns the beans and the color of the beans is totally uneven.

It was working fine before Sat and now seems to be having several few issues. I bought it open box so I think I might just return it and start over, but feel free to let me know your thoughts before I do.

BTW, does anyone know if the Pro Roast Library on the app is all the profiles there are and then you have to tweak your own from there?

Thank you!