@delta76 I went for the Ikawa for a few reasons. My intention long term is to learn a bit about roasting; tweak the roast profiles via the graph editor and cup the results to see how different curves affect different coffee etc. then upgrade to a larger capacity roaster like the Bullet for ease of roasting larger quantities.
Whilst it’s the ‘easy mode’ version, I wanted something that at least replicates how some of the bigger roasters operate in terms of profile graphs etc.
One main reason for me is that the Ikawa is ‘almost’ smokeless. I don’t even use the cooker hood and just roast next to an open window. The smell isn’t strong and dissipates quickly. Even after roasting 600g earlier in the week the smell was gone in a few minutes.
Also, the Ikawa cools the roasted beans and empties the chaff as part of the process which makes the whole thing very simple. Given that you can just keep dropping the green beans into the hopper and pressing ‘go’, it’s easy to do multiple roasts back to back.
Lastly, Ikawa sell greens themselves and have roast profiles set up for them. You don’t have to use them, but I’d guess this is a huge factor in the quality of my early results. I’m sure there will be a bit more trial and error with third-party beans.
To be honest, I don’t think there’s much in it between the Ikawa and the Kaffeelogic, I just like how the Ikawa hardware/software looks and works.
