Just a short clip of the end of a roast showing my favorite part, where it blows out all the beans in the cup! The nice thing about the roaster is it keeps things pretty neat, the Behmor and FreshRoast SR800 you will likely find chaff escaping and landing all over the place.
One double-walled glass collects the chaff as it roasts, then you swap jars after the cooling phase is finished and it spits the coffee into the 2nd cup.
Been getting some nice roasts out of the Ikawa, I like the roaster, it seems pretty smart and easy to use, but not sure I love the company, their pricing and marketing tactics! (Keep reading for more details! )
The smart roaster is very dependent on the phone app software which allows you to connect to the roaster via Bluetooth, select and modify roast profiles and send it to the roaster. I found there's a big different in the experience and features depending on whether your phone is an iPhone or Android.
The Android version hasn't been updated, but the iPhone version has.
The new (iPhone) version is a lot more user friendly with profiles that are kind of editable but in a guided way, where you can select a roast level and adjust low, medium or high development time (time after first crack).
However, they do not allow you to modify profiles manually and create your own profiles using your own chosen temperatures, roast times and fan speeds. The older version apparently had that and the older Android version has it still! If you want to manually create profiles you need to PAY an monthly subscription fee (after already purchasing their expensive roaster) :o
On the Android it's more basic, not as user friendly but allows you to manually control fan power levels, temperatures, and roast time (as well as cooling time) it's adjustable but not infinitely so, it has max time and temperature limits, as well as min fan speed, this is acceptable, as it's a safeguard to prevent fires and not so restrictive.
I feel the android app is better for experienced roasters and people who want to experiment more after getting to know how the Ikawa works. Where the iPhone app is more for people who want an easy / guided experience and are new to roasting, or even just new to using this machine.
For either android or iPhone they also seem to only have specific profiles for their OWN expensive green coffees, which makes it seem like they're selling their roaster, only to hook you into buying their green coffee. So for most green coffees (non Ikawa green coffees), you'll have to choose one of their Ikawa profiles which you think would be suitable, like if they have an Natural ethiopian profile, and you're roasting a natural Ethiopian, it would likely be a good place to start!
The roasts are FAST like 8-10 minutes and to me the development time for a lot of these profiles seems like it's very short, I barely hit first crack and 30 seconds later it's going to the cooling phase. (Today I experimented with longer development times though) Amazingly though I haven't had any roasts that seemed under-roasted which usually gives you a gross grassy taste. They've all been pretty good. I've definitely had a higher success rate so far with this machine vs the Behmor 1600 and FreshRoast SR800, although I think FreshRoast does give you the most control, you have full control over heat level and fan speed for the whole roast, and can change things MID roast on the fly, depending on how things are 'developing' however, the down side is it's not easily repeatable.
With the Ikawa you don't really have any control on the fly, other than to skip to the cooling phase, so I'm thinking later I'll make a custom profile (on the android app) that just gets relatively hot and stays hot for a while, so I can manually end it when I think the roast has enough development time.
The Pro version of the Ikawa is much more expensive, it adds a Pre-heat feature, (an extra button too which does... something) and more sensors so you can get the bean temperature, input and exhaust temperature I believe, so it is more 'pro'.
They have their own PRO app too, which apparently isn't perfect either, but IS more full featured, and gives you much more control and more set points you can choose for temperature and fan speed changes (without having to pay a monthly fee).
The pro version also seems to have some NON IKAWA high end coffee profiles like ones used from coffee championships etc which would be cool if they could also give the Ikawa HOME those profiles, but nope!
Other than that the Pro and Home version seem almost identical.
