Ikawa

Du Jianing of Nanjing, China won the World Brewers Cup Championship in Boston at SCA Expo 2019. Du’s winning routine was remarkable in many ways. The Chinese champion utilized different pouring speeds at different points of the brewing process to highlight certain flavor attributes, and used a tablet linked to her scales to allow the judges to check her technique in real time. Perhaps what was most remarkable, though, was how Du choose to roast her coffee.

The coffee had been roasted in an Ikawa coffee roaster in small batches, 4 days prior to the competition. The Ikawa, which fits in a carry-on sized suitcase, is a bluetooth-enabled coffee roaster that’s controlled with a smartphone app, allowing the user to plot the coffee’s exact profile.

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For coffee importers and roasters, sample roasting is a crucial part of evaluating the quality of a coffee. Designed to highlight the intrinsic qualities of a given coffee, a sample roast is traditionally lighter than a production roast. This gives the taster a snapshot of a coffee’s aroma, acidity, and body. The intricacies of consistently roasting 100 gram batches with a conventional sample roaster require years of practice, skill, and maybe even a little luck. The Ikawa Pro Sample Roaster is trying to change that….

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