From Green to Brown - Roasting with IKAWA Home

Video Transcript 

Roasting your own green coffee beans at home: getting started.

Hello, my name is Emily, and I source green coffee at IKAWA. 
Today we are going to look at what you need to get started on your roasting journey.

By roasting coffee at home, you will be able to roast as much as you need, on-demand, without the worry of coffee going stale. And it’s a lot easier to get started than you think.

Now, to roast your own coffee it is quite simple, you only need two things: green beans and a heat source.

Let’s start with beans:

There is a wide range of green coffee available on the market. As a beginner coffee roaster, it can be difficult to figure out which green coffees to choose. Some factors to consider:
The beans' origins and variety:
Coffee is grown between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, in three main growing regions: Africa, Asia and the Americas. Each of these regions has some distinctive flavour characteristics. Within each region, are specific arabica varieties that are grown that have their own unique character.The processing method: 
Processing is how the coffee bean is removed from the fruit that it was grown in. How coffee is processed plays a big factor in flavour. 
We have made some other videos that you can find in the playlist, that dive deeper into the topics of processing, origin and variety. 

Heat source:
For thousands of years, coffee was roasted over an open flame in a pan. As a traditional method, it gets the job done of turning green beans brown. However, this method presents a fire risk and makes it hard to get consistent results. Most home roasting methods are similar to the traditional method. You can use these methods but you would risk wasting quite a lot of beans before you get good results, and they might be difficult to replicate.
We developed our roaster in order to deliver consistent, replicable and safe roasts. In the fluid bed, convection heat is applied following a pre-decided recipe, contained in a roast chamber with our patented cyclone technology.
By using the IKAWA Home roaster, you can avoid a lot of smoke, and risks of fire, and get repeatable results time after time.
 
Tips:
Get yourself a notebook: Coffee is an organic product and will roast differently from day to today. You may find it helpful to write down any notes from your roasting session as well as any tasting notes. Keeping a record is the best way to troubleshoot and learn from your losses and wins. 
Weigh your green beans: By weighing your coffee, you will get consistent, reliable results from roast to roast.
Remember that depending on how many roasts you do in a session, roasting coffee, even of the IKAWA Home Roaster, may produce some smoke. To be safe, turn on your kitchen extractor if you have one, or open a window.
Don’t leave your IKAWA roaster unattended while roasting. And make sure that the roaster is completely cool before storing away.
Remember: there is no rush to be the best or the most perfect at home roasting. But if you ever need any pointers or if you run into any problems, you can reach us at hereforyou@ikawacoffee.com

Thanks for watching. Happy Roasting!