Coffee Appreciation

One of these: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/355771160267

The Ikawa looks to be strictly a sample roaster with a 50g or 100g capacity (which will yield less than 45/90g).

The one I have is very basic in terms of temperature monitoring, just a single basic thermometer which isn't always fully surrounded by the beans. So you're always going to suffer with precision in recreating roast profiles.

In hindsight, I probably should've got the 500g model. With the 250g one, I've found that anything much over 200g, you start to get inconsistency across the beans. But it's a decent enough little thing. I've had it just under 4 years now, probably got through around 80-100 kilos of coffee in that time. Normally works out around £12-14 per kilo, so probably saving around £30 per kilo (each 200g roast probably costs around 2-3p in electricity so I guess that should be added), so probably broke even after 6-7 months or so?

There's also the various Kaldi roasters which look like a decent offering for small scale roasting, but they require a standalone burner and I couldn't be bothered with the faff of that. But they do look like the better option in terms of precision & monitoring capabilities.

In terms of learning curve, it was pretty basic. Largely due to the lack of monitoring capability. There's a load of info out there in terms of roast profiles, but with a basic thermometer I'm pretty limited in what I can do, which I'm honestly not unhappy about. I heat the thing up, keep it at around 75% heat until the turning point, up to 100%, gradually rolling off a bit until first crack, then drop it and wait for it to look like it's done (pretty much done by eye on my part).

Professional roasters are probably frothing at the mouth reading that basic description, but it provides decent and consistent enough roasts for me. It's not on par with a great coffee from a great roaster, but it's worth it for me.

But yeah, feel free to fire over any questions you might have, obviously we have at least one professional roaster in the thread so I might pass over the more detailed questions to them. But for the hobbyist stuff I'm happy to oblige!