Ikawa brings coffee-roasting home

Calling all coffee aficionados! You may have zeroed in on your preferred brewing method, but you can up your coffee cred even more by roasting the beans yourself. That's what Ikawa wants you to think, anyway.

These bona-fide coffee fanatics recently launched a campaign on Kickstarter for a Home Coffee Roaster, a 9.5-pound countertop appliance designed to give you small batches of good ol' home-roasted coffee or espresso.

According to Ikawa, you can source your own un-roasted "green" coffee or select from its curated inventory of fresh beans.

Once you have your beans, you should be able to access a variety of related recipes on the Ikawa Home Android or iOS app -- and even edit them to suit your exact taste. Specifically, it provides the flexibility to tweak things like the temperature and length of the roast as well as the air flow. That makes this Home Coffee Brewer seem like a decent fit for anyone from a total novice (who might crave more guidance) to an experienced coffee roaster (who might be more willing to experiment).

Ikawa says that the whole process is as simple as selecting the recipe you want or creating your own, pouring the unroasted beans into the machine, and waiting 3 to 10 minutes for them to finish. That almost sounds too easy, but Ikawa does claim to have the "world's first digital micro roaster."

And while your beans are busy roasting, the app supposedly tracks the temperature and lets you share your success stories with friends on Facebook, Twitter or Ikawa's own online forum.

There are 26 days remaining on Ikawa's Home Coffee Roaster campaign. The last time I checked, it had raised $107,227, which is getting pretty close to its $122,709 funding goal. Worldwide shipping is available and slated for February 2016, although units don't come cheap; you'll have to drop at least $680 to snag one (at the current exchange rate, that's about £450 and AU$855).