LINK announced as official sample roaster of the World Coffee Roasting Championships

The World Coffee Roasting Championships

The LINK roaster has been announced as the official sample roaster of the World Coffee Roasting Championships. 

Since 2013, the World Coffee Roasting Championships has enabled talented roasters from around the world to represent their country and share their coffee roasting and assessment skills. In the three-stage competition, competitors are evaluated on their performance evaluating the quality of green coffee, developing a roasting profile that best accentuates the desirable characteristics of that coffee, and on the ultimate cup quality of coffees that are roasted.

An innovative coffee sample roaster created through collaboration between two companies – Nucleus Coffee Tools and Kaffelogic – the LINK uses a unique combination of assessment between density measurements, processing, varietal and species to provide recommend roasting profiles for its users.

A dual sponsorship by both Nucleus Coffee Tools and Kaffelogic will see the LINK used by competitors in the World Coffee Roasting Championship between 2024 and 2027. The first use of the LINK at the global competition will be in June at the 2024  World of Coffee exhibition, hosted in Copenhagen, Denmark. 

In 2024 alone, the LINK roaster has been used at a number of prominent coffee roasting competitions, including the Producer & Roaster Forum Global Roasting Contest, the Korean Coffee Roasting Championship, and by Martin Wölfl to win the World Brewers Cup.

The new dual sponsorship from Nucleus Coffee Tools and Kaffelogic, and subsequent use of the LINK at the World Coffee Roasting Championship, signify the growing interest across the globe in more intuitive roasting technology, focused on coffee’s inherent characteristics.

“[Denmark] feels like the perfect place to commence this sponsorship – to be able to bring LINK back to one of the major players of the specialty coffee movement feels like the best place to showcase its potential, and bring it into the hands of both the competitors and the community,” says Sean Ellis, Head of Coffee at Kaffelogic.

“Specialty coffee is what has allowed our system to shine. It has allowed us to make connections that we may have never made and to bring to light the incredible coffees that may have never existed or graced the cups in cafes. Without the Scandinavian influence, none of us may be where we are today – that seems pretty significant to me.”

Driving innovation

Produced at the Kaffelogic headquarters in New Zealand, the LINK roaster is currently distributed in more than 30 countries across the globe. Via Nucleus Coffee Tools’ Producer Program, this has included providing accessible roasting to a large number of coffee farmers and producers, who are able to easily transport the LINK to roast coffee in remote locations, at varying altitudes and with more than 600 recommend profiles.

Sam Corra, one of the key developers of the LINK roaster, believes that competitions such as the World Coffee Roasting Championship are of crucial importance for driving innovation in specialty coffee, and the coffee sector at large.

“This competition and its contestants represents the pinnacle of the coffee roasting world – the techniques, trends and knowledge on display ultimately have a trickle-down effect to the rest of the coffee industry across the world,” he says.

“We’re excited for these talented roasters to utilise the LINK to achieve the best roasts possible, and to use their experience to continue improving our technology and ultimately, to make quality coffee roasting easier and more accessible.”

Likewise, Sean believes that the inclusion of the LINK as the official sample roaster of the World Coffee Roasting Championship will create new opportunities to advance and develop methods for roasting coffee – leading to improvements in how coffee roasters are developed, and used.

“We can all see what people are doing online, but being in an environment amongst so many creative and innovative people driving new products and systems to further better the industry we all love in their own ways is a very powerful thing,” Sean says.

“On a roasting competitor level, it also challenges their skills into working with new technologies, methods and ways of thinking about roasting coffee. Seeing how new and experienced professionals tackle new technology and possibly use it in ways that you can ever thought it could be used can open up an entire new way of thinking to help us all roast coffee better.”

The road to Copenhagen

As the 2024 World Coffee Roasting Championships draw closer, many competitors will be faced with the prospect of using the LINK for the first time in a competition environment.

However, the in-built software of the roaster, the accompanying LINK Studio desktop program, and LINK App provide users with both the ability to select from hundreds of profiles – determined by coffee density, altitude and processing – or to use an Advanced Dial-In feature to further customise their roast profiles.

Chris Hilder, COO of Kaffelogic believes that using this system allows not only the competitors, but all LINK users to start from a position of strength, with roasted samples that truly reflect the attributes of the green coffee.

“You can maximise your use of sample roasting time due to the fast cycle time of the roaster (no pre-heat, no BBP), maximise your use of sample green coffee due to the ability to roast 60g samples, try a range of different approaches within the confines of the time and coffee you have been given, and more,” he says.

“Users will get accurate results from the cupping due to the way the roaster produces coffee that can be cupped straight off the roast. And you know that when you identify an improvement, you can quickly make the change and see the results, confident that other variables are not going to change.”

The 2024 World Roasting Championship will take place at the World of Coffee exhibition in Denmark, Copenhagen from June 27-29. For more information, click here.