LeBrew·October 31, 2025

LeBrew × Stronghold | The 6th STRONGHOLD Roasting Championship Successfully Concludes

Real-Time Color and Multi-Parameter Detection — Empowering Intelligent Roasting

In the fall of 2025, LeBrew and Stronghold joined forces for the 6th SmartRoast Cup, a nationwide competition that brought together top roasters, café owners, and industry judges from across China.

As the Official Roast Colorimeter Sponsor, LeBrew showcased two core instruments at the event: the RoastSee Next Real-Time Roast Color & Crack Analyzer and the RoastSee Fusion All-in-One Coffee Analyzer. Both instruments received wide acclaim for their visualization, quantification, and repeatability, helping competitors transform roasting intuition into measurable precision.

Real-Time Visualization: Turning “Experience” into “Data Curves”

The RoastSee Next analyzer continuously tracks bean surface reflectivity during roasting, displaying real-time yellowing points, bean color values, and crack moments. After roasting, it records and marks key events such as first crack and second crack.

Competitors shared that, whereas they once relied mainly on sight and sound, they can now see precise inflection points and trends directly on the curve. This gives them better control over heat power, development time, and roast pacing — significantly improving batch-to-batch consistency.

As several judges noted:

“The real-time curve makes communication so much easier — parameters and flavor can finally speak the same language.”

All-in-One Analysis: Color, Moisture, Density, and Water Activity in One Device

The RoastSee Fusion integrates key metrics — roast color, moisture content, bulk/true density, and water activity — supporting the entire roasting process, from green bean intake and curve design to post-roast stability checks.

Competitors used Fusion to measure green bean moisture and density before roasting, and later cross-check color and water activity afterward. This not only verified roast consistency but also informed storage recommendations.

Its multi-parameter integration and portable design made “data-driven quality control” the new normal —“Getting all your data in just a few minutes,” was the most common feedback from participants.

Inside Stronghold: A Systemic Approach to Heat, Intelligence, and Industrial Design

As both the organizer and partner of this year’s competition, Stronghold continues to lead through its ongoing innovations in electric heating, intelligent control, and industrial design — the key reasons it has earned the trust of professional users.

Heat Source System

Stronghold is renowned for its electric-heating technology — a clean, controllable, and fast-response system that blends halogen radiant heating and hot air convection.This dual-heat mechanism allows for more precise and predictable thermal delivery, particularly during critical stages like the yellowing point and crack window.The fast-reacting halogen element enables subtle, real-time power adjustments, helping roasters fine-tune energy input with exceptional precision.

Intelligent Control

Stronghold’s architecture features multi-sensor integration and a PID/Feedforward hybrid control strategy combined with its proprietary boost management system.Operators can monitor real-time temperature, airflow, damper position, and drum speed — then align and analyze curves across batches.

During the event, the Stronghold R&D team and LeBrew engineers explored integrating real-time color and crack detection signals from RoastSee Next directly into the roaster’s control system. The goal: to enable machines that understand color and roast milestones, achieving intelligent control anchored in color and sensory data.

Industrial Design

Stronghold’s design philosophy emphasizes compactness, maintainability, and cleanliness. Modular layouts facilitate upgrades and servicing, airflow and cooling paths are well-managed, and access points and viewing windows are ergonomically designed. The result is equipment that bridges laboratory precision and café usability — equally suitable for commercial production and educational demonstration.

Halogen Innovation

Compared with traditional gas burners or heating rods, halogen radiant heating offers faster response, lower thermal inertia, and finer controllability.When combined with convection, it enables nuanced heat distribution between surface coloration and internal development, providing new solutions for complex roast profiles such as light, high-acidity, or honey-processed coffees.

Closing the Loop: Connecting Process Parameters with Measurable Outcomes

LeBrew and Stronghold formed a natural synergy at the event: LeBrew provided measurable outcome indicators — color, moisture, density, and water activity. Stronghold delivered programmable process parameters — heat, airflow, and drum speed. When RoastSee Next marks “yellowing” or “crack” points, Stronghold can fine-tune heat and airflow around those nodes. When Fusion reports color and water activity after roasting, roasters can trace curve deviations and pinpoint process causes.

This collaboration represents more than a competition — it’s a convergence of technology and philosophy.

Stronghold continues to lead in intelligent electric roasting, while LeBrew’s instruments provide the scientific feedback needed to close the loop between control and outcome.Together, they’re building a closed-loop roasting ecosystem — where parameters and results are connected, validated, and repeatable.

LeBrew and Stronghold are actively working on integrating real-time color and crack detection technology directly into Stronghold’s control system. This will serve as a model for future roasting labs and production environments — blending sensor data, algorithmic control, and real-time visualization to transform roasting from an art of intuition into a science of precision.

This new paradigm turns the traditional Green Bean → Process → Product sequence into a verifiable feedback loop. Experience becomes codified. Flavor becomes reproducible.

Behind Every Machine Is a Passionate Roaster

Throughout the competition, LeBrew documented vivid moments — competitors analyzing curves and fine-tuning heat, judges discussing sensory results alongside data, and the interplay between Stronghold’s halogen glow and RoastSee’s digital readouts. These images will soon be available on the LeBrew official website, along with full photo galleries and post-event technical notes.

Conclusion: Let Science Be the Foundation of Flavor

The 6th SmartRoast Cup has concluded successfully, but the journey toward intelligent, data-driven roasting has only just begun. LeBrew will continue working with Stronghold and other equipment partners, bringing RoastSee Next and RoastSee Fusion to more roasters and cafés around the world — making roasting more visible, measurable, and repeatable.

Technology doesn’t replace intuition — it validates it. Instruments don’t eliminate craft — they make it more reliable. That’s the direction we share with every coffee lover:Science empowers flavor. Precision honors passion.