FRESHLY Roasted Coffee!

FRESHNESS is a contentious topic.  Groups that can't provide fresh coffee because of their long supply chain attempt to ignore this essential factor when selling a perishable food.  Cafés that Roast OnSite say that coffee staling begins to be noticeable one week after roasting.  They aim to sell "take home coffee beans" within the week and to serve all coffee within 1 1/2 weeks.  The question they ask is "Would you buy 10 day old bread?".  We attempt to bolster this strategy by providing an efficient small batch 3 kg roaster which makes it easy for the café to roast only the coffee beans that are required for the next few days.  This roaster benefits from the advantages of using electric heating which allows the re-circulation of the heated air after it is scrubbed of the smoke particles.  The built-in SmokEater™breaks down the exhaust gasses which otherwise cause neighbours to complain about roasting odours.

Café owners that buy from a local roaster sometimes do have fresh coffee but, obviously, they can't proudly serve their own creation.  The passion of creation communicates very well at the counter.  Perhaps they do not really know when the coffee beans were roasted.  One RoastMaster explained it like this: we put it for sale as an estate arabica, after some time we make blends, and if we still have some left we wet a cloth with some flavouring and tumble it and the beans in a small drum.  Is that flavouring to enhance or mask?  To the Café owner "Does the cost of your coffee pay for your roaster or your supplier's?"

A lot of lobbying dollars were spent to convince governments that coffee beans last more than 18 months therefore did not require expiry dates, in other words they concluded that roasted beans were non perishable.  This decision was required by centralized roasters and grocery chains because they cannot transport the beans to client coffee pots within two weeks.  Consequently, they promote peripheral messages such as freshly ground, freshly brewed, consistency, convenience, low price, contests, etc.   They can accessorize the product as much as they want but if you start with stale beans you can't make a quality drink.  Coffee parallels the preparation of food in that increased processing equals diminished quality.  Some of the tricks are to add cheaper robusta beans, which are more bitter than arabica beans, to the blend so that the espresso will have more crema like freshly roasted coffee.  It is not a great espresso and most likely they will suggest that you give it some zing with a flavouring.  Freshly roasted coffee has plenty of zing plus it has complexity that a flavouring does not even try to achieve.

Out of curiosity two books were consulted; one by a large Italian central roaster and other by UK specialists.  The first only mentions "freshness" as it pertains to serving it quickly after it is brewed.  The second book does not mention freshness.  Freshness is not part of the centralized roasting business model.  As a consumer the choice is yours "Do you wish to pay for freshness or warehousing?".

Packaging is often ascribed miracle properties.  In the first day(s) following roasting the beans emit a lot of carbon dioxide which can burst bags.  Hence, the use of the valve.  If the valve is the highest point in the bag the CO2 will force out the lighter gases such as air which is beneficial but it is hardly locking the flavour in.  One web site says that packaged coffee lasts a few months until the bag is opened but a little further down they claim: How long does coffee last? Coffee packaged with a freshness valve = 12 months then add a little further Ground coffee once the bag is opened = 2 weeks.  Check for consistency of message and verify that information.  Your priority is taste or the coffee experience theirs is sales.  Studies have been done about slowing down the degradation through cold storage but that requires colder deep freezers than those in homes.  An additional problem is that, due to the pressure differential, the deep freeze is the area with the highest humidity in a house.  Moisture accelerates staleness.

If possible observe a roasting session, you will learn.  You may find that some of the urban based coffee roasters are not used because of pollution complaints and that some RoastMasters , that do not have Afterburners, roast during the night. 

To improve the roasted beans' relatively short lifespan they should be ground just before brewing.  Make a comparison with beans that have been ground for half an hour. I expect that after half an hour the finely ground beans will make a flat coffee.  An espresso will have greatly reduced crema.  You will then be in a position to judge the statement "Ground coffee once the bag is opened = 2 weeks"

My mantra is "Buy from the roaster".

"Green" Roaster

Pollution controls is a timely topic but it was not at all planned for right now, another example of serendipity.  We are currently upgrading Mel's ( freshcup.ca ) third generation Roastaire™.  It is only five years old but enough new parts were developed in the interim that it was a good idea to modify or install parts to satisfy his working requirements.  The first occasion for an "Ah Hah!" moment was the inside view of the exhaust just before it enters the chimney.   It was a good feeling to have the proof that the "SmokEater™" was working so well.

The second element in this synchronicity is the chimney fire warning contained in two advertisements in the September - October  "roast Magazine":

- If you're a roaster, you know the quote: "It's not IF you're going to have a roaster fire, but WHEN."

- "According to the U.S. Government, there were over 1,800 roaster fires last year." an advert by Iron Dragon Tools

They were advocating regular exhaust and chimney cleaning to prevent chimney fires yet the Roastaire™s roasted for over a decade without cleaning an exhaust nor having a problem.  Furthermore, only days before we had witnessed a five year old Roastaire™, which roasted 5 days a week,  that had an exhaust which was as clean as the day it was installed.

Further reading of "roast Magazine" showed the significance of the problem where their featured interviews asked each interviewee about their experience with fires.  Youtube has some videos of the chimney coating problems faced by other roasting companies.  Mel was deprived of this experience but he does not mind.

Originally our pollution test was only a visual inspection or rather the lack of visual evidence at the chimney when the Roastaire began the Cool Mode.  The test is more stringent now but we did not have to make any changes to the roaster.  Obviously a clear exhaust cannot be deemed to be a definitive pollution test after all we know that the common solution to neutralizing the smoke is to subject it to the high heat of a natural gas flame.  Small independent roasters do not have the required scrubbers to clean the combustion residues but they do eliminate the roasting smoke.  You still have to ask "Is the 400,000 btu to 1 million btu flame in the Afterburner the best way to eliminate smoke?".  It seems to be very wasteful to me not to mention the pollution by that flame itself.  In addition to its costly fuel charges the gas Afterburner takes up valuable floor space.  We decided to make the SmokEater™ a standard component of the roaster to optimize its operation and to minimize the footprint.  It does create a more expensive basic unit but we don't foster midnight roasting unless it is the third shift.  Of course not having to pay the gas heating for those high input Afterburners means that savings accrue very quickly.

Another fundamental difference with Drum Coffee Roasters is that they are continually flowing air through the flame, through the beans, and then up the chimney.  The Roastaire™ is a closed loop system for the entire Roast Mode.  During that time the air is recirculated which has the added benefit of significantly increasing the heating efficiency.  The air cleaning process wasn't an easy problem to solve.  Leaving too much smoke in the circulating air can affect the taste of the coffee by coating the beans with a tar like substance plus coating the inside of the roaster with the same substance.  Below is a photo of the air duct just before it enters the Roasting Chamber.  After 5 years of roasting there is only a light staining of the interior of the duct.

A design choice was to stop the roasting process within the roaster to improve the roasting repeatability.  Our earlier generations used a cooling tray, which is easier to accomplish, that delays cooling until the transfer is done and evenly distributed over the bottom.  Cooling within the Roasting Chamber permits the constant monitoring of the air quenching of the beans which stops the exothermic roasting reaction within a few seconds.   It also assures that the air entering the roaster during the Cool Mode will be "double cleaned" before it is evacuated to the vent or chimney.

California is the bellwether on emission standards but it is still a work in progress.  The traditional method has been complaint based forcing many roasters to occupy commercial areas or midnight roasting.  The people at Roastaire™ promote the "theatre of roasting" which takes place at the café.  It is the most convincing way of communicating to clients that the coffee is "freshly roasted".  To this end they roasted, without a chimney, on the floor of the Canadian Coffee & Tea Shows in Vancouver and last year in Toronto.  

In closing here is a quotation that appears in the October 26, 2011 edition of the Edmonton Journal Food Section which describes one side effect of the technologies we supersede.

“When we moved from our old location to this new location, the first couple of months we roasted coffee, I saw the fire department four times because people driving by would see all the smoke from the roaster coming out of the roof, and they thought the building was on fire,” says Filpula, laughing. “The firemen would come in; I’d give a tour of the roaster.”

Sustainable Roasting

During the last decade we have been quite busy "doing" rather than writing about our goals.  Vancouver was the second Coffee & Tea Show in which the Roastaire™ was the only coffee roaster that was making magic in the hall.  In time, we should blog some of the fundamentals that drive the project i.e. efficiency, pollution controls, sustainability, "greeness", freshness, design, roasting, etc.

For more detail click photo and choose original size

 Function determined style for the roaster and the business model.  FRESHNESS is our dominant theme.  It, along with SUSTAINABILITY  has determined the roaster design and the business model.

No one involved had the desire to operate a roasted coffee warehouse.  For those who may not have given it much thought the green beans have a relatively long life span, just as other living seeds.  Given proper storage conditions they last more than a year. 

Roasted coffee has a short life span.  This is incongruous with the designation of non perishable food.  It has been written that lobbying by food purveyors resulted in a legislation that roasted coffee has a lifespan of greater than 18 months hence it was deemed non perishable.  The coffee continues to stale along its own time line but the vendors do not have to indicate when it was roasted.   Many gimmicks are used to give the impression that freshness is maintained or is not important.  Valves do not "lock in freshness" they prevent the carbon dioxide, given off by the recently roasted beans, from bursting the bags.  Cold storage does reduce chemical reactions but studies promoting this used temperatures that were much colder than the inside of a household deep freeze.  Furthermore, bar the bath tub, the refrigerator is the most humid place in a house.  It is not a good bean storage environment.  Moving beans between the cold storage and the coffee preparation counter only exacerbates the problem.  Grinding the beans at the time of purchase is most likely the worst practice.  Store ground beans are probably better than going without but you deserve so much more. 

The aim of getting the coffee to the consumer within 3 - 5 days has determined the size of the roaster and the business model.  People have found that the optimum flavour is produced 24 to 48 hours after roasting.  With this in mind   www,FreshCup.ca   opened an Online Store which ships coffee on roasting day via Expedited Parcel.  There is no compromise possible on shipping - it has to be as fast as possible.  To make the Expedited Parcel costs acceptable they are free within Canada for two lbs. of coffee, or more.  To present the consumer with a top notch product all elements of the preparation have to attain the same high level.  Giving someone the choice of saving a dollar with a snail like delivery was thought to be counter-productive.

It is getting quite obvious why this opinion was not a tweet.

The Roastaire™ has a 3 kg green bean capacity which yields nearly 6 lbs of roasted coffee depending on the degree of roast.  The darker the roast the greater the weight losses.  This roaster is able to do about 5 batches per hour, again depending on the degree of roast.  This implies that a café only needs to roast what is required in the immediate future.  The concept is "store green beans" and "move roasted coffee".   Regarding the café owners; they will pay for a coffee roaster regardless, either it will be their own or that of a supplier.

Even though we have reason to believe that our roaster produces excellent coffee I think that you can be well served by a local roaster if your coffee is freshly roasted On-Site.

Canadian Coffee & Tea Show

We just returned from the Canadian Coffee & Tea Show, in Vancouver, where the Roastaire™ roasted coffee on the show floor.  The big deal was that it was the only coffee roaster that took on the challenge of roasting inside without a chimney.  A lot of design work has gone into improving the roaster efficiency and pollution controls but that is what made it possible to accomplish task.

The air, cooling the newly roasted beans, was vented into the room so there was a coffee aroma near the booth but the roasting smoke was neutralized within the machine which is why this machine is friendly to neighbours.

 Mel, the Roast Master, roasted approximately forty 3 kg batches of coffee while he explained  the Roastaire™ features and the significance of monitoring the roasting process in real time with the computer.  The Bean Sampler was only pulled to show the visitors that there was a Bean Sampler but that the process was not optimal especially for someone with less than a year's roasting experience.

Mel's coffee is available at FreshCup.ca   There are no transportation costs within Canada for two or more pounds of coffee.  Unfortunately this morning's order from Santiago, Chile could not be filled in a timely manner.  FRESHNESS is their mantra.

We also received the Twitter Lawrence Tanner who has a better photo of the Roastaire™ on yfrog:  (link is   yfrog.com/kgrh6dkj  ) as shown below

LT_Chronicles Lawrence Tanner

Nifty ecofriendly on-site coffee roaster #greentech #coffee www.roastaire.ca & www.freshcup.ca cool organic beans! yfrog.com/kgrh6dkj

3 Oct 

 It is quite a challenge to photograph stainless steel cylinders in front of a black wall.  There is certainly something to be learned in that process as well.

Roastaire™ and Coffee Roasting