It is no secret that time is moving, persistent in its nature, it almost seems time is moving faster than we can keep up! Every business today, no matter the industry, must continually evolve and figure out ways to stay ahead of the game.
The coffee roasting business is no exception to this. Advancements in coffee roasting technology is progressing an at exponential rate. However, reducing the production time and the costs involved in production, while roasting a premium product, with no compromises on quality, is the future for any coffee roasting business today, and this is achieved with the Air-Motion Roaster
Recently, and this is a true story, a client of ours who purchased his own Air-Motion Coffee Roaster, put together a coffee bean order for a customer, however, the amount ended up being 10 Kilograms shorter than what the client had ordered.
Our client’s business partner, who was going to be out of the office for the day, had realized this before leaving and asked our client if he would roast another two batches of coffee on their 6kg Air-Motion Roaster, to make up for the short order.
At 4:30pm the partner returned and asked if the order was produced and the reply was “I’ve been busy with other things today, but I promise I will still get it done”.
The partner replied, “but it is 4:30pm and we close at 5pm” and the response was, “yes I know, I still have lots of time”.
This is because our client had been roasting with the Air-Motion Roaster for some time and had come to realize that this machine is a time-saver. They were able to efficiently roast the last remaining batches in no-time and were ready to close shop by 5 pm.
The beauty of having an Air-Motion Roaster is that one does not have to Charge the roast chamber before one begins the roast.
This is against the norm in coffee roasting, since most coffee roasters require a roaster to pre-heat the coffee roaster, before beginning a roast. In fact, some traditional drum roaster brands insist on at least 30 minutes of warm-up before one can begin a roast.
This is because only after 30 minutes can the metal in the roast chamber be fully heated up so when one starts the roast, no heat energy is lost to heating up the roast chamber and the heat transfer is then only focused onto the beans.
This is not the case with the Air-Motion Coffee Roaster, it saves precious time with an immediate heat response element bank, providing instant heat into the roast chamber where no pre-heating is required, allowing roasters flexibility to roast coffee beans at their convenience while eliminating energy wastage, entirely.
Furthermore, the hassle of pre-heating or charging a traditional roast chamber before one can begin a roast, raises additional concerns which should be noted:
The additional cost of consuming energy (burning gas) while waiting for the roast chamber to “charge”.
It is not viable to only do one or two roasts at a time, resulting in the need to plan around rigid roasting schedules.
Having to drop one’s beans into a roast chamber that has been charged to around 425˚F/218˚C, onto scorching hot metal, is not ideal for the best outcome.
Regrettably, there is no way of getting around this with a drum roaster. A too high Charge Temperature will cause Scorching or Tipping of the beans causing a dryness or acidity in the taste. On the other hand, a too low charge temperature will cause an underdevelopment of the beans. The roast will take too long and result in a flat or even some baked flavour notes in the cup.
Then there is the Turning Point. After dumping the raw coffee beans, which are at room temperature, into the heated roast chamber, it immediately reduces the heat of the roast chamber.
Until such time as the heat of the roast chamber and the beans meet, they will then start climbing in temperature together.
The time for this to happen depends on different factors such as Charge Temperature, ambient bean temperature, density of the beans and batch size. If one of these variables are out of line, it will affect the rest of the roast.
The Air-Motion Roaster eliminates the entire process from Charging the roaster to the Turning Point eliminating time wasted, cost and other variables that can affect the roast.
The most important thing is that the Air-Motion Roasting process starts from ambient temperature - no pre-heating required and no exposing of the beans to scorching hot metal.
As soon as the roast starts, both air temperature and bean temperature start increasing together because of the immediate response and heat transfer from the elements to the air and in-turn the beans.
The other thing saving on time and energy costs is that, in drum roasters one must get one’s Roast Chamber back up to Charge Temperature between roasts, this may also be referred to as (BBP) or Between Batch Protocol, this is where one must reset the roasters thermal energy between batches.
With the Air-Motion Roaster, the Roast Chamber is cooled down between roasts or before we put in a new batch of beans to start the next roast.
The Air-Motion approach is a gentler approach to one’s beans, avoiding the aggressive approach of exposing one’s beans to the Charging of the Roast Chamber and scorching hot metal.
So, the next time you only have 12 minutes and need to do a quick roast, the Air-Motion Roaster is definitely the answer… JP.