Roasting green beans into fragrant coffee requires a piece of important equipment: a coffee roaster.

However, for so many years people have been drinking coffee. It didn't used to be so advanced, but they started with the sunniest of ways. Do you know the history of roasted beans? Why was the coffee roaster designed the way it was? How has it evolved throughout history? In this article, we take a look at the development of coffee roasting!

Pan Roast Era

Coffee has a long history. The earliest people who baked coffee beans into beverages can be traced back to Central Africa and the Middle East hundreds of years ago. Then Ottoman Turkish Empire and European colonists brought coffee to the world.

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The earliest tool for baking beans was a thin, perforated pot, which was directly baked over a high fire. The coffee roaster would use a spoon to flip the coffee beans and ensure that the baking was uniform.

Only a small amount of coffee beans in the whole pot will be baked at the same time, which means that the bean roaster who flips the coffee beans needs to be very focused on the whole roasting process.

The pan baking process produces a lot of smoke and silver dust, and, as expected, the roasted coffee is uneven and uncontrolled.

Due to the confusion and inconsistency in the process of frying beans, it is conceivable that these coffee lovers will start to look for new ways to bake coffee beans.

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The Era Of The Roller Coffee Roaster

According to records, roller coffee roasters originated in Cairo, Egypt, in the 17th century. Such a device can place beans in a semi enclosed space so that the heat in the roller can be dissipated. In addition, the handle of the roller can be rotated, so that the roller coffee roaster can be moved even when it comes into contact with fire.

This design will also reduce smoke emissions and make coffee roasters more comfortable. After that, people made some adjustments to the roller coffee roaster, but its central concept remained unchanged. With the development of colonialism, roller coffee roasters were designed all over Europe and America.

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Development Of Commercial Coffee Roaster

Coffee roasting is not surprisingly affected by industrialization. In the 19th century, although many people continued to bake their own coffee at home in small quantities, in the United States and Europe, the commercial coffee roaster obtained various patents.

Many early commercial coffee roasters simply placed huge cylinders on the heat source. However, before the introduction of natural gas as energy in cities, firewood or coal had been used as the heat source, and the roasted coffee would be full of smoke. Therefore, when natural gas was available, it soon became the preferred heat source for this kind of coffee roaster.

Richard Evans obtained the patent for the first large coffee roaster in Britain in 1824. It allows the user to invert the whole cylinder to facilitate the discharge of baked beans and is also equipped with a "sampler", which can take out some coffee beans during the baking process to confirm the baking state.

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In 1846, James Carter patented the 'pull-out' coffee roaster in Boston. This was an iron cylinder fixed in a boiler. To roast, the entire cylinder had to be pulled out of the boiler and the cylinder door opened so that the roasted coffee beans could be poured onto a tray or onto the floor to cool. However, this is an unsafe and inefficient method.

In 1864 Jabez Burns was granted a patent for a commercial coffee roaster in the USA. His design was a closed cylinder covered with a brick structure. It has an opening mechanism to empty the beans without removing the cylinder from the flame, and a double spiral design inside the cylinder allows for an even distribution of the beans. These innovations make the bean roasting process safer and more consistent.

Burns' company later installed a fan under the coffee roaster to blow cold air onto the beans and added a cooling plate in front of it. These features laid the foundations for the modern coffee roaster.

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In 1868, Alexius van gulpen, together with Theodor von gimborn and Johann Heinrich lensing, established a company in Germany, which later developed into what is now Probat. In 1880, they applied for a patent for the fast coffee roaster, which the company said was very important for the development of the drum coffee roaster in the future.

Influence Of Electric Power On The Coffee Roaster

With the increasing popularity of electric power development in the early 20th century, the coffee baking industry has also changed.

The use of electric power means that roasting becomes less labour-intensive and, because electric heating is more predictable than an open fire, roasting results are more consistent and safer. For the first time, electric coffee roasters are able to control the ability of the beans to be heated with a degree of precision and have better reproduction capabilities.

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Hot Air Coffee Roaster

Today, the roller-type coffee roaster based on the patent design of the 19th century is still the first choice of many people. However, in the 1970s, semi hot air or full hot air coffee roaster appeared in the market.

In a hot air coffee roaster, the roaster forces hot air through a screen beneath the beans, strong enough to blow them up and transfer the heat to them as they roll. The American chemical engineer Michael Sivitz patented this design in 1976.

At that time, many bean dryers did not choose the hot air bean dryer, because they could not provide the same baking quality. This was due to the fact that heat transfer only used convection, rather than the combination of convection, conduction, and radiation generated by the roller bean dryer.

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Application Of New Technology

A better understanding of the chemical composition of coffee and what changes will take place in this process will contribute to the development of modern coffee baking. The bean dryer can better measure the variable factors and analyze the reasons for the success of baking. With the help of digital temperature and configuration file software, baked beans can be more efficient and consistent than before.

However, these innovations are still based on core inventions more than a century ago. The addition of modern technology can help us better control baking, but they are essentially a fine-tuning of the 19th-century roller bean dryer.

For decades, thanks to the efforts of many people and companies, bean baking equipment have been developed and improved. Without some trial and error, we will not have all kinds of delicious coffee we like now.

It is expected that more technologies will be integrated into coffee baking technology in the future, and there may be exciting development!

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