The Basics of Air Roasted Coffee: What You Need To Know
The minute we enter our favorite cafe, we immediately notice the aroma that accompanies our favorite beverage. That aroma is a product of the roasting that these coffee beans go through, as well as the flavors that we all love.
It takes skill to properly roast coffee; not everybody with a roaster is able to achieve top notch results. For that reason, coffee roasters make use of different kinds of equipment that help them achieve the best results.
The Significance of Roasting
There’s a reason why so much thought is put into the roasting process of coffee. Green coffee beans, as they are, will not give us the drinking experience we’re familiar with. These first have to be roasted so that roastmasters are able to properly develop the right flavors.
There will be a couple of factors affecting this process too. First, the origin of the coffee; this will give roasters an idea of what kind of roast profile they’ll want to follow for their process. Second, the preference of the roast master will be taken into account. While others prefer medium roasts, a large portion of customers also prefer dark roasted coffee.
All these work together to produce the final product. Therefore, having a roaster that fulfills the requirements of the roast master in question will definitely improve the process.
During the actual roasting, the green beans outer layer (called the chaff) peels away from the bean. This chaff eventually burns due to the high temperatures in the roaster.
For drum roasters, this has the effect of producing a lot of smoke during the roast as the chaff gets stuck within the drum. For air roasters, the chaff gets blown upward into a collection area where they are kept away from most of the heat.
Types of Roasters
Traditional Drum Roaster
The traditional drum roaster is one that we might’ve seen in the past. It makes use of a rolling drum that spins the coffee as it is heated, usually by a fire beneath the drum. For this process, the drum has fins or stirrers that help displace the coffee.
The heat inside the chamber along with the spinning of the drum helps the roaster achieve a consistent roast quality throughout the batch. This consistency is the key to a proper roast as it ensures a reliable quality for the whole process.
Air Roaster
Air roasters function in a similar way but approach the displacement of coffee beans differently. Instead of a spinning drum, the air roaster will have the beans over a steel plate with holes that allow for the passage of air.
Hot air is then pumped through the bottom which both roasts the coffee beans while also displacing them evenly. For this reason, many roastmasters have turned to the use of air roasters in order to guarantee a consistent product.
Air Roasting Coffee Helps You Get the Most Out of Your Beans
As you can see, there are significant advantages that come with this method as they usually yield more evenly roasted coffee compared to more traditional methods of roasting. Indeed, air roasting offers similar levels of consistency and quality that are only available with the best Australian coffee pods.
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