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Coffee beans are the seeds inside a ripe, red cherry-like fruit. It is the careful roasting of the green bean that has given coffee its place in our daily lives. The roasting process is not a mystery; the careful application of heat breaks down the protein in the beans to create aromatic oils, called caffeol, which when combined with the gasses that reside in the bean after the roasting process, are the heart and soul of what is most loved in every good cup of coffee.
Our roasting process, in a fluid bed roaster, delivers a consistent, evenly-roasted bean with a dramatically superior result over flat-bed and drum
roasters. The beans are kept aloft in a fluid, circulating fountain of air,
roasting the beans evenly through to the center. Other roasting techniques allow the beans to come in contact with hot sheet metal, which burns the outside
of the bean while leaving the inside unroasted. This results in an incompletely developed roast with a taste that can be grassy or bitter. A natural benefit of the fluid bed roaster is that because the beans do not come in continuous contact with metal, they do not interact with material from previous roasts. Each bean is roasted in a wave of clean air, uncontaminated by residual elements. This is a pure, clean roast.
One of the technological advantages of the fluid bed roaster is the ability to
control the temperature in each bean equally. A thermocouple is introduced into the fluid bed of air and
can accurately sense temperature to within .01 degree. While coffee drinking
historically has been one enjoyed amongst the cultural elite, its
perfection is nothing less than mad science. A roastmaster employs an ear for
the crackle, a nose for the roast, and an eye for color. The precision required
for consistent results in roasting cannot be overstated.
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