Today, Roba tells me that traditional coffee roasting techniques remain, perhaps most notably in producing countries. For others, it might be the minute that coffee was no longer roasted in pans. It could be argued that coffee stopped being truly “hand roasted” with the introduction of dedicated roasting software or electricity. However, the question remains: at what point throughout the history of roasting did people stop roasting coffee by hand? Today, every roastery selling coffee at scale will use a mechanical roaster of some kind, generally ranging in capacity from 1kg to above 100kg. Beans were stirred in the pan, but naturally, this was considerably less precise in the application of heat. This practice can be traced back to the 15th century, and it is thought to have originated in the Ottoman Empire and Greater Persia. In the years that followed, this design quickly spread across England, France, Italy, and the Netherlands, before then following to European colonies.īefore this, however, coffee was roasted in a thin metal or ceramic pan. The first cylinder roaster can be traced back to 17th-century Egypt, where a hand crank was used to rotate the beans to allow for even exposure to heat. Just because something requires more levers and literal hands-on work to control the process does not mean that it is ‘more craft’ or better quality.”Īutomation And Traditional Roasting Techniques Joe adds: “I think that a lot of people in the specialty market believe that busywork adds something to craftsmanship. “Whenever I see the terms ‘hand roasted’ or ‘small batch’, this increases the amount of variables and ultimately decreases consistency.” You should be able to come in, buy a bag of coffee, come in again the week after and have a similar experience with that coffee. ![]() “Consistency in coffee marks the skill of the roaster. In this case, while the personal touch might be appealing to some, any additional level of manual control means consistency can be an issue. He raises another important point: hand roasting implies that there’s a degree of human involvement in the practice, more so than usual. “It’s what smaller businesses do to show that they’re special.” “Certainly in the US specialty coffee sector, I don’t see either term meaning that much any more,” Tony says. ![]() Tony draws parallels between “hand roasting” and the concept of “craft coffee”, a phrase often associated with smaller, independent roasters and cafés. So, if there’s no concrete definition: is it just another one of the many buzzwords used day-in, day-out by specialty coffee professionals? Is it just marketing? For all three interviewees, at some point it comes back to one thing: the idea of some kind of manual control in the roasting process. Ultimately, there seems to be a shared philosophy rooted to some extent in being hands-on, and focused, rather than actually using one’s hands. ![]() Everyone seems to have their own idea, but it’s not necessarily one that’s clear or simple. While adjusting gas and airflow are signs of being hands-on, that’s not necessarily roasting by hand.”Īltogether, the responses point to one conclusion, if nothing else: it’s a difficult term to qualify. “However, today, there are nearly no processes carried out by hand in coffee roasting, with the exception of sampling. He says: “It’s a little tough to define… within the craft it’s clear that of the done by hand. “When you can say that you use a certain technique to control a certain variable, rather than just throwing the coffee into a roaster to turn it from raw to usable with no regard for taste… that is hand roasted to me.”įinally, Joe Marrocco is a Management Executive at List & Beisler. “How much time do you spend meticulously putting together the most perfect taste or profile for a certain coffee? At each and every step, your hands are involved… from handling the green beans to heating up the machine and checking everything. “For me, it’s down to the connection that you have with the coffee, it’s about telling a story. “It is really tricky to label or define it,” he says. Roba Bulga Gilo is a coffee scholar based in Ethiopia. Hand roasted to me would simply imply manual manipulation versus digital manipulation… a level of manual control.” ![]() He says: “There is no real consensus as to what the term should mean. Tony Querio was the 2016 US Roaster Champion. When we asked each of these experts to explain what “hand roasted” meant, something became clear: there is a lack of consensus as to the actual definition.
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