Creating Consistency While Roasting 

It's to our detriment that we strive for perfection & consistency in the Speciality Coffee World, Being consistent on a Coffee Roaster is incredibly rewarding for you and your customers. Imagine having one of the best cups of coffee one morning from your favourite Coffee Roaster only to be disappointed after you flew through the bag only to purchase another that does not live up to what you had just experienced, I doubt this will equate to returning customers. 

So how do we be consistent ? 

There are multiple Practices that help with consistency while roasting coffee, 

• BBP (Between Batch Protocol)
• Ambient Temperature Monitoring 
• Weight Monitoring 
• Software Tracking 

BBP is a series of temperature points that you must follow to the letter to help create consistent roasts, Once you open the roaster door you release your batch of coffee but along with it lots of heat and energy from your machine. When the door closes the roasting chamber and sensors need to climatize, What happens is your temperature reading will drop once the door is opened once closed the reading will slowly rise until it reaches the internal ambient temperature, we then want to wait for this reading to drop to a chosen degree and then turn our heat source back on but at a reduced power setting, Then when we meet a second selected temperature reading we apply the power setting to the desired charge temperature (Charge/Drop Temperature is the degree of which you want to let your Green Coffee into the roasting drum) if you rinse and repeat the between batch protocol you will for certain see increased consistency throughout. 

Ambient Temperature Monitoring is exactly what it says on the tin, you want your green coffee to be in a similar environment before you start roasting. If Green coffee is just loaded off a truck and you roast it straight away it is going to roast differently to a coffee that has been sat in your roastery due to its temperature difference, Imagine cooking a steak from the fridge or one that has being resting outside of a fridge the rested steak would cook faster. So storing your coffee in your regulated temperature area for at least 24 hrs prior to when you will commence roasting it will give another edge on consistency. 

Weight Monitoring, Weighing each batch to the gram is paramount for consistency. Less coffee will roast faster & vice versa more coffee will take longer. Weighing coffee after its been roasted will show you how much weight has been lost during the roasting process and if you keep hitting your numbers you know you're being consistent.  

Software Tracking, using a Roasting software such as Cropster or Artisan will allow you to create and track your roasting profiles. (Profiles are a combination of power, airflow & drumspeed actions) these softwares allow you to play back your profiles and allow the roaster to try match what they found to be the best sequence of settings for the coffee.