Roasting Coffee

Coffee roasting is a controlled application of heat that brings about a physical and chemical change in the green coffee bean. During the coffee roasting process, a green coffee bean can expand to twice its size but loses 20% of its volume.

Typically green coffee beans are either air roasted or fire roasted. Air roasted coffee is superheated, usually within an enclosed cylinder which burns the chaff (the seed casings and other inedible matter) with the coffee beans. The coffee beans are cooked from the outside in, which allows roasters to process large batches of coffee very quickly.

With fire roasted coffee, the coffee beans are roasted from the inside out. Fire roasting is usually done in small batches, which gives the roast master more control over the whole coffee roasting process. At Allann Bros Coffee, we fire roast our coffee in a 1939 Jabez Burns Roaster. The roaster has a perforated drum, which allows all of the chaff to be separated from the roasted coffee, giving the coffee a clean, unburned taste.