Coffee makes a long journey from a seed to our cup. At the beginning of this journey, the farmers or producers work incredibly hard tending to the trees and soil, harvesting when perfectly ripe and then making processing decisions which will affect the cup profile. When we source coffees we are looking to ensure that everyone before us in the supply chain has made the right decisions which result in a delicious coffee. It’s then our responsibility to do our very best with the roasting in order to honour the hard work of the producers. 

Something which has a major impact on the flavour of the coffee is the design of the roaster. Most traditional drum roasters use a combination of a burner which heats the drum (conduction) and a fan which pulls air through it (convection). This is a system which offers a lot of control over how heat is applied to the coffee but is very susceptible to the environmental conditions in which the roaster is situated. If you have a particularly cold day for instance then the air which is being pulled through the drum will be at a different temperature to yesterday. Another issue is that the drum gets hotter and hotter throughout a day of roasting so the first and last few roasts will behave differently. Consistency is key with coffee roasting and as well as managing the balance of convective and conductive heat to apply to the coffee the roaster also has to consider the environmental conditions and adapt the roast to suit. This type of roasting machine also produces smoke, requiring treatment by an afterburner which uses a tremendous amount of fuel.

The Loring Smart Roast system is very different.

The stainless steel drum is not heated. Instead, the air traveling through it is precisely heated and using the patented single burner system, recycled through the drum, being cleaned along the way. This means extremely precise control over the environmental heat and temperature stability between roasts. This closed system design means that changes in the weather and humidity make no difference to what is happening in the roasting chamber, offering the skilled roaster the opportunity to really concentrate on the important thing; the roast profile. The Loring is also extremely efficient, using up to 80% less fuel than a traditional drum roaster, offering the very best performance in terms of environmental impact and controllability and we love it dearly!