Coffee merchandising

The most modern way to roast coffee is in revolving, perforated metal cylinders, by coal or gas fuel. For anyone to make a real success in the coffee business, he must have had considerable experience in this particular line. However, in this business as in others, intelligent application spells success, but, whether the business is wholesale or retail, it takes time. The roaster man, or coffee chef, is the first and most important cook necessary to a good cup of coffee.

A study of the chemistry of roasted coffee discloses that in the roasting process the beans swell up by the liberation of gases, and the aromatic oils are developed or cooked and made ready for solution in water when the cells are broken up by grinding.

Separating, Milling, and Mixing

The roasting operation is preceded by separating, milling, and mixing. Where the coffees have not been graded and cleaned before delivery to the roasting plant, they must be run through a separator for grading closely as regards the size of the beans, and particularly for the separation of round beans, or peaberry. Then they must be milled and mixed. This operation may be performed in special machines designed for these purposes, or the regular roasting cylinder may be utilized.

The Roasting Operation

“Roasting per se is not such a difficult operation as many experts would have us believe,” says A. L. Burns, an authority on the subject. Manufacturers of modern coffee-roasting machines have made them practically fool proof. In this business, however, experience is, as always, the best teacher.

A typical roasting machine employs an open perforated metal cylinder, the inside being arranged with reverse spiral flanges which mix the coffee, while the cylinder revolves over the fire. It is fitted with a front head opening to receive the green coffee, and through this, when turned to the lower position, the finished product is discharged into the cooler box.

Modern coffee-roasting machines provide for easy control of the heat (from coal, coke, or gas fuel), for constantly mixing the coffee in such a manner that the heat is transmitted uniformly to the entire batch, for carrying away all steam and smoke rapidly, for easy testing of the progress of the roast, and for immediate discharge when desired. The operator’s problem, therefore, is the regulation of the heat and deciding just when the desired roasting has been accomplished.

If all coffees were alike, roasting would soon be almost automatic. In some plants most of the work is one uniform grade or blend; but coffees which vary greatly in moisture-content, in flinty or spongy nature, and in various other characteristics, will puzzle the operator until he establishes a personal acquaintance with them in various combinations in repeated roasting operations. The roaster man, therefore, must be able to observe closely, to draw sensible conclusions, and to remember what he learns. Roasting coffee is work of a sort which anybody can do, which a few people can do really well, and no one so well but that further improvement is possible.

Because the roasting principles vary in different green coffees, trained study and a nice science in timing the roast and manipulating the fire are necessary to a perfect development of aroma and flavor. There is no absolute standard of what the best roasting results are. Some dealers want the coffee beans swelled up to the bursting point, while others would object to so showy a development. Some care nothing at all about appearance as compared with cup value, while others insist on a bright style even at some sacrifice of quality. Business judgment must decide what goods can be sold most profitably.

Coffee roasting requires a temperature of about 420° Fahr. A slow roast is favored by some roaster men; others argue that this bakes the coffee and does not give full development. The quicker the roast, the better the coffee.

So there is no universal rule for the degree to which coffee should be roasted. The average time in the United States is 15 to 30 minutes, depending on the fuel and machine employed. (The Germans have “quick roasters” that do it in 3½ to 10 minutes.) The trade knows these different roasts: Light, cinnamon, medium, high, city, full city, French, and Italian. The city roast is a dark bean, while full city is a few degrees darker. In the French roast, the bean is cooked until the natural oil appears on the surface, and in the Italian it is roasted to the point of actual carbonization, so that it can be easily powdered. Germany likes a roast similar to the French type, while Scandinavia prefers the high Italian roast.

In the United States, the lighter roast is favored on the Pacific Coast; the darkest, in the South; and a medium-colored roast, in the eastern states. The cinnamon roast is most favored by the trade in Boston.

Coffee loses weight in roasting; the loss varying, depending upon the kind of bean, its age, and the style of roast. The average loss is about 16 percent. It has been estimated that 100 pounds of coffee in the cherry produce 25 pounds in the parchment; that 100 pounds in the parchment produce 84 pounds of cleaned coffee; that 100 pounds of cleaned coffee produce 84 pounds of roasted.

After the coffee has been in the roasting cylinder for a short time, the color of the bean becomes a yellowish brown, which gradually deepens as it cooks. Likewise, as the beans become heated, they shrivel up until about half done, or at the “developing” point. At this stage, they begin to swell, and then “pop open,” increasing 50 percent in bulk. This is when the experienced roaster man turns on all the heat he can command, to finish the roasting as quickly as possible. The roast is considered done when the bean cracks easily between the fingers. Some roaster men use their teeth, others the palm of the hand and a coffee trier.

“Dry” and “Wet” Roasts

At frequent intervals, he thrusts his “trier”—an instrument shaped somewhat like an elongated spoon—into the cylinder, and takes out a sample of coffee to compare with his type sample. When the coffee is done, he shuts off the heat and checks the cooking by reducing the temperature of the coffee and of the cylinder as quickly as can be done. In the wet roast method he will spray the coffee, as the cylinder is still revolving, with three to four quarts of water to every 130 pounds of coffee. In the dry method he depends altogether upon his cooling apparatus.

Roasters generally are not in favor of the excessive watering of coffee in and after the roasting process for the purpose of reducing shrinkage. “Heading” the coffee, or checking the roast before turning it out of the roasting cylinder, is quite another matter and is considered legitimate. Where coffees are watered in the cylinder at the close of the roast to reduce the shrinkage, it is possible to get back only about four percent of the shrinkage by such treatment, and the practice is usually looked upon with disapproval by the best roasters.

Generally speaking, water is turned into the roasting cylinder to quench the roast. The amount varies with the style of machine, whether gas or coal. Usually the water turns to steam, and the result is not an absorption of the water, but a momentary checking of the roast, with a tendency to swell and to brighten the coffee. This is, comparatively speaking, a “dry roast,” but not an absolutely dry roast. It is doubtful if more than one percent of American coffee roasters employ an absolutely “dry” roast: it does not give satisfactory results. The word has been abused for advertising purposes. Of course, a dry roasted coffee is a better article for making a satisfactory beverage than one that has been soaked with water, but the word needs to be given a definite meaning. The real dry roast represents the coffee’s highest cup value.

Finishing whole-bean roasted coffee by giving it a friction polish when it is still moist, using a glaze solution, or water only, is a practice not harmful if the proper solutions are employed. A machine comes for finishing or glazing. Coatings of sugar and eggs, glucose, mustard oil, and chicory are sometimes employed, but their use must be stated on the label.

Coffee roasters are divided on this question of coffee coating. The best thought of the trade is undoubtedly opposed to the practice when it is done to conceal inferiority or abnormally to reduce shrinkage. Some New York coffee roasters, who made a thorough investigation of the matter, found coating coffee with a wholesome material not injurious and the coated coffee better in the cup. Dr. Harvey W. Wiley found, in the celebrated Ohio case against Arbuckle Brothers, that coating coffee with sugar and eggs produced beneficial results, and that the coating preserved the bean. The Bureau of Chemistry has never issued any ruling on the subject of coating coffee.

COST CARD FOR ROASTERS

Showing the value added to the cost of green coffee by roasting.
By A. C. Aborn

Basis: 16 per cent shrinkage, ¾-cent a pound for roasting.

  A = Cost Green, Cents per Lb.
B = Cost Roasted, Cents per Lb.

Cooling and Stoning

The cooling and stoning operation which follows the roasting requires efficient apparatus.

Generally speaking, the process is to dump the roast into a metal car having a perforated false bottom, to which is attached a powerful exhaust fan that sucks the heat out of the coffee. The stoner has for its function the removal of stones and other foreign matter which the green-coffee operations have failed to get rid of. Usually the coffee beans are carried up a pipe by a regulated air current which is strong enough to raise the coffee but not the stones, which remain at the bottom of the stoner boot, whence they are dumped at intervals into a pan underneath.

Equipment

For those about to engage in the coffee business, it is best to take counsel with the manufacturers of coffee-roasting machinery, of whom there are several old established concerns. Their names and addresses, as well as the names and addresses of makers of all other kinds of equipment and supplies needed for large or small plants, may be obtained by consulting the latest edition of Ukers Tea & Coffee Buyer’s Guide.

Blending Roasted Coffee

After cooling and stoning, unless it is to be polished or glazed, the coffee is ready for grinding and packing, if it has been blended in the green state. Otherwise, the next step will be to mix the different varieties before grinding, although some packers blend the different kinds after they have been ground. To mix whole-bean roasted coffee without hurting its appearance is rather difficult, and there is no regular machine for such work.

A Trip Through a Coffee-Roasting Plant

Perhaps a little journey through a small but altogether modern coffee-roasting plant is the best way to acquaint oneself with first-hand knowledge of how coffee is roasted. We have selected a typical New York plant, having many model features.

Entering the ground floor, the receiving and shipping department, we notice the fine light and air characteristic of every floor in this house of sunlight and fresh air. Entering with us are many bags of green coffee, unloaded from trucks at the door and ending long journeys from distant lands. There are, for instance, a consignment of bales of real Arabian Mocha, in their original, oriental bindings which began their round-the-world trip on the back of a camel; Javas, genuine products of Java soil; old brown East Indies, with complexions like the swarthy natives, who picked and stored them; fine old-crop Bogotas, Bucaramangas, Maracaibos, and adventurous bags escaped from bandit raids in Mexico; also coffees from Brazil, with high-grade district marks, and coffees from other parts of the world, the chosen of their kind, are here. Each of the coffees is a “survival of the fittest,” a champion, having won over its fellows in the testing room.

Suppose we follow the coffee and go up with it on the electric elevator, running in a fire-proof well, with its automatic doors, safety devices, and smooth, quick action.

Disembarking on the storage floor (fourth), we walk over and watch the start of the green coffee for its course through the building. It is dumped into galvanized bins and taken by a bucket elevator to the floor above. Along one wall on this floor are the big, galvanized, dirt-proof, storage bins, the modern steel grinders turning out efficient granulations, and the pulverizers producing “stone-ground,” powdered coffee. We enter the stairway fire tower, go up one flight, and pass into the concrete, fire-proof roasting and milling room, the pride of the building.

The clean, white walls, the lofty ceiling, with its great skylight, shedding a flood of sunlight upon the glistening, white-enameled, bricked roasters, the large windows, contributing big drafts of fresh air, all make a picture which draws an admiring comment. The machinery is all run by electric power and up to the minute in every detail. You see how the green coffee, run up from the floor below, into the milling machine, is being cleaned by agitating sieves, friction brushes, and blown by fans. All particles of dirt, sticks, and foreign matter are removed, and the coffee made immaculate and ready for the roasting process, which is the cooking of the berry.

Automatic conveyors take the coffee from the milling machine into the big roasting cylinders, holding 250 to 300 pounds each, revolving over coal fires; for this is a coal roasting plant. The roaster men, in the neat khaki uniform of the building, stand in front of the cylinders with a “trier,” a sort of open tube. With this they draw small samples of the coffee, which is tossing around within the cylinder and gradually assuming a brown shade as it is roasted.

Each coffee requires special care, according to its character, and the roaster man skillfully governs his fire and times his roast accordingly. Carefully comparing the shade of the roast with his standard sample, at the precisely right moment the cooler box, a perforated iron car, is rolled up on its track, the cylinder gate is opened, and the hot, delicately browned berries pour out. It is the dramatic moment in the roasting room, and the “roast is off.” Immediately the hot coffee meets a current of cool air supplied from electric fans through a large pipe. This pipe is a new type, moving, with the car, upon an ingenious ball-and-socket joint, thus beginning the cooling process instantly. The new, quick control is an important point in producing a perfect roast.

The car is rolled back, tips automatically, and the coffee is discharged into the stoner on the floor below, whence a strong current of air draws it up again, through a large pipe, into the roasting room. Small stones and weighty particles, being heavier than the coffee, are left behind, and any foreign substances which may have escaped previous processes are thus removed. Green coffee passes through various cleaning and sifting processes at the plantations, but the final cleaning and perfecting are done by the roasters with their modern and extensive equipment.

Some interesting and curious things, suggestive of foreign life, are occasionally picked out by the machines; for instance, a small Spanish coin dropped by some native worker, or, as once occurred, a Mauser cartridge from the belt, perhaps, of a revolutionist.

The roasted coffee, now on the roasting floor, is dropped into runabout iron cars which are rolled over the chutes. The cars open at the bottom and the coffee descends on its last lap into the shipping room, or packaging department, where it is ready for packing and shipping, having been turned into as perfect a product as the best human resources can make it.

We leave the pleasant and efficient roasting room, realizing how greatly modern machinery has improved the roasting process and made possible white walls and spotless floors, with dust and smoke eliminated by the modern, electric, suction ventilation.

A few steps up through the fire tower and out on the roof show the numerous fire ladders, the huge chaff collector which collects all the chaff from the roasting coffee, and the spot reserved for a little roof garden for employees.

Passing down two floors to the package department, we visit one of the most interesting and important parts of the building.

Busy workers, the women in blue uniforms and white caps and the men in khaki, are working under bright, cheerful, and sanitary conditions. Near the windows, in front, is the printing department, with its electric power press turning out labels, bags, circulars, at short notice and with creditable effect.

The coffee-packaging department is on the east side of the floor, where a long packing table is set under the automatic weighing machines receiving coffee from the chutes. At one end girls are making paper bags, also tinfoil-lined bags, a most efficient container for coffee. The bags are put upon a moving belt, filled under the weighers, carried along again on the belt, then folded, sealed, and packed in cases. Well known, favorite brands are moving rapidly along, every package representing cleanliness, purity, and sanitary ideals, the coffee untouched by human hands and protected from all contacts.

After a glance at the dressing rooms and employee accommodations, we go downstairs to the floor below into the office and salesroom. There are few offices in New York so light and well ventilated. The whole front is a group of large windows which furnish fine daylight for the observation of goods. Back of these are the round, sanitary-top, testing tables with smoking cups giving out fragrant odors. The shining brass kettles are singing merrily. Here is where the ultimate value, the drinking quality, is ascertained. Cup testing has always been a specialty of this firm, and unusually fine distinctions of flavor and character are considered on these tables. The goods are purchased by strict cup standards, and the drinking quality of shipments, as well as purchases, is repeatedly tested and confirmed. The samples of coffee are ground by electric power, in a small mill.

Before saying farewell, we again step down into the shipping room, which is a hum of activity. The gates in the galvanized chutes are opening and closing, and the fragrant, crisp, browned berries, fresh from the roasters above, milled and cleaned, having traveled automatically by gravity through the various processes, pour into drums, barrels, bags, etc. These are swung upon suspension scales, the most accurate type known. One man takes the weight, another checks it, the package is marked with a machine-cutstencil, and is finally ready for shipment. You look the second time at a busy and ingenious little truck or conveyor, which is run under platforms piled high with goods. The man steps upon a lever, the conveyor “humps its back,” and the whole load of 2,000 pounds, platform and all, in one unit, is easily moved along and gently deposited. The conveyor is slipped out and continues on for another load. This saving of movements, by handling bags in groups, instead of singly, is a principle of the “scientific management” of which every up-to-date factory management makes some study.

As we pass out into the entrance way, we are invited to take a brief look into the water-proof basement, boiler rooms, and fire-proof passage connecting with the screened fire escape in the rear. A moment is spent in hearing of the fire-alarm system and fire drills. The little red box under a great gong, on each floor, almost thinks and acts for itself, announcing not only the fire, but its location, and also, if out of order, or not wound up, declaring the fact.

Every modern fire precaution safeguards the workers from fire as effectively as the light, air, and sanitary equipment safeguard their health and the purity of the goods turned out by this establishment.

Evolution of Coffee Roasting Apparatus

Crude, burnt clay dishes and stone vessels were the first coffee roasters. In them the dried hulls and green beans were roasted over open fires about 1200 to 1300.

Between 1400 and 1500, individual earthenware and metal coffee-roasting plates appeared. These were circular, four to six inches in diameter, about ¹/₁₆-inch thick, slightly concave, and pierced with small holes, something like the modern kitchen skimmer. They were used in Turkey and Persia for roasting a few beans at a time over braziers (open pans, or basins, for holding live coals). The braziers were usually mounted on feet and bore very rich ornamentation.

The Turkish coffee grinder seems to have suggested the individual cylinder roaster which later (1650) became common, and from which developed the huge, modern-cylinder, commercial roasting machines.

Between 1500 and 1600, shallow iron dippers with long handles and foot rests, designed to stand in open fires, were used in Bagdad, and by the Arabs in Mesopotamia, for roasting coffee. These roasters had handles about 34 inches long, and the bowls were eight inches in diameter. They were accompanied by a metal stirrer (spatula) for turning the beans.

Another type of roaster was developed about 1600. It was in the shape of an iron spider on legs, and was designed, like that just described, to sit in open fires.

When La Roque speaks of his father bringing back to Marseilles from Constantinople in 1644 the instruments for making coffee, he undoubtedly refers to the individual devices which at that time in the Orient included the roaster plate, the cylinder grinder, the small, long-handled boiler, and fenjeyns (findjans), the little porcelain drinking cups.

When Bernier visited Grand Cairo about the middle of the 17th century, in all the city’s thousand-odd coffee houses, he found but two persons who understood the art of roasting the bean.

About 1650, there was developed the individual-cylinder coffee roaster made of metal, usually tinplate or tinned copper, suggested by the original Turkish pocket grinder. This was designed for use over open fires in braziers. There appeared about this time also a combined making-and-serving metal pot which was undoubtedly the original of the common type of pot that we know today.

There appeared in England about 1660 Elford’s white iron machine (sheet iron coated with tin), which was “turned on a spit by a jack.” This was simply a larger size of the individual-cylinder roaster, and was designed for family or commercial use. Modifications were developed by the French and Dutch. In the 17th century, the Italians produced some beautiful designs in wrought-iron coffee roasters.

Before the advent of the Elford machine, and, indeed, for two centuries thereafter, it was the common practice in the home to roast coffee in uncovered earthenware tart dishes, old pudding pans, and frying pans. Before the time of the modern kitchen stove, it was usually done over charcoal fires without flame.

By combining the long-handle idea contained in the Bagdad roaster with that of the original cylinder roaster, the Dutch perfected a small, closed, sheet-iron, cylinder roaster with a long handle that permitted its being held and turned in open fireplaces. From 1670, and well into the middle of the 19th century, this type of family roaster enjoyed great favor in Holland, France, England, and the United States, more especially in the country districts. The museums of Europe and the United States contain many specimens. The iron cylinder measured about five inches in diameter, and was from six to eight inches long, being attached to a three- or four-foot iron rod provided with a wooden handle. The green coffee was put into the cylinder through a sliding door. Balancing the roaster over the blaze by resting the end of the iron rod projecting from the far end of the roasting cylinder in a hook of the usual fireplace crane, the housekeeper was wont slowly to revolve the cylinder until the beans had turned the proper color.

Between 1700 and 1800, there was developed a type of small portable household stove to burn coke or charcoal, made of iron, and fitted with horizontal revolving cylinders for coffee roasting. These were provided with iron handles for turning. A modification of this type of roaster, under a three-sided hood, and standing on three legs, was designed to sit on the hearth of open fireplaces, close to the fire, or in the smoldering ashes. Because of its greater capacity, it was probably used in the inns and coffee houses for roasting large batches. Still another type, which made its appearance late in the 18th century, was the sheet-iron roaster suspended at the top of a tall, iron, boxlike compartment, or stove, in which the fire was built. This, too, was designed to roast coffee in comparatively large quantities. In some examples it was provided with legs.

In 1704, Bull’s machine for roasting coffee was patented in England. This probably marks the first use of coal for commercial roasting.

In 1710, the popular coffee roaster in French homes was a dish of varnished earthenware.

French inventors continued to apply themselves to coffee-roasting and coffee-making problems, and many new ideas were evolved. Some of these were improved upon by the Dutch, the Germans, and the Italians; but the best work in the line of improvements that have survived the test of time was done by inventors in England and the United States.

It was common practice to roast coffee in England in “an iron pan or in hollow cylinders made of sheet-iron”; while in Italy the practice was to roast it in glass flasks, which were fitted with loose corks. The flasks were “held over clear fires of burning coals and continually agitated.” Anthony Schick, was granted an English patent in 1812, on a method, or process, for roasting coffee; but, as he never filed his specifications, we shall probably never know what the process was. The custom of the day in England was to pound the roasted beans in a mortar, or to grind them in a French mill.

While French inventors were busy with coffee makers, English and American inventors were studying means to improve the roasting of the beans. Peregrine Williamson, of Baltimore, was granted the first patent in the United States for an improvement on a coffee roaster in 1820. In 1824, Richard Evans was granted a patent in England for a commercial method of roasting coffee, comprising a cylindrical sheet-iron roaster fitted with improved flanges for mixing, a hollow tube and trier for sampling coffee while roasting, and a means for turning the roaster completely over to empty it.

In 1829, the Établissements Lauzaune, Paris, began to make hand-turned, iron-cylinder machines for the roasting of coffee.

The English began exporting coffee-roasting and coffee-grinding machinery to the United States in 1833-34.

In 1840, Abel Stillman, Poland, New York, was granted a United States patent on a family coffee roaster having a mica window to enable the operator to observe the coffee while roasting.

During the first half of the 19th century, the French were only toying with the roaster, because roasting in France was not yet a separate branch of business, as it had become in England and the United States, where keen minds were already at work on the purely commercial coffee-roasting machine. The application of intensive thought in this direction was destined to bear fruit in America in 1846, and in England in 1847.

James W. Carter, of Boston, was granted a United States patent in 1846 on his “pull-out” roaster; and this was the machine most generally employed for trade roasting in America for the next 20 years. Carter did not claim to have invented the combination of cylindrical roaster and furnace; but he did claim priority for the combination, with the furnace and roasting vessel, of the air space, or chamber, surrounding it, “the same being for the purpose of preventing the too rapid escape of heat from the furnace when the air chamber’s induction and eduction air openings or passages are closed.”

The Carter “pull-out” was so called because the roasting cylinder of sheet iron was pulled out from the furnace on a shaft supported by standards, to be emptied or to be refilled from sliding doors in its “sides.” It was in use for many years in such oldtime plants as that of the Dwinell-Wright Company, 25 Harberhill Street, Boston; by James H. Forbes and William Schotten, in St. Louis; and by D. Y. Harrison, in Cincinnati.

In 1847-48, William and Elizabeth Dakin were granted patents in England on an apparatus for “cleaning and roasting coffee and for making decoctions.” The roaster specification covered a gold, silver, platinum, or alloy-lined roasting cylinder and traversing carriage on an overhead railway to move the roaster in and out of the roasting oven; and the “decoction” specification covered an arrangement for twisting a cloth-bag ground-coffee container in a coffee biggin, or applied a screw motion to a disk within a perforated cylinder containing the ground coffee, so as to squeeze the liquid out of the grounds after infusion had taken place.

The roaster has survived, but the coffee maker was not so fortunate. The Dakin idea was that coffee was injuriously affected by coming into contact with iron during the roasting process. The roasting cylinder was inclosed in an oven instead of being directly exposed to the furnace heat. The apparatus was provided also with a “taster,” or sampler, the first of its kind, to enable the operator to examine the roasting berries without stopping the machine.

In 1849, Thomas R. Wood, of Cincinnati, was granted a United States patent on a spherical coffee roaster for use on kitchen stoves. It attained considerable popularity among housewives who preferred to do their own roasting.

In 1852, Edward Gee secured a patent in England on a coffee roaster fitted with inclined flanges for turning the beans while roasting.

In 1862, E. J. Hyde, of Philadelphia, was granted a United States patent on a combined coffee roaster and stove, fitted with a crane on which the roasting cylinder was revolved and swung out horizontally for emptying and refilling. It was a commercial success. Benedickt Fischer used one in his first roasting plant in New York. It is still manufactured by the Bramhall Deane Company, of New York.

In 1864, Jabez Burns, of New York, was granted a United States patent on the original Burns coffee roaster, the first machine which did not have to be moved away from the fire for discharging the roasted coffee, and one that marked a distinct advance in the manufacture of coffee-roasting apparatus. It was a closed iron cylinder set in brickwork.

Until the Burns roaster appeared, coffee roasters were usually cylinders that revolved upon an axis; the other devices that were tried were not successful.

Jabez Burns patented an improved form of his roaster in 1881, and a sample coffee roaster in 1883, before he died in 1888; and since that time his sons, who continue the business, have perfected a number of improvements and brought out new machines.

Thomas Page, a New York millwright, began the manufacture of a pull-out coffee roaster similar to the old Carter machine, in 1868. Later, Chris Abele, who was foreman in the Page shop, succeeded to the business, and in 1882 he was granted a United States patent on an improvement on a coffee roaster similar to the original Burns machine (the patent had then expired), which he marketed under the name of Knickerbocker.

In the 1860s, ’70s, and ’80s, French, English, and Dutch inventors began producing gas coffee roasters, some of which were brought to America. For the complete story of their evolution and the evolution of other apparatus, the reader is referred to All About Coffee.

The first direct-flame gas coffee roaster in America was installed in the plant of the Potter-Parlin Company, New York, by F. T. Holmes, in 1893. This was Tupholme’s machine, patented in England in 1887, and in the United States in 1896-97. The Potter-Parlin Company subsequently placed the Tupholme machines throughout the United States on a daily rental basis, limiting the leases to one firm in a city, having obtained the exclusive American rights from the Waygood, Tupholme Company, now the Grocers Engineering & Whitmee, Ltd.

In 1897, a special gas burner, not to be confused with the direct-flame machine, was first attached to a regular Burns roaster in the United States, and was made the basis of application for a patent. The Burns direct-flame gas roaster, with patented swing-gate head for feeding and discharging, was introduced to the trade in 1900. The Burns gas sample roaster followed.

In 1901, Joseph Lambert, of Marshall, Michigan, introduced to the trade one of the earliest indirect gas roasting machines.

In the same year, 1901, F. T. Holmes, formerly with the Potter-Parlin Company, joined the Huntley Manufacturing Company, Silver Creek, New York, which then began to build the Monitor direct-flame gas coffee roaster.

In 1915, and again in 1919, Jabez Burns & Sons, New York, patented their Jubilee roaster, an inner-heated machine in which the gas is burned inside a revolving cylinder in a combustion chamber protected from direct coffee contact. The heat is deflected downward and then passes upward through the coffee.

In 1897, Joseph Lambert, of Vermont, began the manufacture and sale at Battle Creek, Michigan, of the Lambert self-contained coffee roaster without the brick setting then required for coffee-roasting machines. In 1900, he was joined by A. P. Grohens. In 1901, the Lambert Food & Machinery Company was organized. In 1904, the company was reorganized. Since then, many improvements have been made under Mr. Grohens direction. The Lambert gas roaster, one of the first machines employing gas as fuel for indirect roasting, dates back to 1901, as mentioned. The Economic roaster is Mr. Grohens latest development for coal or coke fuel. It is a compact, self-contained equipment, operating in connection with a new-type rotary cooler. He has also recently brought out a gas-fired, electrically operated, 600-pound Victory roaster and a 50-pound miniature coffee-roasting plant designed for retail stores.

In 1903, John Arbuckle was granted a United States patent on a coffee-roasting apparatus employing a fan to force the hot-fire gases into the roasting cylinder. From this was developed the Jumbo roaster, now used in the Arbuckle plant, which roasts 10,000 pounds an hour.