Coffee merchandising

“Steel-cut” coffee—Wholesale coffee grinding—Evolution of grinding apparatus.

Unless the coffee is to be sold in the bean, it is sent to the grinding and packing department, to be further prepared for the consumer. Since the federal Food Law has been in effect, the public has gained confidence in ground and bean coffee in packages; and today a large part of the coffee consumed in the United States is sold in one- and two-pound cartons and cans, already blended and ready for brewing.

“Steel-Cut” Coffee

A progressive coffee-packing house may have three different styles of grinding machines; one called the granulator for turning out the so-called “steel-cut” coffee; the second, a pulverizer for making a really fine grind; and the third, a grinding mill for general factory work and producing a medium-ground coffee.

Commercial coffee-grinding machines are alike in principle in all countries, the beans being crushed or broken between toothed or corrugated metal or stone members, one revolving and the other being stationary. While all grinding machines are alike in principle, they may vary in capacity and design. The average granulator will turn out about 500 pounds of “steel-cut” coffee in an hour; the pulverizer, 75 to 100 pounds; and the average grinding mill, 500 to 600 pounds. Some types of grinding machines have chaff-removing attachments to extract, by air suction, the chaff from the coffee as it is being ground.

A large number of trade terms for designating different grinds of coffee are used in the United States, some of them meaning the same thing, while similar names are sometimes contradictory. A canvass of the leading American coffee packers in 1917 discovered that there were 15 terms in use, and that there were 34 different meanings attached to them. For the term “fine,” there were five different definitions; “medium” had five; “coarse,” seven; “pulverized,” four; “steel-cut,” seven; “ground,” two; “powdered,” one; “percolator,” two; “steel-cut-chaff-removed,” one; “Turkish ground,” one; while “granulated,” “Greek ground,” “extra fine,” “standard,” and “regular” were not defined.

The term “steel-cut” is generally understood to mean that in the grinding process the chaff has been removed and an approximate uniformity of granules has been obtained by sifting. The term does not necessarily mean that the grinding mills have steel burrs. In fact, most firms employ burrs made of case iron or of a composition metal known as “burr metal,” because of its combined hardness and toughness.

The “steel-cut” idea is another of those sophistries for which American advertising methods have been largely responsible in the development of the package-coffee business in the United States. The term “steel-cut” lost all its value as an advertising catchword for the original user when every other dealer began to use it, no matter how the ground coffee was produced. When the public has been taught that coffee should be “steel-cut,” it is hard to sell it ground coffee unless it is called “steel-cut”; although a truer instructor of the consumer would have caused him to insist on buying whole bean coffee to be ground at home.

“Steel-cut” coffee—that is, a medium-ground coffee with the chaff blown out—does not compare in cup test with coffee that has been more scientifically ground and not given the chaff-removal treatment that is largely associated in the public mind with the idea of the “steel-cut” process.

According to the results of the trade canvass previously referred to, it would appear that the terms most suited to convey the right idea of the different grades of grinding, and likely to be acceptable to the greatest number, would be “coarse” (for boiling and including all the coarser grades); “medium” (for coffee made in the ordinary pot, including the so-called “steel-cut”); “fine” (like granulated sugar, and used for percolators); “very fine” (like cornmeal, and used for drip or filtration methods); “powdered” (like flour, and used for Turkish coffee).

Coffee begins to lose its strength immediately after roasting, the rate of loss increasing rapidly after grinding. In a test carried out by a Michigan coffee packer, it was discovered that a mixture of a very fine with a coarse grind gave the best results in the cup. It was also determined that coarse-ground coffee lost its strength more rapidly than the medium ground; while the latter deteriorated more quickly than a fine ground; and so on, down the scale. His conclusions were that the most satisfactory grind for putting into packages that were likely to stand for some time before being consumed was a mixture consisting of about 90 percent finely ground coffee and 10 percent coarse. His theory is that the fine grind supplies sufficiently high body extraction; the coarse, the needful flavor and aroma. On this irregular grind a United States patent (No. 14,520) has been granted, in which the inventor claims that the 90 percent of fine eliminates the interstices—that allow too free ventilation in a coarse-ground coffee—and consequently prevents the loss of the highly volatile constituents of the 10 percent of coarse-ground particles, and at the same time gives a full-body extraction.

Wholesale Coffee Grinding

As long as there continues a consumer demand for ground package coffee, there will be found manufacturers willing to supply it, despite all the well-turned arguments in favor of grinding at home or in the shop at the time of purchase.

There are to be had factory mills in which coffee may be reduced to the desired fineness at one passage through a pair of metal-disk grinding plates, which are capable of producing 500 pounds an hour of finely ground coffee such as will pass completely through a square-mesh sieve having ³/₆₄-inch clear openings. These mills can be made to produce as much as 1,000 to 1,500 pounds of finely ground coffee an hour.

For retail distributers there are many excellent counter mills that render efficient service in grinding whole-bean loose or package coffee for the housewife while she waits.

Evolution of Grinding Apparatus

In the beginning,—that is to say, in Ethiopia, about 800 A. D.,—a primitive stone mortar and pestle were the original coffee grinder. Next, the coffee beans were ground between little millstones, one turning above the other; then came the mill used by the Greeks and Romans for grain. This mill consisted of two conical millstones, one hollow and fitted over the other, specimens of which have been found in Pompeii. The idea is the same as that employed in the most modern metal grinder.

In the 15th century, we notice the first appearance of the familiar Turkish pocket-cylinder coffee mill. 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 1428 and 1448, a spice grinder standing on four legs was invented, and this was later used for grinding coffee. The drawer to receive the ground coffee was added in the 18th century.

Between 1600 and 1632, mortars and pestles of wood, iron, brass, and bronze came into common use in Europe for braying the roasted beans. For several centuries, coffee connoisseurs held that pounding the beans in a mortar was superior to grinding in the most efficient mill. Peregrine White’s parents brought to America on the Mayflower, in 1620, a wooden mortar and pestle that were used for braying coffee to make coffee “powder.”

The improved Turkish combination coffee grinder with folding handle and cup receptacle for the beans, used for grinding, boiling, and drinking, was first made in Damascus in 1665.

In 1665, Nicholas Book, “living at the Sign of the Frying Pan in St. Tulies Street,” London, advertised that he was “the only known man for making of mills for grinding of coffee powder, which mills are sold by him from 40 to 45 shillings the mill.”

Coffee grinders were so common in France in 1720 that they were to be had for $1.25 each. Their development by the French had been rapid from the original spice grinder. At first, they were known as coffee mills; but in the 18th century, roasters came to be known by that name. They were made of iron, retaining the same principle of the horizontal millstones—one of which is fixed while the other moves—that the ancients employed for grinding wheat. They were squat, box-shaped affairs, having in the center a shank of iron that revolved upon a fixed, corrugated iron plate. There was also the style that fastened to the wall. At first, the drawer to receive ground coffee was missing, but this was supplied in later types. Before its invention, the ground coffee was received in a sack of greased leather, or in one treated on the outside with beeswax—probably the original of the duplex paper bag for conserving the flavor.

The French brought their innate artistic talents to bear upon coffee grinders, just as they did upon roasters and serving pots. In many instances, they made the outer parts of silver and of gold.

English and American inventors soon afterward produced the well-known wall-mill type of coffee grinder. The original Parker mill appeared in 1832. Jabez Burns secured a patent on his granulating mill in 1872. Mr. Burns had some very definite ideas on the subject of grinding coffee, as well as on how the product should be roasted. At that time the French and English lap and wall mills, the English steel mills, and the Swift mills were all used in the United States. Troemner’s, the Enterprise, and others were extending their use in a retail way; but Jabez Burns confined his attention to a practicable mill for wholesale grinding establishments.

For manufacturing purposes, burr-stone mills were for many years exclusively employed, especially one first known as the Prentiss & Page, and later as the Page mill. There was a time when all coffee establishments in New York sent their coffee to Prentiss & Page to be ground. Some of the places roasted by hand, others by horse power; and, if by steam, it was limited, and they did not have enough to spare for grinding.

With the march of improvement, burr-stone mills went into the discard. The difficulty lay in finding men experienced in stone dressing to run them; and the demand grew for a better style of grinding than could be done in a mill out of face and balance. This demand was met in an altogether different style of machine, which for 25 years was well known as the Barbor mill. It was for improvements on this mill that Jabez Burns in 1867, 1872, and 1874 obtained his granulator patents.

The mill comprised cutters in the form of an iron roller running in near contact with a concave, also of iron, and a revolving cylinder provided with sieves, or screens, that received the ground material, rolled it over the wire surface, sifting out the fine and discharging the course automatically into the cutter, to be again manipulated until it was fine enough to pass through the meshes of the screen.

In 1875-76-78, Turner Strowbridge, of New Brighton, Pennsylvania, was granted three United States patents on a box coffee mill.

In 1878, Landers, Frary & Clark, New Britain, Connecticut, brought out an improved box coffee grinder for home use.

In 1878 and 1880, United States patents were issued to John C. Dell, of Philadelphia, on a store coffee mill.

In 1879 and 1880, United States patents were issued to Orson W. Stowe, of the Peck, Stowe & Wilcox Company, Southington, Connecticut, on a household coffee mill.

In 1881, the Morgan Brothers, Edgar H. and Charles, began the manufacture of household coffee mills, the business being acquired in 1885 by the Arcade Manufacturing Company, of Freeport, Illinois. The latter concern brought out the first pound coffee mill in 1889. Its mills became very popular in the United States. In 1900, Charles Morgan was granted a United States patent on a glass-jar coffee mill, with removable glass measuring cup.

In 1897, the Enterprise Manufacturing Company, of Pennsylvania, was the first regularly to employ electric motors for driving commercial coffee mills by means of belt-and-pulley attachments.

In 1898, the Hobart Manufacturing Company, of Troy, Ohio, introduced to the trade another early coffee grinder connected with an electric motor and driven by belt-and-pulley attachment.

In 1900, the first gear-driven electric coffee grinder was put on the market by the Enterprise Manufacturing Company, of Pennsylvania.

In 1902, the Coles Manufacturing Company (Braun Company, successor) and Henry Troemner, of Philadelphia, began the manufacture and sale of gear-driven electric coffee grinders.

In 1905, the A. J. Deer Company, Buffalo, New York (now at Hornell, New York), began to sell its Royal electric coffee mills direct to dealers on the installment plan, revolutionizing the former practice of selling coffee mills through hardware jobbers.

In 1905, H. L. Johnston was granted a United States patent on a coffee mill. He assigned the patent to the Hobart Manufacturing Company.

In 1905, a celebrated case was decided in Kansas City involving litigation between William E. Baker, of Baker & Company, Minneapolis, and the F. A. Duncombe Manufacturing Company, of St. Joseph, Missouri, over Mr. Baker’s patent rights in a machine to produce steel-cut coffee. The suit was brought in 1903, and Mr. Baker contended that his patent gave him the exclusive right to the “uniformity of granules by means of the sharply dressed mechanism” and by the use of a fan for blowing away the silver skins, produced by his machine; while the defendant said he obtained the same result (steel-cut coffee) by grading the granules through screens or sieves. The defense was that Mr. Baker’s process was not a discovery; because, grinding coffee was as old as the world’s knowledge, and winnowing the chaff was equally ancient. The lower court dismissed the bill, because the “patents sued upon are devoid of patentable invention,” and the United States Court of Appeals confirmed the decision.

Herbert L. Johnston, assignor to the Hobart Electric Manufacturing Company, Troy, Ohio, was granted a United States patent on a machine for refining coffee in 1913.

In 1915, the National Coffee Roasters Association’s Home coffee mill, employing an improved set screw operating on a cog-and-ratchet principle, was introduced to the trade.

In 1916, Jules Le Page, Darlington, Indiana, obtained two United States patents on cutting rolls to cut—and not to grind or crush—corn, wheat, or coffee. These were subsequently incorporated in the Ideal steel-cut coffee mill and marketed to the trade first by the B. F. Gump Company, Chicago, and later through Jabez Burns & Sons, New York.