S3: Episode 11: The Coffee Machines You (Probably) Don’t Know About
By now, most people probably appreciate that to get coffee from the bush where it’s grown to your coffee mug involves a lot of manual work by many different people across the globe. But you may not be so aware of the various machines that are also involved in the process. So in this week’s episode we are shining the spotlight on some of the machines used to transform coffee cherries into the coffee you drink and how they can unexpectedly affect your coffee. This week’s FACQ offers advice on what to do if you are unlucky enough to come across hard evidence of one of these machines in your coffee bag.
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Hello and welcome to The Coffee Drinker’s Guide, a podcast for the coffee curious where I explore and explain the world of specialty coffee to make your daily coffee better and more satisfying.
I’m Angela Holder a coffee roaster and writer on a mission to fight back against bad coffee by giving you the knowledge you need to help you get good coffee and a happier (coffee) life in coffee-break sized episodes. So grab your coffee, pull up a chair and take a break…
In this week’s episode we are taking a look at the machines used across the coffee supply chain and their unsuspected influence on the quality of your coffee….and later I’ll be answering a question about what to do when their presence becomes apparent - specifically, if you find a piece of metal in your bag of coffee so stay tuned for that…
When you imagine what goes into the production of the coffee you buy, what do you think of? Perhaps poor but cheerful workers bringing sacks of coffee down from the mountains on the backs of donkeys. Or the passionate artisan roaster crafting each batch of coffee with tender loving care on a vintage roasting machine. While there may be an element of truth in these representations, eagerly fostered by marketing, in fact they do not reflect the reality of the majority of the coffee industry. From harvesting to green bean processing, roasting and packing, a lot of the work is very manual but many machines are needed to produce the huge volumes of coffee drunk by hundreds of millions of people around the world. If these machines are looked after properly the end result is a bag of great tasting coffee. But if something goes wrong with them or they are not well maintained a problem can unfortunately become evident further along the coffee supply chain. So lets take a look at the various machines used to produce your coffee and some ways they can make their presence known in the bag you buy…
Firstly industrial machines and the bean
Let me say front and centre that there is a lot of manual labour and heavy lifting involved in all stages of processing coffee even today. But there are also some key pieces of equipment and machinery that are used too. Such as cherry harvesting machines used on Brazilian farms where the land is relatively flat and the fields are huge. Also in coffee growing countries the mills where coffee cherries are processed into green beans use machines such as depulpers to remove the cherry flesh, huge mechanical dryers akin to tumble dryers to dry the beans and various machines to sort and grade the coffee into the different quality grades. When the green coffee arrives at the roastery it may be transferred into and out of silos before roasting. The roasting machines themselves can range from small 5kg machines all the way up to huge factory roasters that run continuously as part of a production line while being monitored by a remote operator. The coffee may finally be ground in yet another machine before being loaded into a packing machine to fill up the coffee bags you buy. All of these machines need to be looked after to ensure the quality of the coffee, but what happens when things go wrong?
Next industrial machines and the taste
Last week I explored the effect that dirty and poorly maintained coffee equipment has on your coffee’s flavour. The condition of your brewing equipment is entirely under your control. But what you are probably not aware of is that the condition of coffee processing equipment and machines can also affect your coffee’s flavour long before it gets into the bag that you buy. At the roastery, sluggish airflow through roasting machines due to a build up of dust in flues or a clogged cooling tray mesh will cause the coffee to taste dark and muddy. Also if coffee oils are allowed to build up on the temperature probes used to control the roasting process this will affect their performance, leading to coffees being roasted darker than intended. For these reasons alone every good roastery has a regular cleaning and maintenance schedule to ensure their coffee tastes its best. At origin if the green bean processing equipment is not cleaned thoroughly between batches cross contamination of coffee can occur which may affect its flavour. This is not necessarily always noticeable by the coffee drinker. However, in the worst instances, beans which have become lodged in the equipment or machinery and have been infected by bacteria or mould may become incorporated into later coffee batches. This will bring random sour, medicinal or mouldy flavours to coffees that would otherwise not have them. Now that you would notice!
Finally industrial machines and the brew
Perhaps the most obvious impact on brewing by machines used throughout the coffee supply chain is finding a bit of metal caught in your grinder burrs. This could be in the form of screws, nuts, bolts, or other random bits of metal that may have broken off a machine used to process the coffee. These small items can get caught in the burrs with ear splitting effect and sometimes with disastrous consequences for the grinder. As well as ruining your brewing session, this is of course a food safety issue as ingesting metal fragments is potentially very bad for your health. All roasteries should have magnets on their production lines to catch bits of metal before the coffee is packed into the bag you buy, but not all metal is magnetic. Thankfully because of the quality assurance and quality control procedures followed by most roasters, finding metal in retail coffee is extremely rare. But it’s still a good idea to pay attention to the beans when you pour them into your grinder’s bean hopper, just in case!
And now its time for a Frequently Asked Coffee Question…
And this episode’s question is…
What should I do if I do find a piece of metal in my coffee beans?
You have two options. If you want to help the business who sold you the coffee, take the bag back to them and point out the problem. They will want to assess the piece to determine if it came off of a machine at the roastery or if it was already in the green coffee when it arrived at the roastery. Alternatively you could keep the evidence and report it directly to the local food regulatory authority. In the UK that is the local authority’s food safety team where the business is located. I will say again that the chance of actually finding a piece of metal in a bag of coffee is extremely rare - and the chance of it making it into your brew is almost zero. This is because the brewing process that the coffee goes through will catch metal pieces - either by getting caught in the grinder or by being screened out by the filtration system of your brewing method. So its not something to lie awake worrying about but it is something you should be aware of.
Thank you for listening to this episode of The Coffee Drinker’s Guide and that was all about industrial coffee machines and their potential influence on your coffee. Have you ever found metal or anything odd or random in your coffee? Let me know on Instagram @thecoffeedrinkersguide, email me at thecoffeedrinkersguide@gmail.com or leave me a text message using the link in the show notes. In the next episode which is also the last for this season we are taking a look at the people whose work, passion and dedication goes into your daily brew … be sure to hit follow so that you don’t miss it, if you haven’t already. If you have a friend who you think would find this interesting please tell them about the show and rate and review this podcast wherever you listen to your podcasts to help other coffee curious people find the show too. Thanks to my executive producer Viel Richardson at Lusona Publishing and Media Limited. You can find him at lusonapub.co.uk. Until next time I’m Angela Holder thanks for taking your coffee break with me - the best way to tackle life is one coffee at a time and here’s to better coffee!
The Coffee Drinker’s Guide is a Blue Sky Coffee Project