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The majority of coffee is roasted on a large scale, but small-scale roasting has grown with the trend toward specialty shops.

Process

The vast majority of coffee is roasted commercially on a large scale, but small-scale commercial roasting has grown significantly with the trend toward “single-origin” coffees served at specialty shops. Some coffee drinkers even roast coffee at home as a hobby in order to both experiment with the flavor profile of the beans and ensure themselves of the freshest possible roast.

The coffee-roasting process follows coffee processing and precedes coffee brewing. It consists essentially of sorting, roasting, cooling, and packaging but can also include grinding in larger-scale roasting houses. In larger operations, bags of green coffee beans are hand- or machine-opened, dumped into a hopper, and screened to remove debris. The green beans are then weighed and transferred by belt or pneumatic conveyor to storage hoppers. From the storage hoppers, the green beans are conveyed to the roaster. Initially, the process is endothermic (absorbing heat), but at around 175 °C (347 °F) it becomes exothermic (giving off heat). For the roaster, this means that the beans are heating themselves and an adjustment of the roaster’s heat source might be required. At the end of the roasting cycle, the roasted beans are dumped from the roasting chamber and air cooled with a draft inducer.

The most common roasting machines are of two basic types: drum and hot-air, although there are others including packed-bed, tangential and centrifugal roasters.

Hot-air roasters force heated air through a screen or perforated plate under the coffee beans with sufficient force to lift the beans. Heat is transferred to the beans as they tumble and circulate within this fluidized bed. Some coffee roasters use names for the various degrees of roast, such as City Roast and French Roast, for the internal bean temperatures found during roasting.