THE EVOLUTION OF COFFEE APPARATUS Page 9

In 1849, Apoleoni Pierre Preterre, of Havre, was granted an English patent on a coffee roaster mounted on a weighing apparatus to indicate loss of weight in roasting and automatically stop the roasting process. At the same time he secured an English patent on a vacuum percolator, not unlike Durant's of 1827.

In 1849 also, 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.

C.W. Van Vliet, of Fishkill Landing, N.Y., was granted a United States patent in 1855 on a household coffee mill employing upper breaking and lower grinding cones. He assigned it to Charles Parker of Meriden, Conn. In 1860–61 several United States patents were granted John and Edmund Parker on coffee grinders for home use.

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. This machine proved to be a commercial success. Benedickt Fischer used one in his first roasting plant in New York. It is still being 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. Jabez Burns had been a student of coffee roasting in New York for twenty years before he produced the machine that was to revolutionize the coffee business of the United States. He had brought with him from England a knowledge of the trade in that country, where he first began his business training by selling Java coffee at fourteen cents and Sumatra at eleven cents to hotels, boarding-houses, and private families.

Up to the time of the Civil War, the contrivances employed for roasting coffee in every case necessitated the removal of the roasting apparatus—whether pan, globe, or cylinder—from the fire. The process of causing coffee to discharge from the end of the roasting cylinder at the pleasure of the operator while the cylinder was still in motion was new; and the double set of flanges to produce this effect, and at the same time, during the process of roasting, to keep the coffee equally distributed from end to end of the cylinder, was new. Some one suggested this last improvement was simply an Archimedean screw placed in a cylinder, but Mr. Burns replied: "It is a double screw, a thing never suggested by the Archimedean screw. It is, in fact, a double right and left augur, one within the other, firmly secured together and also to the shell or cylinder, and when the cylinder revolves the desired result is obtained—the idea being entirely original."

Mr. Burns had watched the development of the coffee business from the time when the preparation of coffee was largely confined to the home, where the approved roasting implements were hot stones, or tiles, iron plates, skillets, and frying pans. Some of these were still in use twenty years after he produced his first machine; and he often said that coffee evenly roasted by such methods was just as good as if done by the best mechanical device ever invented. He also said: "Coffee can be roasted in very simple machinery. Some of the best we ever saw was done in a corn popper. Patent portable roasters are almost as numerous as rat traps or churns."

The Original Burns Roaster, 1864

He early saw the practise of domestic roasting falling into disuse, as it was becoming possible to supply the consumer with roasted coffee for only a trifle more than in the green state, with all the labor and annoyance of roasting done away with—a talking point that John Arbuckle was quick to seize upon in his first Ariosa advertising.

In almost every town of any size there were concerns engaged in the roasting business. Within a few years, Burns machines were placed in all the principal roasting centers. Pupke & Reid in New York; Flint, Evans & Co., and James H. Forbes in St. Louis; Arbuckles & Co., in Pittsburgh; the Weikel & Smith Spice Co. in Philadelphia; Theodore F. Johnson & Co., in Newark; Evans & Walker in Detroit; W. & J.G. Flint in Milwaukee; and Parker & Harrison in Cincinnati, were among his first customers.

It is said that in 1845 there were facilities in and around New York to roast as much coffee as was then consumed in Great Britain. Steam power was being extensively used, and the roasting was done here for a large part of the country. The habit was to buy roasted coffee from the coffee and spice mills by the bag or larger quantity for country consumption; and the grocers and small tea stores, for local consumption, bought from twenty-five pounds upward at a time. This method cheapened the roasting of coffee to half a cent a pound; and then good profits could be made, for everything was cheap in those days. Even at that, it would have been impossible for each tea dealer to have roasted his own coffee for several times the amount, so the practise was generally adhered to all over the country.

Jabez Burns wrote in 1874:

It is preposterous to suppose that household roasting will be continued long in any part of this country, if coffee properly prepared can be had. This is demonstrated by the remarkable advances made in Pittsburgh and other places, where only a few years ago the sales were chiefly in green coffee. Now the amount roasted in Pittsburgh alone by those who make a business of it, exceeds the entire consumption of coffee of any kind in the United States fifty years ago. It will never pay for small stores to roast if the large manufactories will do the work well, and if they will not, small dealers will add proper machinery, and will eventually become strong competing dealers. By doing the work with proper care they will not only secure a reputation with large sales for themselves, but will command the roasting for other parties.

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 thus describes the first roaster he ever saw at Hull, England:

It consisted of a furnace, open at the top, and a perforated cylinder with a slide door. The axis, or shaft, of the cylinder had bearings on a frame which passed outside the furnace, while the cylinder went down into the fire pit, the top of which could be covered over. In this position it could be turned by means of a crank on the end of a shaft The only means of testing was by the escape of the steam or aroma, whichever predominated, passing out through the perforations at the top; but so expert was the operator and so quick to detect the aroma, that he seldom had to return the cylinder to the fire to produce a satisfactory roast. This man roasted fifty pounds or less in a batch for a number of retail stores.

Globes, consisting of two hemispheres, made of cast-iron and so arranged that they opened to fill and discharge, but operated substantially as above, only with the method of lowering into the fire changed somewhat, I have seen in use in Scotland in 1840. They were called French roasters.

In this country a few years ago the use of the long sheet-iron cylinder was almost universal, varying only in the method of placing the cylinder over the fire—some sideways on a track, others endwise, sliding on a long shaft or by turning on a crane, in either case causing considerable labor and loss of time, which often resulted in the hands of the inexperienced in more or less spoiling the batch of coffee.

From his expert knowledge of coffee and coffee-roasting problems, Jabez Burns quickly rose to a commanding position in the industry. He was a trade teacher and a trade builder. He had very definite ideas on roasting. He said:

The object of roasting is not attained until all the moisture (water of vegetation) is driven off. Roast properly—uniformly and sufficiently—and you will get all the aroma there is in the bean. Coffees of various kinds can not be roasted to a uniform color. Some will be of a light shade when sufficiently roasted while others will have to be roasted dark to develop the aroma. Therefore, appearance alone is not a proper test. Aroma-saving devices have had their day. Coffee is of no use unless the aroma is fully developed, and the more it is developed by roasting the better it is. What passes off in the roasting process can not be saved and is so small that if all of it in the country could be collected and freed of all foreign matter, it would not weigh an ounce.

Roast coffee over a slow fire so that it will be an hour before it has the color of roasted coffee, and, in contrast, produce in another batch of like quantity the same color in thirty minutes, and it will be found for all intended purposes, either to grind, sell or drink, that the latter will be, beyond all comparison, the best. Coffee should be roasted uniform and as quickly as possible, only it must not be scorched or spotted, otherwise it will have a bitter burned taste. If roasted properly it will very considerably increase its bulk and will be plump, swelled out and crisp; easily crushed in the hand or between the fingers.