A funny thing happens when coffee roasts: It pops. The beans don’t explode like popcorn, but they do let out a loud snap. It’s this “first crack” that roasters have listened for over the centuries, and the sound I waited to hear during a coffee-roasting lesson at Brooklyn Roasting Co.
Brooklyn Roasting Co. is steeped in coffee-roasting history. The roaster sits on the foundation of Arbuckle’s, the first commercially successful coffee roaster in this country. And inside lie coffee-roasting equipment and the answers to all my coffee-roasting questions, answered by Michael Pollack, the roaster himself.
To appreciate the efficiency of the modern process that turns green coffee beans into their recognizable chocolate-colored hues, a short roasting history illustrates the improvements.
Back in the late 1800s, coffee was fire-roasted in tiny batches using machines like the Jabez Burns, where four perforated barrels rotated over an open flame as beans heated inside. San Francisco cult coffee roaster Four Barrel pays homage to coffee roasting’s history with its name.
The German company Probat entered the coffee scene in the early 1900s to add scale and consistency to the process. By introducing a much larger solid metal drum that roasted coffee through conduction, not an open flame, coffee roasted more evenly. Probat still thrives today: both Sightglass Coffee and Ritual Coffee, two other revered coffee roasters in San Francisco, roast on a Probat.
The latest roasting improvements come from Loring, a company in Santa Rosa, Calif., whose modern roaster sits in the back of Brooklyn Roasting Co. The Loring is essentially a convection oven, where 40-pound batches of beans rotate in a piping-hot drum, shaking like a baby’s rattle as the drum heats up and then cools.
It’s the roasting process that drives different flavor profiles of coffee as much as the terroir of the beans itself. As the beans heat up, they lose moisture. Aromas of wet hay and then yeast, like baking bread, waft through the room. The steam begins to turn to smoke as the beans brown, and roasters listen for the “first crack” (SNAP!).
At this point, the beans take on a soft brown hue, with toffee aromas signaling a light roast profile. As they continue to heat, just before the “second crack” (CRACKLE!), the beans take on the milk-chocolate undertones of a medium-roast profile as their sugars start to caramelize. And after the second crack, if the beans continue to roast, they take on the crisper deep-brown color and intense, pure “coffee” aromas of a traditional dark or “Italian” roast.
It takes a certain fanaticism with coffee roasting – an interest in the old and an obsession with the new – to get the perfect cup. And with a snap, maybe a crackle, and at some point, a full stop, coffee beans hit that perfect roast level for a flavorful sip.
Follow my epicurean adventures on Twitter @KathrynAndersen
