Roasting coffee beans with technology-modified ruts

Although the drinking and planting methods of coffee developed dramatically in the 17th and 18th centuries, progress in roasting was very poor. The most common method of roasting at that time was to follow the Middle Eastern way of simple roasting: put the raw coffee beans in an iron pan, then bake them on the fire and continue to stir until the coffee beans turned brown. In addition, there are some relatively complex materials, such as a metal cylinder or a hollow ball in which raw coffee beans can be filled, and then hang them in the upper room of the fire to bake, with a hand stirring device to stir the coffee beans inside. These devices can bake several pounds of coffee beans at a time and are often used in coffee shops or small baking retailers; they also come in smaller sizes and can be used for general household use and roasting small quantities of coffee beans in your own fireplace. The illustration below is an illustration and description of such a device, and you can also see a sample diagram of this baking device on pages 48-58.

More difficult questions to answer

For example: where did Europeans and Americans roast coffee beans in the 17th and 18th centuries? Do they all bake coffee beans at home or buy roasted coffee beans from the store? Compared with the way it is roasted now, what was the taste of coffee then?

Only the first two clues can answer these three questions: at that time, people's coffee beans were baked by servants at home and bought from the store. For people at that time, baking coffee beans was not as difficult as other cooking chores, as in Europe, the job was usually left to older children at home.

So are they baking well or not? How do the coffee beans taste like this? Just imagine: with an iron pot, uneven vitality, and baked by children, it is not difficult to foresee that such baking quality cannot guarantee a stable performance, and charred coffee is produced from time to time. At that time, perhaps the coffee beans bought from stores will be more stable, but there are not many stores that can bake well.

What is certain, however, is that at that time, people drank coffee beans baked by themselves or baked in stores, even freshly roasted; compared with today's instant coffee or cheap canned coffee powder, these ancient home-baked coffee performed slightly better.

The relationship between baking mode and region

In the past, the depth of baking used in different places was very different, which was very similar to the taste preference of modern regional people. For example, in most parts of Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries, they drank very deep-roasted Turkish-style coffee. For example, a 17th century homemade baking advice booklet described it as follows: "take any number of raw coffee beans you like, throw them into the fryer, move them to the charcoal fire, and continue to argue about the coffee beans in the pan." until the color of the coffee beans is close to black. "

But there are special cases, such as in the northern half of Europe, such as Germany, Scandinavia and the UK, where their baking habits are shallower than in other parts of Europe that prefer Turkish baking. This difference is also obvious in the new colonies: most of the North American regions ruled by the colonial powers in the northern half of Europe prefer the shallow baking mode, while the southern colonized Latin America prefers the deeper baking mode.

Another week's presentation also reveals why people in northern Europe have switched from Turkish deep-baked drinks to lightly roasted coffee beans: this shift in taste, in terms of time, was around the end of the 17th century and the beginning of the 18th century. when Europeans began to adopt the new filter drinking method, some people thought that such a taste preference shift It may have something to do with Nordic drinking mild drinks such as tea and beer, which explains why Nordic people later developed so differently in baking and brewing.

The Arabian Peninsula and parts of East Africa still retain the traditional way of drinking and still use the lighter baking mode, which is cooked with spices but without sugar.

The era of industrial revolution

At the beginning of the 19th century, most people in Europe and the United States lived in the countryside to earn a living by farming; however, at the end of the 19th century, more and more people moved to live in the city, and the form of work also changed into industry and service industry. At the beginning of the 19th century, people's lives were inextricably linked with closed traditions, while in 1999, people had more open careers, and life was closely related to newspapers and advertising. At the beginning of the 19th century, there were only simple machinery and tools, and most of the energy came from renewable water power and wind power; by the end of the 19th century, there were many complex machines closely connected with people's lives. most of the energy used comes from coal and oil.

Coffee beans have also changed with this changing trend: at the beginning of the 19th century, whether baking coffee beans at home or buying roasted coffee beans in shops or coffee shops, the roasting equipment used was relatively simple; by the end of the 19th century, more and more city residents are buying coffee beans baked by large, complex baking machines, and these coffee beans even have a brand logo.

However, after words, the degree of development varies greatly from place to place. For example, the United States has been in the lead, replacing the activity of roasting coffee beans at home with roasted cooked beans or ground coffee powder; Germany and the British Empire are catching up; but other industrialized countries such as France and Italy have maintained older, smaller-scale baking traditions.

On page 36 of this book, there is an advertisement for the earliest branded coffee beans, which is intended to attract people who roast coffee beans at home to buy their baked packaged coffee beans. Advertisements like this appear more and more frequently as Europeans and beauties gradually move to work farther and farther away from their hometown. In working-class families, women, like men, had to go out to work, and by the end of the 19th century, some of the wealthier families had left the task of baking coffee beans to their servants, but they were also forced to do it themselves to enjoy the fresh coffee beans baked at home. In the content of this advertisement, it is not difficult to see why more and more people would rather spend more money on roasted coffee beans, because it is so convenient!

This new trend of buying cooked beans of bread and coffee from stores in the county town was also driven by a mysterious force behind the industrial revolution in the 19th and early 20th centuries, when buying roasted coffee beans was a clean modern world. At that time, roasting coffee beans at home was considered dirty, clumsy, sloppy and out-of-date And it's something an ignorant hillbilly would do.

Pursue quality stability

With advertising and brands, the most important thing is to have stable and reliable products. When a consumer buys this beautifully packaged ripe coffee beans home, he will hope that the beans this time taste as good as the ones he bought the week before. At this time, the new form of coffee roasters also take the quality stability as the main demand, not only for the quality of raw coffee beans, but also improve the stability in the baking stage.

There are many aspects to be concerned about stabilizing the quality of coffee and raw beans. With the development of technical terminology and classification of coffee beans, the international trading of coffee beans has become more and more organized and the division of labor has become more and more elaborate, so the trading of coffee beans has become very convenient. Coffee producing countries have adopted very complex grading standards and the art of mixing beans has also begun to develop (professionals are beginning to know how to do tricks with coffee beans from different harvesting seasons and producing areas, and in this way to maintain the stability of quality at the same time. It can also stabilize material costs.

At the same time, the coffee industry in the United States has developed a set of trading terms that mainly describe baking depth and baking patterns: cinnamon roasting (Cinnamon), light roasting (Light), moderate roasting (Medium), high roasting (High), urban roasting (City), deep urban roasting (Full City), deep roasting (Dark), heavy roasting (Heavy). Different enterprise systems usually adopt only one baking mode, which is easy to maintain the stability of the product.