Roaster
This was once in a decade experience… .
Thats how old (or older that roasting machine is). The person who was roasting this coffee was also hulling coffee, apart from that making coconut oil, grinding turmeric, black pepper and a whole lot of other spices were final processed in this facility.
Roasting coffee was however done in a segregated room.
This place was OLD school, Kerala shop/factory, it was so much fun to see it.
Everything I have learnt about roasting, was folded and kept in a small box, because this gentle was not doing this for “delicate flavour” and 64 agtron scale roasting.
This gentleman did this for years, for people in the locality to use. To be honest his ways of doing is not what is taught in the classes we do or the books we read, but it did work and he knew his stuff.
So first up its an old 25 kg roaster, and he roasts pretty much any quantity in it, from 1kg to 25kg.
He does not do pre heating, that is considered as losing Gas, so put the coffees in, switch the Gas and then switch the motor on.
Then he goes about doing other things in his shop, John (whom I was accompanying) and I were just standing there waiting to see whats next.
He went around did other things and then so did we.
After about a while, I started smelling the coffee and bit of coffee smoke … ( roughly about 20 mins in) and I was trying to show my skills (of smelling roasted coffee) that, ‘this smell comes when it hits first crack, and the smoke is oozing out , around the time its done’.
As I said this and was standing next to the roaster with a grin on my face, this gentleman, came strolling to the roaster and said, “its done, its ready, for the gold brown colour coffee as you had sad” and he got the coffee out of the roaster into the bin in front of it. I was pleasantly surprised.
To begin with the options to roast were “Gold brown” or “Black” profiles which is our text book alternative for medium and dark.
Once the coffee beans were out into the bean, (this roaster didn't really have a cooling tray) so he manually started whisking the beans to cool it.
This is the point where in I saw there are just too many variations in the colour of the roasted bean and I was like…ahhh thats not “good” roasted coffee….. and while I was thinking about it, the gentleman said, these coffees are not evenly ripened and evenly dried coffee… there are way too many variations in the colour, I was just Super Impressed at this point… my respect for this man just kept on going up and up and up and it got stuck there.
We took turns trying to whisk and cool the beans ( in the colder Munnar weather), this was nothing short of a life lesson yet again.
Life is filled with people who learn by doing and there are ways to learn beyond books, beyond certification and beyond formal education.
P.s. name of this Gentleman is : Mr. Sony, runs his shop/kada in town of Ambazhachal.
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