With the most pessimistic reports predicting the near extinction of arabica coffee in the next fifty years due to climate change, the specialty coffee industry has an invested interest in reducing coffee’s environmental impact. But most coffee roasters utilize technology that is more or less a century old, and far from fuel efficient. A conventional drum roaster burns a lot of fossil fuels, not to mention the by-products that are put into the atmosphere. But a new in-shop roaster from Bellwether Coffee aims to change the way the industry roasts coffee. We interviewed Bellwether Coffee’s COO Arno Holschuh to find out how their zero-emissions roaster works, and why he thinks it could disrupt a whole industry.
Bellwether Coffee is manufacturing the first zero–emissions coffee roaster. I’m sure your technology is proprietary, but can you tell us something about how the roaster works?
I can tell lots of things about how it works! For starters, our roaster uses a fixed-drum roasting architecture. This is also known as the “modified drum” architecture. What I mean is that the roasting drum is made out of stainless steel and does not rotate; the beans are mixed to assure even roasting by “paddles” that lift the beans off the drum surface and loft them into the air. (This design was popularized by …
