One of the questions that often comes up in home coffee roasting forums and even in the fluid bed Facebook group where I am one of the admins is the topic of the value of transitioning from various forms of manual roasting to what we might call a more tech-based approach. My recent review of the Kaffelogic has generated some behind the scenes inquiries on the subject and I wanted to address this topic. Since I have put my thoughts in writing already, I thought I would just share this in hopes that it provides some help as I find that advocates for both sides can easily talk past one another.

The first thing I want to be clear about is that I believe a skilled roaster can get really good results manually roasting whether they are manually roasting with a rudimentary device like the Hive roaster or a stove-top popcorn popper or they are roasting on a production roaster without the aid of roasting logging software. That being said, I also believe that transitioning to a roaster like the Kaffelogic (for those looking for a small batch solution) or a larger production roaster equipped with modern thermocouples, roast logging software, and possibly even PID automation such as the Hermetheus Co-Pilot (for fluid bed roasters) offers way more control, precision, and ability to replicate roasts.

The best analogy I can come up with on the fly is cooking over an open fire versus cooking with modern equipment that allows the user to precisely control the temperature and to monitor the item being cooked with highly responsive and accurate digital thermometers. Or it is like the older generation of home cooks who didn’t/don’t use a recipe but manage to get good and even great results. They may literally never be able to replicate the same dish exactly but it is good enough to taste great even though it isn’t identical. I think the same is true for coffee. Roasters like the Kaffelogic just make roasting good coffee much easier and requires less skill to do so.

I think the benefit of smaller roasters like the Kaffelogic is that they allow the user to really learn and explore roasting theory in a way you just can’t with a manual roaster. What I mean is let’s say you want to understand what impact big or maybe small changes make during the drying phase. With the Kaffelogic you can design a profile to accomplish that goal and the roaster will follow it. Let’s say you want to see what impact a really short dry end time has compared to a normal one and a long one. You easily design three profiles where the rest of the profile is the same but the only thing that changes is this one variable. The other cool thing about the Kaffelogic is that once you have a profile you like and it is loaded on the roaster, you can load the coffee, hit start on the roaster (without a laptop attached), and go do other things in the area. For example, in the time that it took me to type an email response to someone inquiring about manual roasting versus a tech-based approach like the Kaffelogic I was able to conduct three 50 gram roasts of three green coffee samples.

So, the question as to whether I would recommend someone who is currently manually roasting coffee to get the Kaffelogic or a larger-scale tech-driven production roaster comes down to what you would like to accomplish and whether you would want a roaster that a family member or employee could roast coffee on without knowing anything about how to roast other than how to operate the roaster. Both approaches can result in very good results. If you are someone who enjoys the sensory and artisanal side of roasting, you don’t mind the time and task orientation constraints associated with manually roasting (i.e., focused on one task), and you and your customers are okay with a bit more variation in the end product, by all means continue manually roasting. I view this just like the above analogy of home cooks who don’t use a recipe or a more tech-driven approach to cooking. They may literally never be able to replicate the same dish exactly but it is good enough to taste great even though it isn’t identical. To those who say that a tech-driven approach to roasting diminishes the artisanal side of roasting, I would say that it ultimately refocuses it. It still takes skill, experience, and attention to detail to design and fine tune a roast profile and to learn the craft of tech-based roasting, but there is no question that it makes it so easy that the artisan himself or herself doesn’t have to be the one to operate the roasting equipment to produce the product.