All About Coffee Part 122

In 1839, John Rittenhouse, of Philadelphia, was granted a United States patent on a cast-iron mill designed to handle the problem of nails and stones in grinding coffee. His improvement was intended to prevent injury to the grinding teeth by stopping the machine.

In 1840, Abel Stillman, Poland, N.Y., was granted a United States patent on a family coffee roaster having a mica window to enable the operator to observe the coffee while roasting. (See 10, page 630.)

In 1841, William Ward Andrews was granted an English patent on an improved coffee pot employing a pump to force the boiling water upward through the coffee, which was contained in a perforated cylinder screwed to the bottom of the pot. This was Rabaut's idea of nineteen years before. We find it again repeated in the United States in a machine which appeared on the New York market in 1906.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BATTERY OF CARTER PULL-OUT MACHINES IN AN EARLY AMERICAN PLANT]

In 1841, Claude Marie Victor Bernard, of Paris, was granted a French patent on a coffee roaster, which was an improvement designed to bring the roasting cylinder and the fire in closer contact. This was accomplished, to quote the quaint language of the inventor, by applying movable legs and "by superimposing a sheet iron circlet around the edge of the furnace to get double the quant.i.ty of heat and it presents so much advantage that it has seemed to me worthy of being patented." (See 4, page 627.)

But the French were only toying with the roaster, because roasting in France was not yet a separate branch of business, as it had become in England and the United States, where keen minds were already at work on the purely commercial coffee-roasting machine. The application of intensive thought in this direction was destined to bear fruit in America in 1846, and in England in 1847.

French inventive genius continued to occupy itself with coffee making, and in the invention of Edward Loysel de Santais, of Paris, in 1843, produced the first of the ideas that were later incorporated in the hydrostatic percolator for making "two thousand cups of coffee an hour"[363] at the exposition of 1855, and that has since been improved upon by the Italians in their rapid-filter machines. It should be noted that Loysel's 2,000 cups were probably demi-ta.s.ses. The modern Italian rapid-filter machine produces about 1,000 large coffee cups per hour.

James W. Carter, of Boston, was granted a United States patent in 1846 on his "pull-out" roaster; and this was the machine most generally employed for trade roasting in America for the next twenty years. Carter did not claim to have invented the combination of cylindrical roaster and furnace; but he did claim priority for the combination, with the furnace and roasting vessel, of the air s.p.a.ce, or chamber, surrounding it, "the same being for the purpose of preventing the too rapid escape of heat from the furnace when the air chamber's induction and eduction air openings or pa.s.sages are closed."

The Carter "pull-out," was so called because the roasting cylinder of sheet iron was pulled out from the furnace on a shaft supported by standards, to be emptied or to be refilled from sliding doors in its "sides." It was in use for many years in such old-time plants as that of Dwinell-Wright Company, 25 Haverhill Street. Boston; by James H. Forbes and William Schotten in St. Louis; and by D.Y. Harrison in Cincinnati.

The picture of a roasting room with Carter machines in operation, reproduced here, recalled to George S. Wright, the present head of the Dwinell-Wright Company's business, the scene as he saw it so many times when, as a boy of ten or twelve, he occasionally spent a day in his father's factory. "The only difference I notice," he wrote the author, "is that, according to my recollection, there was no cooler box to receive the roasted coffee, which was dumped on the floor where it was spread out three or four inches deep with iron rakes and sprinkled with a watering pot. The contact of water and hot coffee caused so much steam that the roasting room was in a dense fog for several minutes after each batch of coffee was drawn from the fire."

A.E. Forbes also thus recalled the Carter machine in his father's factory in St. Louis in 1853, when he used to help after school; and sometimes ran the roasters, after 1857:

It was barrel shaped, having a slide the full length of one side to fill and empty. A heavy shaft ran through the centre, resting on the wall of the furnace at the rear end and on an upright about eight feet from the front wall. The fire was about sixteen to eighteen inches below the cylinder and of soft coal. The cylinder was not perforated, the theory being to keep the vapors from escaping.[364] This of course was erroneous. The color of the smoke bursting from the edge of the slide was our medium of telling when the roasting process was nearing completion, and often the cylinder was pulled out and opened for inspection several times before that point was reached. When just right, the belt was shifted to a loose pulley, stopping the cylinder, which, was pulled off the fire. A handle was attached to the shaft, the slide drawn, and the coffee was dumped into a wooden tray which had to be shoved under the cylinder. The coffee was stirred around in the tray until cool enough to sack.

The roaster man had to be a husky in those days to pick up a sack of Rio weighing about one hundred, sixty to one hundred, seventy-five pounds (not a hundred, thirty-two pounds, as now) and to empty it in the cylinder. We had no overhead hoppers.

[Ill.u.s.tration: EARLY ENGLISH AND AMERICAN COFFEE ROASTERS

1, 2--English charcoal machines. 3, 5, 8--American coal-stove roasters. 4--Remington's wheel-of-buckets (American) roaster, 1841.

6--Wood's roaster. 7--Hyde's stove roaster. 9--Reversible stove roaster. 10--Abel Stillman's stove roaster]

Later we built in the rear and put in two cylinders of the Chris Abele type, having stationary fronts and filling and emptying from the front end. We still used soft coal, with the fire sixteen to eighteen inches under the cylinder.

We had other machines made locally from the Carter pattern. The idea of the tight cylinder was to keep out smoke, as well as to keep in the aroma. I think we were the first to use perforations, because I remember old Jabez Burns coming along after we put in one of his machines and remarking on it.... We had a kind of mechanical genius for engineer at that time (he also did the roasting) and he conceived the idea that we ought to get rid of the moisture in the roasting coffee because it would cook quicker. When the holes clogged up, he put in loose pieces of wire bent at the ends which shook as the cylinder revolved and kept the holes open. Another thing, he put a hole in the cylinder head and a stopper with a string on it so he could get out a few grains at a time to note the progress of the roasting--but he judged mostly by the smoke.

The cooling box was as I have described it, but later we put in a perforated false bottom which let out some chaff and small stones.

On our first watering, we pulled out the slide and dashed in a bucket of water, then closed the slide and let it revolve outside the furnace. This was hard on the cylinder, so later we used the sprinkling can and put on water sparingly.

Once we had a party that wanted to put in a soapstone lined roaster, and another near us named Salzgerber patented a superheated-steam roaster which was shaped like our modern milk bottle. This was covered with asbestos and worked on a central bearing so it could be depressed for emptying and elevated for filling. It did good work.

Mr. Forbes' recollections of the early days of roasting and selling coffee at retail in St. Louis are so illuminating, and paint so interesting a picture of the period that they are printed here to ill.u.s.trate the conditions that prevailed generally at the time when the commercial roasting machine of the United States was being developed into the modern type. He says further:

Selling roasted coffee was uphill work, as every one roasted coffee in the kitchen oven. People were buying, say, at twenty cents. Our asking twenty-five cents "roasted" called for a lot of explanation about shrinkage, tight cylinders so the strength and flavor could not get away, etc.; while, when they roasted a pound in the oven the flavor scented the whole house, thus losing so much strength to say nothing of the unevenness of their roasts--part raw, part roasted, producing an unpleasant taste. An occasional burned roast at home helped some. They tell of a man who, going out in the back yard and kicking over a clod by accident, uncovered some burned coffee. He called to his wife and wanted an explanation. She acknowledged she had burnt it, and hid it so he would not scold. He said, "We had better buy it roasted in the future and avoid such accidents."

We roasted in the cellar. We had an elaborately polished Reed & Mann engine in one window, two bra.s.s hoppered mills in the other, and our boiler was under the sidewalk. We had a mahogany-top counter, oil paintings on the wall, and bin fronts of Chinamen, etc., done by the celebrated artist, Mat Hastings (now dead); so you see we started right.

The fight we had to introduce roasted coffee was fierce. Our argument was on the saving of fuel, labor, temper, scorched faces, and anything we could think of. We talked only three coffees, Rio, Java, and Mocha. When Santos began to come, it was hard to change them over from the rank Rio flavor to the more mild Santos. The latter they claimed did not have the rough taste. They missed it and longed for the wild tang of the Rio.

We did not import, but bought in New Orleans and from several local wholesale grocers. No one delivered. Shipments were f.o.b. St.

Louis. Draying and packages were extra. Coffee was not cleaned or stoned, but was sold as it came from the sack. However, we did not use any very low grades then. If any one complained of the stones hurting their mills, we advised them to buy ground coffee, showing how it kept better ground as it was packed tight, whereas the roasted was looser and the air could get through it. It was fully a year or more before we began to sell in quant.i.ties to make it profitable. In roasting for others, we got a cent per pound; and after awhile, that became so much a business it paid all our expenses. We were the first to roast coffee by steam power west of the Mississippi and east of the Rocky Mountains.

The tea department helped us to hold out until coffee got its hold on the public; for in those days every one used tea and insisted on having it good. Price was no object. How different now!

Five years later (1862) J. Nevison, an Englishman, drifted into town and opened at 85 North Fourth Street. He got out a very bombastic circular which caused us to put out the one I enclose (ill.u.s.tration, page 436). Then came a party named Childs; and after him, Hugh Menown, grand-uncle of the present Menown, of Menown & Gregory; and Mat Hunt; all pa.s.sed over to the Great Majority. After the Civil War they multiplied pretty fast, coming and going until now we have nineteen roasting establishments in the city.

The late Julius J. Schotten also wrote the author as follows concerning the days of the Carter roaster and of the wholesale coffee-roasting business founded by William Schotten in 1862:

In the early days, every wholesale grocer was selling coffee; the wholesale grocer controlled ninety percent of the trade in the country. It did not pay the coffee roaster to have men on the road selling coffee in those days. Such being the case, seventy-five percent of the roasting done by the coffee roasters was job roasting, at one cent a pound.

In the beginning there were only two kinds of roasted coffee known to the trade in this section of the country (St. Louis) and of course one of these brands was "Rio"--the other; "Java". The former was a genuine Rio, but the Java was mostly Jamaica coffee.

Roasted coffee then was packed (for city trade) in five and ten pound packages, and this size package seemed to supply the wants of the ordinary grocer for a week. Occasionally a twenty-five pound package, and in a few instances as much as fifty pounds of one grade was sold at a time.

The cla.s.s of customers the coffee roasters sold in those days were the smaller merchants; the larger stores, having their ideas as to quality, bought their coffees green. As they had very little sale for the roasted, they would send a half-sack, and sometimes a whole sack to have it roasted. It took a number of years to induce the larger grocers, and even the average grocers, to purchase their coffee already roasted.

Coffees were roasted in the old style, "pull-out" roaster cylinder.

That is to say, it was necessary to stop the roaster and to pull out the cylinder to sample the coffee in order to know when to take the coffee off the fire. When the coffee was ready to take off, the cylinder was pulled out its entire length. It was then turned over and a slide nine inches wide, running the full length of the cylinder, was opened and the contents were dumped in the cooling box. When the coffee reached the cooling box, it took two men with hoes or wooden shovels to stir and turn it until it was properly cooled, there being no cooling arrangements then as we have nowadays.

At that time there were no stoning or separating machines; and as a bag of the ordinary green Jamaica coffee contained from three to five pounds of stones and sticks, it was necessary to hand-pick the coffee after it was roasted.

[Ill.u.s.tration: EARLY FOREIGN AND AMERICAN COFFEE-MAKING DEVICES

1--English adaptation of French boiler. 2--English coffee biggin.

3--Improved Rumford percolator. 4--Jones's exterior-tube percolator.

5--Parker's steam-fountain coffee maker. 6--Platow's filterer.

7--Brain's Vacuum, or pneumatic filter. 8--Beart's percolator.

9--American coffee biggin. 10--cloth-bag drip pot. 11--Vienna coffee pot. 12--Le Brun's cafetiere. 13--Reversible Potsdam cafetiere. 14, 15--Gen. Hutchinson's percolator and urn. 16--Etruscan biggin]

After Carter, the next United States coffee-roaster patent was granted to J.R. Remington, of Baltimore, on a roaster employing a wheel of buckets to move the green coffee beans singly through a charcoal heated trough. It never became a commercial success. (See 4, page 630.)

In 1847-48, William and Elizabeth Dakin were granted patents in England on an apparatus for "cleaning and roasting coffee and for making decoctions." The roaster specification covered a gold, silver, platinum, or alloy-lined roasting cylinder and traversing carriage on an overhead railway to move the roaster in and out of the roasting oven; and the "decoction" specification covered an arrangement for twisting a cloth-bag ground-coffee-container in a coffee biggin, or applied a screw motion to a disk within a perforated cylinder containing the ground coffee, so as to squeeze the liquid out of the grounds after infusion had taken place.

The roaster has survived, but the coffee maker was not so fortunate. The Dakin idea was that coffee was injuriously affected by coming in contact with iron during the roasting process. The roasting cylinder was enclosed in an oven instead of being directly exposed to the furnace heat. The apparatus was provided also with a "taster," or sampler, the first of its kind, to enable the operator to examine the roasting berries without stopping the machine. As will be seen by referring to the picture of the model shown, the apparatus was ingenious and not without considerable merit. Dakin & Co. are still in existence in London, operating a machine very like the original model.

In 1848, Thomas John Knowlys was granted a patent in England on a perforated roasting cylinder coated with enamel.

It is to be noted in pa.s.sing that this idea of handling the green bean with extreme delicacy, evidently obtained from the French, was never taken seriously in the United States, whose inventors chose to handle it with rough courage.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE DAKIN ROASTING MACHINE OF 1848]

The first English patent on a coffee grinder was granted to Luke Herbert in 1848.

In 1849, Apoleoni Pierre Preterre, of Havre, was granted an English patent on a coffee roaster mounted on a weighing apparatus to indicate loss of weight in roasting and automatically stop the roasting process.

At the same time he secured an English patent on a vacuum percolator, not unlike Durant's of 1827.

In 1849 also, Thomas R. Wood, of Cincinnati, was granted a United States patent on a spherical coffee roaster for use on kitchen stoves. It attained considerable popularity among housewives who preferred to do their own roasting. (See 6, page 630.)

In 1852, Edward Gee secured a patent in England on a coffee roaster fitted with inclined f.l.a.n.g.es for turning the beans while roasting.