FROM THE EDITOR

SCIENCE VS. CRAFT: It’s the roasting community’s eternal debate, akin to psychology’s back-and-forth about nature vs. nurture. And, much like in psychology, roasters are coming to the conclusion that it isn’t an either/or question. Roasting is, in best-case scenarios, both science and craft, and one informs the other.
     The difficulty, I think, is that roasting comes from a craft-based mindset. Thus, it has a deep history of craft, and less history in the way of science. For years, the craft has informed and guided the science. However, science, with its shorter history in the industry, has struggled to help the craft.
     Which isn’t to say there haven’t been experiments or technological advancements. Along the way, there has always been science in the form of technology—machines that help us regulate roasts, grind more consistently and package more quickly—but roasting research has been slow in coming (and often well guarded by those who are completing it).
     However, as we all know, that’s changing. Scientists in and out of the coffee field are prying coffee apart at the cellular and molecular level to discover what makes coffee roasting tick, as well as crack, brown and pop.
     A perfect example is the recent study by Thomas Hofmann, chair of food chemistry and molecular sensory science at the Technical University of Munich in Freising, Germany, which looked at bitterness in coffee—and proved something that many of us have believed instinctively for a long time: that bitterness isn’t a result of caffeine. Instead, bitterness is the result of chlorogenic acid lactones and multiply hydroxylated phenylindanes, both of which are changed during roasting (and would you be surprised to hear that they yield more bitterness during longer roasting?)
     Another great example is the recent technology seminar organized by Praxis International and hosted at Green Mountain Coffee Roasters. There, a number of roasters, R&D guys and others had a chance to see behind the technology curtain. The studies that are being done by scientists such as Professor Henry Schwartzberg (Emeritus Professor of Food Engineering at the University of Massachusetts), Dr. Rainer Perren (head of RPN Food Technology, AG, which focuses on roasting technology and optimizing food product quality) and Joachim Eichner (chief engineer and president for Praxis International) are going to have huge impacts on the future, whether they give us a better understanding of the basic science of coffee roasting or look at the way that coffee cell walls expand, contract and break down during roasting.
     Even the way that technology is being used to “show” us the things we already know is fascinating—at the seminar, a video highlighting the external changes in a single bean during the roasting process was both informative and slightly nauseating (mainly when it came to the over-roasted section that showed, in minute detail, the amount of oil coming out of the bean). Photos that demonstrated the way that moisture content affected the reaction of cell walls during roasting help explain why beans that are extremely high or low in moisture content are difficult to roast well.
     As amazing and informative as these studies are, there’s still so much to be learned. Questions from roasters, such as “What’s occurring at a cellular level during first and second crack?” and “What causes some beans to flake during roasting?” are things that the scientists haven’t delved into yet. But now, the experiments are coming—and the answers will be too.
     It’s time to move forward from the nature vs. nurture debate and start asking ourselves, “How can science improve my craft?” And, perhaps more importantly, “How can my craft improve the science?” The answer there seems simple: keep abreast of what research is being done, and ask the questions that you wish scientists would answer.

      Keep the flame burning,

      Shanna