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Heis and Sivetz Fluid Bed Coffee Roasting Equipment

When it comes to coffee roasting and roasting equipment, drum roasters have been the most popular and widely used design.  Although these drum roasters are more frequently used in the industry, fluid bed roasters offer coffee roasters a more advanced option to the traditional drum roaster design.  Fluid bed roasted coffee has a different “cleaner” and “brighter” flavor when compared to drum roasted, and also contains less contaminants in the roast.

One of the most recognized manufacturers of fluid bed roasters is Sivetz Coffee (http://www.sivetzcoffee.com/).  Michael Sivetz was once known to many as the world’s “foremost coffee scientist.”  As the inventor of fluid-bed coffee roasters, he also wrote one of the first books on the technology of coffee roasting in 1963.

Another manufacturer of custom fluid bed roasters is Heis Roasters (http://heisroasters.com/).  Heis stresses the importance and benefits of having a custom built roaster, as opposed to a mass produced roaster.  For example, utilizing a custom design could save money in terms of installation by ensuring that the unit is built to handle specific gas and electrical requirements.

Heis roasters are built with an accurate control system in which the software allows you to graph the temperature vs. time of both the bean and inlet-air temperature. Heis custom roasters also come standard with controls that allow you to control the inlet air volume, inlet air temperature and an inlet-air velocity indicator.  These controls allow for immediate and accurate changes to your roast as well as giving the user a consistent roaster every time.

Heis Roasters fluid bed coffee roasters boast the advantage that they are very easy to use and maintain.  Although learning to roast coffee properly and consistently can be a challange to anyone new to roasting, the Heis fluid bed roasters claim to be very simple to use due mainly to the ease of use and accuracy of the control system on Heis Roasters.

Luckily Michael Sivetz isn’t running a web design firm, because not only does the “home” page button not work, but their site is fairly stale looking and outdated.

Heis Roasters offers potential customers quite a bit of information on their website, as well as a blog discussing different specific benefits of their custom design.

I certainly look forward to learning and reviewing more from each company in the upcoming months, as fluid bed roasting technology has always been of interest to me ever since my first sip of fluid bed roasted coffee.

About the Author

Shawna Rodgers has been writing professionally for over 10 years.  Due to her vast experience and background in everything coffee, Shawna has traveled the world working with several growers, roasters and manufacturers alike.

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