by providing roasters and flexible roasting control systems suitable for small coffee companies as well as for industrial ones.
Petroncini Impianti is the almost secular Italian company renowned worldwide for designing, manufacturing and installing complete processing plants for coffee, cocoa and dried fruit. Thanks to its expertise, since 1919 Petroncini provides roasting control solutions that can meet both the needs of large companies and those of the more demanding master craftsmen. They meet the request – common to both kinds of roasters – of pairing the high customization of the product with a quality repeatable over time. It is a concrete response to these needs, arising from a market much more specialized in Specialty Coffees and that takes care of the quality.
“The demand for small roasting machines equipped with high technologies has reached unexpected levels” says Roberto Pedini, Product Manager of Petroncini Impianti. “The coffee market is growing and recently, more and more micro coffee companies were born. In order to stand out in the market, these companies need to develop clearly recognizable coffees with rich aromas. At the same time, this change has also interested the industrial companies. Now, they cannot refrain from offering their customers high-quality coffee. In this way, we have seen a significant increase in the demand for large capacities roasting machines, which have to pair a large-scale production with a constant and repeatable quality over time.”
When we hear of roasting, we think of that as the cooking process that allows you to transform an herbaceous bean, totally stodgy and repulsive to the human palate, in a unique product enjoyed by billions of people all around the globe. In fact, as Pedini says, many variables are involved in the roasting process: external variables, related to the climatic conditions of the place, and internal variables, related to the chemical and physical changes that take place during the roasting process of the single origin or blends of green coffee.
Then, customization parameters, such as the beverage preparation method, the consumer habits and the market to which the coffee is destined, are added to the process of roasting. All of these parameters, together contribute to determine the final desired taste. “We can distinguish the roasting process in: light, medium or dark roasting, and slow or fast roasting. These parameters are so much important for define the features that the finished drink will take, such as aroma and full-bodied taste. The classification, which considers the color of the cooking end as a primary benchmark, does not assure full quality. In fact, there are also two other important factors of the roasting process that we have to consider: the time and the temperature.”
The high customization of the product and of quality repeatable over time, are essential characteristics both for SMBs and for large companies. This is the reason why Petroncini has developed a flexible software that is suitable for different productive needs. Petroncini has launched on the market the micro roasters as an absolutely innovative product: the Specialty Roasters, mod. TT5/10 and TT15/20. The Specialty Roasters are characterized by small dimensions and a roasting control system comparable to the industrial roasters: the renowned “profile control system”. Thanks to the continuous modulation of the burner, this kind of software allows to pre-set the temperature, the volume variation of the roasting air and the drum speed rotation, for each programmable stage. All the process is easily manageable via integrated touch panel. The roasting curves are viewable and exportable to PC. Moreover, the temperature probes are equipped with a double output signal that allows the connection to any external data logger for displaying the roasting curves.
It is also very important to remember that in the roasting process the same final temperature can be reached in the same time interval, but by following different paths and heat distribution methods to the coffee beans. For this reason, Petroncini has developed extremely advanced software that allows the roaster to really and accurately reproduce the roasting curve. The curves are previously drawn by setting the time as an independent variable, as Pedini explains. This software, called I.R.C. (Integrated Roasting Control), is available for the Petroncini serie TMR up to 720kg/batch. Designed for large companies, I.R.C. allows to keep a consistent quality of the product right from the first batch, when the machine is cold, up to the last roasting cycle. Moreover, the waiting time between one batch and the next one of the same product, is 2/3 sec max. Through the various settings, I.R.C. allows managing each variation in quantity of the mono-origin or coffee blends to roast, thus becoming a reliable and accurate partner for the repeatability of the quality during the various working phases.
FOCUS: THE COMPANY
Petroncini Impianti designs, manufactures and installs complete coffee processing plants, customizing them according to customers needs. Indeed, Petroncini roasters are also suitable for peanuts, barley, pistachios, almonds, hazelnuts and cocoa. These machines are supported by an extensive range of equipment that are an integral part of the company plant system, as follows:
-green coffee reception, treatment and storage;
-coffee roasters fitted with heat recovery system, energy saving and emission treatment;
-roasted coffee storage and mixing;
-coffee grinders for any particolar sizes;
-ground coffee storage and degassing with feeding system to the packaging machines;
-coffee handling and conveying system either mechanically and pneumatically-driven for green coffee or low-speed suction system for roasted coffee beans;
-electronic weighting system, complete with integrated control for data processing;
-profile control system that allows to obtain the desidered aroma and guarantee unaltered constant quality and repeatability of the product;
-central eletronics units to control the entire production process, from green coffee reception to its packaging, with special product traceability of the production lots (D-coffee).
Petroncini Impianti is renowned worldwide as the Coffee Technical Competence Centre. It’s a facility with an in-house test lab, equipped with tools and pilot plants to be used in R&D activities, demos and product analysis.In this centre, customers can analyze and improve the quality of their product and its performance. It is also possible to carry on specific tests to evaluate a product before bringing it to the market.
