Ansa’s new roaster uses radio waves to roast coffee on the countertop

While we know that fresh-roasted coffee tastes better, often, by the time store-bought beans arrive in our coffee machines, chances are they were roasted months ago.

But what if we could roast the beans right before they enter the brewer?

If a new company called Ansā has its way, coffee roasting will be coming to our office breakrooms with its new e23 microroaster. E23 takes company-shipped green beans and roasts them on a countertop without any of the fumes or ambient heat associated with traditional gas-fired roasting systems.

So how does the company roster work? According to Ansa, the company uses dielectric heating, which generally refers to microwave heating-based systems. According to the company, the system’s computer vision (provided via a built-in camera) coordinates the roasting with the precise application of radio waves to transmit energy to individual beans, allowing for a highly precise and homogeneously applied roast. Roast is ready.

When asked whether the system used the old magnetron-based heating (the heating system for conventional microwave ovens) or the new solid-state heating system, Ansa did not specify, instead telling The Spoon, “We set a goal -Designed a built-in EM system that allows us to digitally control the intensity and location of energy concentration within the roasting chamber, in real time. My guess is that since the system can direct energy with high precision , so the system uses a solid-state amplifier to transmit energy via radio waves.

The company also did not reveal the price, saying, “The price is determined by the distributors and at their discretion.” I estimate the machine will cost between $5 and $10 thousand, but it will be offered at a very low initial cost, subsidized through an underlying coffee supply contract in which Ansa will supply unroasted green beans for a specified period of time. supplies.

E23 is the first time we’ve seen on the market using RF radiation to roast beans. Coffee is traditionally roasted in large drums over gas-fired flames, an energy-intensive roasting process that produces a lot of CO2, while newer electric small-footprint roasters like the Bellwether use convection and conduction heating . According to sources I spoke with at the International Microwave Power Institute’s annual conference this week, microwave-powered coffee roasting is a topic the coffee industry is interested in, but it hasn’t yet been commercialized (less at least until this week).

According to Ansa, the company is working with a network of distributors across the US focused on the office/workplace sector. These Office Coffee Service (OCS) companies will sell the solution as a bundled service of Ansā’s specialty green coffee beans and the d23 micro roaster.

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