Why Australian coffee roasters love Loring

australian coffee roasters loring

Loring roasters have connected with the Australian and New Zealand coffee industry, thanks to their emphasis on control, carbon footprint, and quality in the cup.

Since emerging in the coffee roasting market in the 2000s, Loring has developed a strong reputation across the globe for its efficiency, quality, and sustainability.

Loring Australia Representative James Banman tells BeanScene these traits have resonated particularly well with the Australian and New Zealand markets.

“Five years ago, there would have been just a few Loring roasters in Australia. Now there’s a large community popping up in each major city,” James says.

“The Australian and NZ markets have been strong for Loring. It’s because of the focus on quality coffee in the region overall and because coffee roasters care about sustainability in their businesses.”

Loring machines use a single burner to roast coffee and incinerate smoke. This removes the need for an external afterburner, reducing gas usage and emissions.

NZ’s Havana Coffee Works purchased its Loring – the S70 Peregrine – three years ago, due to the appeal of roasting high-quality coffee while reducing its carbon footprint.

australian coffee roasters loring
Havana Coffee Works in NZ uses the Loring S70 Peregrine roaster.

“We decided we were better off with something that was further into the future than what the industry standard was,” Havana Master Roaster Joe Stoddart says.

“To be progressive and carry on doing business into the future, sustainability has to be a core pillar of your company. Not only has Loring improved our energy usage and reduced gas emissions by 70 to 80 per cent, it means we’re treating our green coffee, hard earned at origin, with respect. Every batch is a better quality that our customers can enjoy.”

Despite being capable of the same batch size as Havana’s previous roaster, Joe says the 70-kilogram roaster has enabled them to produce a third more coffee in the same amount of time. The machine’s roast profiling technology has also proved beneficial to Havana, which roasts up to 20 different coffees in a season.

“We can produce exactly what we want to produce. We roast single origins exclusively, and really want to enhance the natures of those coffees,” Joe says.

“We can program the Loring to roast however we want it to and can rely on it to accurately follow those profiles. Then it can capture and repeat any batch you roast. Thanks to Loring, I always say, ‘our limitation is our imagination rather than our potential’.”

Loring manufactures roasters in several sizes. Its smallest roaster, the S7 Nighthawk, landed in Australia in 2019. One of the first businesses to install the S7 Nighthawk was Floozy Coffee Roasters in Newcastle, New South Wales.

Floozy Owner and Roaster Kmac says after roasting in collective spaces for a while and experimenting with different machines, she knew she wanted to roast with greater flexibility.

“If someone needs coffee last minute, we can easily add it to that day’s production. We also feature at a lot of cafés as a guest roaster, which can mean different volumes week to week. Loring gives us the opportunity to be more dynamic,” Kmac says.

“The other important thing is, when you roast on a Loring, sitting there all day, you don’t feel as fatigued as you do with a drum roaster because it’s putting out less heat.”

The S7 Nighthawk’s lack of gas emissions made it easier for the roaster to be set up in Kmac and her partner Hal Gibbs’ city café Besties, rather than in an industrial area.

australian coffee roasters loring
Floozy Coffee Roasters in NSW uses a Loring S7 Nighthawk.

“We’re in the middle of the city, so there’s no way we could get away with not having an afterburner,” Kmac says. “We have the Loring in the shop with the espresso bar, so customers can see it and be involved in whole process.”

Installing the Loring has also allowed Floozy to improve its consistency. Kmac says a large part of this is due to using Loring’s Roast Architect software to develop automatic roasting profiles.

“Being able to play around with your profiles that way kind of reminds me of setting recipes with a [La Marzocco] Strada EP,” she says.

“We still manually roast all of our micro-lots because we like to be in control, but for our milk coffee blends, it’s much easier to tweak profiles through the technology rather than manually.”

Once a profile is established, Kmac says she can rely on Loring’s automatic roasting to follow it to a tee.

“There’s often a level of distrust when it comes to automation in the coffee world, but the consistency between roasts is amazing,” Kmac says.

“The most important thing is the quality we think it provides, and our coffee has been tasting better than ever. When we were deciding on which roaster we wanted, our favourite coffees were roasted on Lorings, which sent us down that direction. We haven’t looked back.”

Like Floozy, Everyday Coffee in Melbourne embraced Loring when it decided to leave its co-roasting space and establish its own roastery in 2018. Owner Aaron Maxwell says Loring’s big talking points of sustainability and automation can overshadow its understated perks.

“Workflow wise, the Loring is a lot more efficient than a drum roaster. I like the way it is able to regulate temperatures between roasts. Starting with similar temperature before roasting every time is huge,” Aaron says.

“Another thing I noticed early on was how quick it wanted to roast. The best thing I could do was get out of my old habits from drum roasting and let it.”

Even small features of Everyday Coffee’s S15 Falcon contribute to its workflow.

Aaron says the green bean vacuum lift with an incorporated scale makes it possible for him to queue up the next roast while the first is still going. He’s also seen the benefits of low-emission roasting firsthand.

“We have another roaster two doors up from us who use a drum roaster and we know whenever they’re roasting because of the smell outside,” Aaron says. “The same can’t be said about us.”

Loring roasters use a greater degree of convection heating than drum roasters to roast coffee. This means a majority of the heat is transferred from the air to the bean, instead of from the drum. Aaron says this roasting method brings the best out of the coffees Everyday Coffee buys and sells.

“We aim to showcase the origin, varietal, and individual flavours of every coffee we roast,” he says.

“With the Loring, our coffee is cleaner, sweeter, and brighter, with more acidity present – all things we’re happy with and drew us to it in first place.”

James Banman says he is excited for even more of the coffee industry to embrace the future of roasting.

“2019 was a tremendous year in Australia and NZ,” James says. “We are thrilled to see more and more coffee roasters taking advantage of the capabilities that Loring can bring to their businesses.”

This article appears in the April 2020 edition of BeanScene. Subscribe HERE.

For more information, visit www.loring.com

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