IMA Coffee held an Academy Day on 18 October at the IMA Coffee Lab, a day of sharing and training which included a program of workshops on roasting and coffee packaging, attended by coffee experts, packaging specialists and international producers.
Titled From Bean to Capsule, this new format of Academy Day at the IMA Coffee Lab was an experiential journey through coffee processing and packaging to discover and manage the key drivers of coffee bean transformation, from coffee varieties to how each roasting profile affects the aroma and taste of the coffee extracted from the capsule.
More than 50 global coffee professionals attended the Academy Day and had the opportunity to discover the lab at the IMA Petroncini production facilities in Ferrara, Italy and try out its pilot plant, the scaled-down coffee processing factory, exploring ways to enhance the quality of coffee and the efficiency of coffee processing and packaging.
“The particle size distribution of the ground coffee is the most important factor linking coffee processing to capsule packaging,” says Alessandro Nobili, Head of Product Management at IMA Coffee Packaging Solutions.
“We have to maintain the same precision in the coffee dosage for each batch, so as to have a constant volume and particle size distribution within each capsule, to guarantee the same quality of extracted coffee. That is possible thanks to the capacity of the system to control the coffee level inside the dosing unit and minimise the particle wire drowing. Accurate weight is an easy target to respect thanks also to the online weighing system which checks each capsule and gives feedback to the dosing unit if automatic adjustments are required.”
Participants had the opportunity to try out the full line, performing roasting sessions and compostable capsule filling and sealing demonstrations. Alongside IMA Coffee trainers and high specialised staff, participants tested the green, roasted and ground coffee for key parameters, and carried out quality analysis and in-cup tasting.
Comparative cupping sessions were conducted by Matteo Barbarossa, Coffee Expert at IMA Coffee Hub, to recognise how different roasting profiles can decisively influence the final taste of capsule coffee by targeting the same ultimate colour of roasted beans, processing the same green origin.
Through several coffee talks throughout the day, participants had the opportunity to deep dive into each step of the process, from the botanical varieties of green coffee to the most accurate and reliable packaging technologies for coffee capsules.
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