The Importance of Being Urnex: A series on the importance of cleaning in the coffee industry -Roaster Cleaning and Interview with Liz Bishop

Image of Roaster parts cleaned with Roaster Soakz

By Erika Koss

Cleaning matters in the coffee industry, and there’s many reasons why.  In this occasional series, Dr. Erika Koss interviews coffee professionals who consider cleaning as seriously—and as important—as Urnex.

In this first interview, we feature Liz Bishop, based on the east coast of Canada. She spends a lot of time cleaning coffee machines in her work with Vintage Coffee and Doug Graf.

Introduction
Who you gonna call if you’re a coffee roaster in Canada, and your roaster has a problem?  

If you’re lucky, roaster expert Doug Graf will pick up the phone.  

Since 1986 Doug has been working on all things roaster-related and for the past decade has been traveling the world as Vintage Coffee, working with coffee roasting companies to provide consulting and training.

A few years ago, Doug hired Liz Bishop to join his business. Liz has traversed many coffee jobs since she started working in coffee in 2005: from barista to green buyer, from Q grader to roaster. Now, she’s on a deep dive into what makes roasting machines run smoothly.

She’s the first woman in the world to be a certified Loring technician.

The Interview:
Erika: It’s great to be back in Halifax and be able to see you, Liz! By traveling around Canada fixing roasting machines, it seems like you’re seeing the internal organs of the coffee industry.  You’re like a coffee machine surgeon, looking into parts of a body that most people never get to see and then you conduct a surgery.  Is this an accurate way to perceive your job for the last few years?

Liz:  Absolutely! It’s a good analogy.  Doug and I are trying to diagnose all the problems that can happen within roasting machines, and then come up with a solution.  And we’re not only like surgeons: we’re also like your physiotherapist  or osteopath who is trying to prevent problems. Roasters need a team: an electrician, gas fitter, good local machine shop, plumber, and more.

Erika: You’re part of a larger team! But how many roasters are calling you for preventive services compared to emergencies?

Liz:  Yes, it’s usually for emergencies, and there is little education about maintenance and repair of roasters.  People don’t always realize that coffee tends to be a very dirty business. As with any food product, there’s going to be dust, oils, or chaff that comes off your coffee, and those build up over time.

Erika:  People need to know their machines inside and out.

Liz: Yes, when someone calls us to describe what’s happening, a lot of times they don’t how to describe the problem.  We try to diagnosis it so we can get to the nitty gritty of the problem, whether is it is a burner issue or a technical issue or something else.

Erika: It sounds like cleaning machines is an essential part of any coffee business.

Liz: Yes, very similar to our bodies, because otherwise they break down after awhile.  Even basic things like once a week, go over the roaster and check to make sure its pipes are clean, or that the burners are being serviced at least once a year.

Erika:  It’s like doing routine check-ups for your car, the oil change and air filters.

Liz:  Exactly, your car does a lot of hard work, and it needs cleaning and upkeep.

Erika: This can be a safety issue, also, right?

Liz:  Yes, that’s why the regular maintenance matters, to check that there’s nothing amiss. As soon as a wire may be loose, or dust gets in your fans, or if there’s a lot of build up of debris on your cycling fan, then problems can start to really happen.

Erika:  What is an example of something roasters can do to save money on maintenance? Can cleaning help save money to avoid bigger repairs  for the future?

Liz:   Sometimes we clean on site for annual cleanings, but we’re really expensive pipe cleaners.  That’s  something roasters can do themselves:  scrap yourself. .

Erika:  You’re making me think also about the time for Doug or you to travel to the roaster, and the layers of time and human labour to repair machines and any broken parts.

Liz:  Cleaning is so much cheaper than replacing a motor.  Once an overworked motors runs out, you have to buy a new one.  To make your roaster run, you have several motors: fan motor, a drum dried motor, and more. If you’re not cleaning your fans very often, then the motor has to run so much harder and it will wear out faster.

Erika:  What about the protection side.  Like preventing fires?

Liz:  Cleaning your roaster is actually a great way to prevent fires. The main places we see fires is in the chaff collector unit, cooling tray, and cooling ducts. Because you’re pulling air and oils and particulates into your cooling ducts, a lot of that can build up in your pipes and your ducts, so that restricts the air flow. You don’t want fuel on your ducts.

Erika:  Do you often witness such fires in roasters?

Liz: Yes, sometimes we see the fires, but most often, we see the evidence of fires that maybe even the roaster didn’t know was there.  Like an aluminum fan that crumbles when we try to take them apart. When we go into a cleaning job, it can be like an archeological dig, where we can see the layers of coffee that have come up through the dust. Sometimes when we see a grey or a white layer, we can see the ash and that means there’s been a smoulder.  If that catches fire, it would lead to a very big problem.  

Erika:  I read in one of the articles you published in Roast Magazine that you regularly use Urnex’s Roaster Soakz.  If that’s still true, what makes this product special?

Liz:   Yes, we use it all the time.  It’s a formula made specifically for coffee roasters.  It’s safer than other products than aren’t coffee specific. And it’s easy to use:  just get a kiddie swimming pool and then soak the parts in there.

Erika: What can roasters do to make cleaning less daunting?

Liz:  Break it down into smaller tasks to do daily or weekly. Not everything has to be done all at once. Depending on how much you’re roasting and the type of coffee you’re roasting, something like checking your chaff barrel should be done daily. That’s also a way to prevent fires so it’s not clean and building up.

Erika:  Once you told me that cleaning can bring your team together. What did you mean by that?  

Liz:  Cleaning can be mundane, but it also can be fun.  We recommend to a lot of people, get your whole team together on Fridays, order a bunch of pizzas, and everyone clean as a team. Then when you come back to work on Monday, everything is clean.

Erika: Cleaning is also a health issue.

Liz:  Coffee roasteries as a food processing facility, where you are preparing a food product. The roastery overall needs to be clean:  especially to have pest and garbage control.

Erika:  How does cleaning affect coffee quality? 

Liz:  If you’re not cleaning your cooling tray, often those coffee particulates can get onto your coffee and affect the flavour of your coffee. If you have dirty pipes or you’re circulation system isn’t clean, that can impact your air flow and that can impact your roast profiles and flavour of your coffee. Similar to espresso machines, if you’re not cleaning your group heads, that’s absolutely going to affect your flavour. 

Liz Bishop and Erika Koss cupping Kenyan coffees in Nova Scotia, Canada.  Photo used courtesy of Erika Koss

Erika:  I’ve learned so much from you today!  Before we end, I want to ask you about being the only full-time female roaster technician in Canada. Coffee is a male-dominated industry, but in areas of tech and maintenance, it seems there are even fewer women.  

Liz:  Yes, I am often in many groups and many rooms, where I am the only woman. The conversation is slowly changing.  The more we have conversations about the gender gaps, and the more the  women doing these jobs in the industry are visible, it can give inspiration for people to try for these jobs and to eliminate barriers. 

Erika:  What would you change?

Liz:  More opportunities for training and learning for women is really important. I’m still learning new things all the time, and there can be some intimidation of women in trades. 

About the writer:
Erika Koss, PhD, is a writer, educator, and researcher who views coffee through the lens of two life-long passions: literature and human rights. She is an Authorized Specialty Coffee Trainer and a co-creator of SCA’s Coffee Sustainability curriculum. Erika's PhD from Saint Mary’s University in Canada focused on coffee's gendered gaps in Kenya, and she has created a new gender and coffee course to help address this issue more globally.  As the founder of “A World in Your Cup Consulting,” she seeks to advance sustainability, gender equity, and decolonization of the beverage crops through education and research. Born and raised in Los Angeles, Erika lives in Nairobi, Kenya, with her younger son.  

Find Erika on IG: @AWorldinYourCup

www.AWorldinYourCup.com