Invention of coffee roaster by Jabez Burns

By the final third of the 19th century, coffee was already a 1,000-year-old drink. And throughout all that time, coffee beans needed to be roasted before they could be used to brew coffee. Initially this was done in open pans and then, from the beginning of the 18th century and for many decades after, in hand operated cylindrical roasters over an open flame or a brazier.

The first successful commercial coffee roaster was invented in 1864 by Jabez Burns, who came to New York from London in 1845 and found employment with coffee and spice merchants.

Mr. Burns was born in London in 1826. Experimenting with more reliable method for roasting coffee beans, he realized that the key was not to allow the beans to rest directly on a hot surface, where the quickly scorch. Burns devised a screw-like device to keep the beans moving as they roasted. He took out his first patent for an industrial roaster in 1864.

He founded the business of Jabez Burns & Sons in 1864, beginning the manufacture of his patent coffee roaster at 107 Warren Street New York.

In 1934 the Jabez Burns company developed a machine that applied no heat whatsoever to the drum itself. The burns machine dispensed with the heat outside the drum, instead relying on a high-velocity blast of hot air roaring through the drum, thus roasting the coffee more by contact with hot air than by contact with hot metal.
Invention of coffee roaster by Jabez Burns