AndyS wrote:The question still remains whether a wood-fired Probat-style roaster might flavor the beans with wood smoke. It is fact that wood smoke would intimately contact the roasting beans. However: the beans are more-or-less continuously outgassing H2O, CO2, CO, and various volatiles. This would limit the opportunity for smoke flavors to work their way in....

Scott Rao wrote:i've had a similar thought about the beans outgassing and perhaps resisting absorbing smoke. and perhaps that is happening. BUT, anytime i've worked on a machine with compromised airflow, or else on a machine with the damper set to vent the smoke more slowly than the smoke is created, the difference in the cup is huge. smokey, muddled, gross (IMO; some like that stuff). so, the beans do absorb the smoke around them. i can't quantify it, but it's enough for a person with a modest palate to notice (i've had numerous people send me smokey-but-not-dark samples and every time the culprit was poor exhausting of gases and was easily fixed.

so, i'm guessing the wood roasted stuff tastes like wood smoke to a material degree. i look forward to trying some soon, but everytime i've tried it the beans were so darkly roasted that it was hard to tell what was going on.

JonR10 wrote:But what if the main "effect" of wood-fired roasting is from using wood fire as the heat source?

Whale wrote:Certainly, the wood burning roasted beans potentially have a different taste characteristics than gas burning or electric heat roasted beans because of the means of heat application, intensity and control being very different and probably requiring a different roasting process. This, along, with the possibility of contact with smoke aromatics could possibly create a different taste characteristic. Additionally the impact of the wood burning on the bean taste, if any, will certainly vary from one roaster to the next.

But is that wood burning taste characteristic only achievable with wood burning? Maybe not, and thus this would mean that the wood burning roasting process does not create a different taste. It would just create that taste differently.

another_jim wrote:It should be feasible to throw wood chips in with the beans, just as one does when smoking in an oven. My hesitation is that it might mess up the drum surface; although that would nail down the proof that there is a difference.

Nik wrote:I can only compare a recent purchase of Ethiopia Amaro Gayo that was wood roasted by Matt's Coffee in Maine. The first bags came from Klatch which were not wood roasted. I can only say that the flavor of berries was more robust in the wood roasted. However I think there are other factors that would affect it as much as the wood.