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Grain roasting machine: find out how to choose the right one

Investing in a grain roasting machine can be a winning choice for farmers and farms. In fact, cereals treated with these machines will considerably improve their quality: not only in terms of taste and fragrance, but also in terms of market value and nutritional properties. However, each grain roasting machine has its own different characteristics and operating principles. So how do you choose the right grain roaster?

Mecmar has created a series of industrial roasters, following three main design developments. In this article we’ll try to answer your questions with some information, experiences and useful tips.

Why should you buy a grain roasting machine?

In many cases, grain roasters are not only useful but even indispensable. Cereals and legumes intended for food – such as soybeans, corn, barley –become more digestible and tasty after roasting: this can make a difference especially in animal nutrition, since animals can have a feed of better quality, which increases their health and strength and contributes to their development. To improve the absorption of proteins and minerals in the digestive tract, it is essential to deactivate the activity of these molecules or decrease their presence. This is possible thanks to the treatment carried out by the roasters because some of the anti-nutritional factors present inside the legumes are thermolabile (meaning they can be degraded by heat).

Let’s see concretely the advantages of a cereal roasting machine with an example. Among the many cereals that can be treated with a roaster there is corn. Corn roasting allows you to:

Increase digestibility – By minimizing trypsin inhibitors, the digestibility level of corn increases.
Facilitating the treatment – The cereal is typically toasted starting from a certain initial moisture content. If the cereal to be treated has some higher humidity point, this is first dried and then toasted inside the same machine.
Higher quality product – During roasting, the product to treat is exposed to high temperatures which contribute to significantly reducing the level of harmful toxins for both humans and animals.
Improve animal health – By introducing a product of the highest quality and high nutritional power, animals grow in excellent health.
Increase profits – The quality of animal meat improves and can be sold at a higher price on the market, but not only: milk production, for example, also increases thanks to better animal nutrition.

How to choose the right roaster?

To obtain maximum profitability from the use of a grain roasting machine, it is important to make a targeted choice so that the roaster adapts to the needs of the company in which it is adopted.

What aspects to consider when choosing the right grain roasting machine? First of all, a good roaster will be able to toast any type of cereal, in order to ensure versatility and quality.

Among the first factors to consider is certainly the capacity of the machine, to be related to the quantity of cereal that must be roasted. To treat large volumes of product, optimizing times and costs, it will be necessary to focus on high-capacity machines equipped with a combustion heating system, capable of producing adequate quantities of heat; otherwise, for more modest needs, a low or medium capacity toaster will be sufficient; it can also be 100% electric, since the amount of heat required for toasting can be obtained from the power line.

Closely related to capacity are the dimensions of the machine. These must also be assessed based on the space available: an optimal choice could be to find a compromise between capacity and space requirements, defining which capacities and dimensions to orientate on.

To ensure a quality final product, it is a good idea to focus on a roaster that guarantees a homogeneous treatment on all the beans: in this way, all of them will come out of the roaster with the same colour and level of roasting. It is also important that the user has the flexibility to intervene on the process parameters to refine the level of roasting according to the needs, while maintaining the homogeneity of the treatment on the grains.

Lastly, the type of fuel used by the machine also deserves an evaluation: depending on the needs, the roaster can be equipped with a gas, LPG or diesel burner. But there’s more: you can also find an alternative and equip the machine with a heat exchanger. This factor is to be considered especially as regards fuel consumption and consequent costs.

Conclusion

Choosing the right grain roasting machine brings numerous benefits in terms of productivity, product value and profit maximization. For decades Mecmar has been a specialist in the design and manufacture of high-quality grain roasters, which guarantee strength, efficacy and reliability. In the Mecmar range we find differente models, like the T5, compact and small in size, or the T100, suitable for roasting large quantities of cereal. All Mecmar roasters are equipped with heat recovery systems to reduce consumption and recently electric grain roasters have been developed for rather limited production (up to 200kg/h) and with very low consumption (approx. 16kW).

The treatment ensured by Mecmar roasters is delicate, homogeneous and quick and allows to obtain perfectly roasted and clean grains. If you want more information about our solutions or want to find out which machine is right for you, do not hesitate to contact us: our experts are at your disposal.