Roasted coffee then was packed (for city trade) in five and ten pound packages, and this size package seemed to supply the wants of the ordinary grocer for a week. Occasionally a twenty-five pound package, and in a few instances as much as fifty pounds of one grade was sold at a time.
The class of customers the coffee roasters sold in those days were the smaller merchants; the larger stores, having their ideas as to quality, bought their coffees green. As they had very little sale for the roasted, they would send a half-sack, and sometimes a whole sack to have it roasted. It took a number of years to induce the larger grocers, and even the average grocers, to purchase their coffee already roasted.
Coffees were roasted in the old style, "pull-out" roaster cylinder. That is to say, it was necessary to stop the roaster and to pull out the cylinder to sample the coffee in order to know when to take the coffee off the fire. When the coffee was ready to take off, the cylinder was pulled out its entire length. It was then turned over and a slide nine inches wide, running the full length of the cylinder, was opened and the contents were dumped in the cooling box. When the coffee reached the cooling box, it took two men with hoes or wooden shovels to stir and turn it until it was properly cooled, there being no cooling arrangements then as we have nowadays.
At that time there were no stoning or separating machines; and as a bag of the ordinary green Jamaica coffee contained from three to five pounds of stones and sticks, it was necessary to hand-pick the coffee after it was roasted.
EARLY FOREIGN AND AMERICAN COFFEE-MAKING DEVICES
1—English adaptation of French boiler. 2—English coffee biggin. 3—Improved Rumford percolator. 4—Jones's exterior-tube percolator. 5—Parker's steam-fountain coffee maker. 6—Platow's filterer. 7—Brain's Vacuum, or pneumatic filter. 8—Beart's percolator. 9—American coffee biggin. 10—cloth-bag drip pot. 11—Vienna coffee pot. 12—Le Brun's cafetière. 13—Reversible Potsdam cafetière. 14, 15—Gen. Hutchinson's percolator and urn. 16—Etruscan biggin