coffee | Rotronic

A fantastic view of the Swiss mountains complimented an exciting glimpse of the future at the Rotronic International Sales Meeting 2014 in the Swiss mountain village of Grindelwald.

The biennial Rotronic ISM brings together distributors and subsidiaries from the global Rotronic network (or family as it feels when we are all together!).

The week long meeting provides an invaluable opportunity to share experiences, projects, new ideas and product updates along with the showing off latest developments and future trends for the company. Aside from the formal workshops, training courses and meetings is the opportunity to informally explore new ventures and insights from around the world – as well as sharing a beer or two of course.

The growing range of new product launches from the Swiss HQ, combined with further developments from the UK’s R&D group based around the HygroGen technology highlights that the outlook for the next two years will be very interesting! (check out our new Hygrogen and AwTherm specific satellite sites www.hygrogen.com)

The last day of the meeting ensured everyone forgot about instruments for a while as we made our way out into the mountains. Mixed groups were pitched against each other in a fairly weird and wonderful mix of traditional team alpine games including Alphorn blowing and milk chair shuffling (best not to ask)!! Competition was tight but fun had by all.

It was all wrapped up with a fantastic outdoor bbq and the Rotronic awards – the UK team getting an award for the best CO2 product sales performance over the past two years!

The ISM are important to maintain open communication and share knowledge. Combined with a delicate mix of hard work, fun and fantastic enthusiasm from all the those attending ensures that once again the ISM was a great success!

Several important announcements were made about new products and future developments including…

New ATEX Range (launches very soon!)

Heated HygroMet Probe (now available!)

Two new videos coming soon (CO2 measurement and humidity overview)!

In addition we were given a glimpse of the future… Rotronic UK unveiled the latest HygroGen2 features and the HG2’s bigger brother, the HygroGen2-XL.

Rotronic AG introduced a new ASIC for the Hygroclip probe range improving reliability and quality without affecting compatibility.

Beyond this there were several very exciting new product ranges on the horizon but these are still under wraps for now… watch this space 🙂

Water Activity and Moisture Content are two very different parameters which are often confused and misused.

In a meeting today with a manufacturer of coffee capsules and pods, these differences were critical.

– Their whole bean supplier provided each batch with moisture content readings.

– However customers buying the coffee capsules and pods were asking for detailed water activity measurements for each batch. In addition for BRC Food Safety and shelf life validation of the final product, water activity was required.

Why are there these differences and can one measurement be used to determine both values?

Moisture content is probably the simplest value to understand. It is simply the quantity of water contained in a material. Traditionally measured through loss of weight on drying. This method raises some issues, depending on the drying temperature you may not remove all water or may also remove other non water compounds.

More modern methods resolve these issues and use infra red absorption. This way the water content is directly measured, the method is non-destructive and far quicker.

Moisture content is typically given as a percentage in terms of weight.

Infrared Moisture Measurement – A measure of moisture content through IR adsorption

Water Activity (aW) is a measure of the free water in a sample, and ranges between 0…1. Pure water would have an aW of 1.0. As water activity measures the ‘free’ or ‘active’ water in a sample it is more relevant to growth of organisms, chemical processes, enzyme activity and physical parameters like size and clumping as these are only effected by the water that can be chemically interacted with. Interestingly Water Activity is related to Moisture Content but it is product and temperature specific.

aW… is more relevant to growth of organisms, chemical processes, enzyme activity and physical parameters

Rotronic HygroLab Water Activity Measurement – A measure of the ‘free’ water

What is free water? Water can be bound in materials in two broad ways.

1. Chemically Bound Water. Is bound so tightly that it cannot be utilised by bacteria, enzymes etc. It can be removed through high temperature heating.

2. Free Water. Is bound through weak bonds, structural diffusion, capillary condensation and surface binding. It can be utilised by bacteria and can exchange with the environment, it is also removed through heating.

For instance a whole grape would have the same moisture content as two halves of the same grape. However the aW would be far lower in a whole grape as much of the water is bound inside the grape skin and only made free when the grape is cut in half!

Take a look at our Water Activity white paper or our Knowledge base for more information.

Introduction to Water Activity

Water Activity White Paper and Product Overview

Application note F004 – Water activity in the food industry

Rotronic – BLOG

Tag Archives: coffee

Highlights from the Rotronic ISM 2014

Water Activity and Moisture Content… What is the difference?

News, views and interesting things from the world of metrology