Crastan, from raw material to your cup
Pre-seeding contracts, strict quality controls and the Panel Test
The best barley, continuous and strict controls of the raw material, a tested processing system that enhances the naturalness of the product: Crastan’s High Quality is composed of many factors, built over the course of a history that began in 1870 thanks to the foresight of Luzio Crastan, the Founder.
The exceptional raw material, of the best quality, comes exclusively from certified Italian farms, that always guarantee a genuine and healthy product.
Crastan has drawn up, with trusted farmers, annual reseeding contracts to guarantee barley varieties, with a high specific weight, suitable for its particular type of production.
In the Crastan factories, in the heart of industrious Tuscany, every day our technicians carry out laboratory checks on raw materials and semi-finished products. Particularly interesting is the activity of the working group that deals with the Panel Test: some tasters, trained over the years, literally taste the incoming raw materials, semi-finished products and finished products, judging them based on specific parameters, such as flavour, aroma, colour, texture.
The strictness of scientific and sensorial tests is the essence of our relationship with consumers, to whom we guarantee High Quality soluble barley every day. In the internal laboratory, we carry out physical analyses which include specific weight, humidity, grain size, colour of both the barley powder and the drink and its Ph. Furthermore, through qualified external laboratories, we carry out microbiological and residual analyses, we search for possible traces of heavy metals, allergens and more.
The Crastan Method: 100% natural product
There are three phases of barley processing and they take place in protected environments within the Crastan factories: Roasting, Extraction and Solubilisation. None of them use chemical or synthetic products. The barley and other ingredients undergo only thermal and mechanical treatments: heat, water and pressure are the only means Crastan uses to transform the barley grains into instant powder.
Crastan Barley is 100% natural and the processing residues are reused in agriculture as natural fertilisers and livestock products or used for the production of biomass and biogas. This is the Crastan Method.
The barley processing phases
Roasting
Of all the phases, this is the one that most defines the taste and aroma of the product.
Roasting occurs automatically according to programmes set according to the ingredient to be roasted. The raw cereals are introduced into the rotating drum of the roaster and hit by a flow of hot air at around 400°C which first causes the loss of the aqueous part and then the roasting itself.
Extraction
Many maxi coffee makers
The roasted substitute, once cooled, is added into a series of stainless steel cylinders called extractors or percolators. The extraction process consists in the passage of a certain quantity of hot water at around 100°C through the toasted product contained in the cylinders. With a mechanism similar to that of the common coffee maker, the water during its journey extracts from the solid barley the substances soluble in water at that temperature: the extracted solution is the cereal coffee which, once cooled, will undergo the final spray-drying phase.
Solubilisation
Here we are, the most awaited moment. The last transformation: cereal coffee becomes instant powder.
Each Crastan solubilisation tower consists of a cylinder 25 metres high and 5 metres in diameter, inside which the infusion coming from the extraction plant is atomised. The infusion is hit by a current of hot air which causes the immediate evaporation of the aqueous part of the solution. Thus, as it falls, the liquid dries up, transforming into an instant powder which is collected at the lower end of the tower and represents the final product: instant barley, ready to prepare your beloved all-natural and caffeine-free drinks.
