Defects or Flaws in roasted beans

beanflying

Part Friday rant and part for information the couple of photos below are from a mainstream mid to large sized roasting company. The photos below are just a random sample from mid way through a 1kg bag of their standard blend. Not a sponsor here either

This company has had a slide in both flavour profile over the last year and this sort of defective bean is becoming far more prevalent. Getting to a point where I won't be buying this one again.

Not quite sure where to place this topic but here for a start  

shape_shifter

That's an awful lot of dud coffee beans when you consider it's just 40 grams of a 1 kilogram package.

beanflying

That was my thoughts too, a few are expected but when the flawed ones are getting to that level it is beyond acceptable. There is some industry scuttlebutt about the bean sourcing being inferior to previous years and it shows. None of my own unsorted roasts have ever gone anywhere like this sort of level of defects.

FreshCoffee2

Sorry T, but I cant see into the photos properly. Some of it for sure is due to damage caused probably in the destoner or roasted beans unloader  OR in the roasted beans to silo loader (ie the settings are too aggressive on the roasted beans) but I cant see much else...... You will have to take a better quality of photo for me to take a better look.......FotographySnobs anyone??? Be aware that brokens from rough handling dont necessarily affect anything other than the visual quality and should brew out fine in amongst the rest of the whole beans. Seriously, are you able to supply better photos? Rgdz, A.

beanflying

Sorry about the photo quality. My phone Camera Sucks. I will take the SLR to work tomorrow and do another 2.

mycuppa

Timbo - is it one of my packs ? I've seen this occur when some bags are squashed in transit (or temporarily stored poorly in the roastery, boxes stacked too high and the weight pressing down) - the beans being slightly darker roasted are very brittle and as bag manufacturers are making them smaller and smaller, it's tight for space - even a small amount of pressure can do it.......like tapping an egg with a spoon or a Thundergod chop breaking through layers of solid items. The only chipped greens I am seeing are the Ethiopian dry processed coffees - Mormosa, Guji, Sidamo, Harrar, etc. but then again, I don't get to see any low grade coffees. Most of the washed greens in the mid-to-upper quality grades are generally pretty good. On a few occasions in the last 5 years, I have come across some brittle beans within lots that I put down to defective fruit - it might be 20kg in a ton, etc.. Unfortunately, you can't see this in the green state as they breakdown after roasting. You may be lucky enough to notice the odd chipped bean in the roaster cooling tray, but as FC noted, it's when the beans get processed using vac loaders into the de-stoner and packing line that they start to breakdown, being brittle and smashing against each other.

beanflying

on 1311929014:

Timbo - is it one of my packs ? I've seen this occur when some bags are squashed in transit (or temporarily stored poorly in the roastery, boxes stacked too high and the weight pressing down) -

Nope but they are a sponsor elsewhere we have spoken about before. Their beans once roasted are packed into 10kg cardboard boxes so there shouldn't be to many post packaging issues . Looking at them most are defective prior to roast. A fair number of them are hollow defects (thin and fragile) which I suspect contributes to the broken up bits during roasting or handling. It is more the disappointing and marked change in a year of what used to be a good all round blend.

mycuppa

What a relief. The PST (33% PNG, Sumatran, Tanza) pack I gave you was the very last I'd been saving especially for you - sitting on the bottom of a big pile for 4 days........worried it was crushed. OK, I think I know what you are talking about.

FreshCoffee2

Unfortunately Tim in this "climate" some roasters are tempted to substitute lower grade (cheaper)  input. You end up with more defects, sometimes a noticeably smaller screen size sometimes not...but more defects......and a different character in the cup if for no other reason, than it cant be the same as a better quality green because it simply isnt the same coffee....... My own opinion is that what you are seeing is not important...what is important is the character of the coffee in the cup. If you brew it and it is good, dont worry about it.... Unfortunately, low quality / cheaper input does not usually translate to equivalency with better quality input.....in the cup. And to know that, you have to be the type of bloke / roaster, that is serious about in house cupping and not just buying greens on price and spec and replacing them into your blends ion the basis that the lower quality beans can be directly substituted for the original type around which the blend was developed. Substitution of different qualities can and will, upset the balance of the original blend. Be aware that you cant rely on your memory for comparison, you have to do direct comparisions  / cuppings one on one. Regardz, Attilio  

beanflying

Todays sample had a few less hollows in it than yesterday and the bottom of the bag has more fragments that had settled out as you would expect. Rough sort Good Pile Defects roughly sorted Chips and small bits Hollows and halves Broken, Deformed and divots.