washing green beans pre-roasting

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RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: washing green beans pre-roasting

Postby kingseven » Sat Jan 16, 2010 12:04 am

Green beans aren't terribly porous, I wonder how much they'd really soak up in a quick wash. I know it is a very silly thing, but part of me wants to give it a try just to see what would happen!
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RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: washing green beans pre-roasting

Postby Bombcup » Sat Jan 16, 2010 3:15 pm

Without speculating on any possible quality issues, my thought was that is a big machine and a small bucket. Lots of work, and if you don't go through a very laborious drying process you're probably going to end up with a sticky mess in your loading system. The 60kg machine we use has a floor level loading hopper and a pneumatic elevator. The majority of the dust gets stuck to the walls of the hopper due to static and it just gets hoovered out at the end of the day. Anything that gets through gets blown straight into the chaff collector.
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RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: washing green beans pre-roasting

Postby bruceb » Sat Jan 16, 2010 7:06 pm

Mr. Motoko Ito answered my email and I also have some personal information on his coffee. He said that he uses "sun dried" beans (dry processed) and that they are dirty so he washes them. He uses a bag roaster (60kg), but unfortunately I do not know if or how he dries the beans before roasting. I heard from a reliable source (a barista from Portland) that Motoya's coffee is excellent, always very fresh and with a particularly clean (!) note in the cup.
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Postby ahgee2 » Sat Jan 16, 2010 9:47 pm

Very interesting - when I think of "dirty" dry processed crops, what come to mind first and foremost are stones. Mr Ito's technique might be a good way to separate the stones from the beans - buoyancy. I appreciate that non-defective greens don't float, but they are more bouyant than stones so swirling them around then fishing them out with a colander might just work.
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Postby espressomattic » Sun Jan 31, 2010 9:37 pm

I have lept into the unkown and am currently 'drying' the beans. I washed them under running water and was actually surprised at how dirty the water was. Very murky and dust laden. A lot of the chaff came off from the beans, which result in what Bombcup predicted...a rather sticky mess!

My next challenge was to dry them. I have opted for a very low heat in the oven, which by and large is working. I will post some more after the roast. The beans are a CoE Costa Rican Las Lajas, semi washed I believe.
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Postby espressomattic » Sun Jan 31, 2010 11:52 pm

Hmmmm.....well they were dried, dry to the touch.

However the roast I think demonstrated the beans had absorbed a fair amount of water. I noticed some 'odd' things going on too. For starters the beans turned very dark quite early on, then went pale/mottled orange, then mottled dark colours. It was at this point I realised it was all going horribly wrong.

To acheieve something resembling a decent roast colour took some doing, then some beans showed oils and others didn't.

Tasting - well I have just had a shot and it wasn't good. I'll wait until a bit later to try again; it doesn't look great.

As in all things, experimentation is fun; however I do not think home equipment can really acheive anything decent with this scenario. But nothing ventured, nothing gained.
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Postby GreenBean » Mon Feb 01, 2010 9:11 am

espressomattic wrote:Hmmmm.....well they were dried, dry to the touch.

However the roast I think demonstrated the beans had absorbed a fair amount of water. I noticed some 'odd' things going on too. For starters the beans turned very dark quite early on, then went pale/mottled orange, then mottled dark colours. It was at this point I realised it was all going horribly wrong.

To acheieve something resembling a decent roast colour took some doing, then some beans showed oils and others didn't.

Tasting - well I have just had a shot and it wasn't good. I'll wait until a bit later to try again; it doesn't look great.

As in all things, experimentation is fun; however I do not think home equipment can really acheive anything decent with this scenario. But nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Very interesting work. Perhaps you could try leaving the washed beans for several days to dry before roasting. The oven may dry the surface but probably does not allow time for the moisture content to equalise throughout the bean.
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Postby Bombcup » Wed Feb 03, 2010 10:21 pm

Sounds to some degree like roasting Swiss Water decaf, which would make sense.
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