Coffee Beans - hygiene and pests

[Paul L]

I bought some olive oil breads and roasted ham with herbs today, specialities of a local Italian shop I have used for nearly six years now (Wimbledon Chase, SW London). I mentioned my surprise that they did not roast coffee beans and sell them. In a fast moving conversation in broken English and amidst the expected comments of ... country not ready... would not sell enough... were some unexpected comments along the lines of ... not easy... flour from canada... flour not easy to keep... little bugs... coffee the same... we played with coffee sacks as kids... threw the beans everywhere... hygiene... bugs... and when departing the shop comments of ... enjoy your coffee... be careful...

It's been puzzling me all day as I have not read anything at all about the whys and wherefores of keeping coffee in any web material and enthusiastic roasting threads, the ills that beans can suffer, the uninvited guests who might share it etc.

Can anyone spill the beans as it were (sorry for the easy pun) or are you just as puzzled?

[barry]

grains of just about any type can be difficult to store w/o some infestation. a lot of coffee is fumigated. i've seen infested bags (at another roaster) where the beans would wiggle about if the bag was bumped. the bugs are larvae of a small moth, similar or even identical to mealy bugs in flour/nuts/etc. they usually roast up and blow away with the chaff (or so i've been told). i've had to deal with small numbers of moths from time to time (one or two at a time), but i've not ever found any larvae in my green. there are also "bag spiders", which are very small spiders that will weave webs between stacked coffee bags (i guess to catch the moths). i've not had any problem with those at all, as i don't have much green on hand at any one time (no room for it), but i've known much larger roasters who have to sweep their stacks of bags every morning to remove the webs.

--barry "not fond of bugs, except fireflies"

[HB]

This topic reminds me of Peter Guiliano's tour of the roasting facility at Counter Culture Coffee. He pointed out that green coffee is a natural product, so there's going to be debris (twigs, stones, bugs) in the end product. A "destoner" is a big vacuum that's strong enough to lift out the beans while leaving behind stones, rocks, screws, bullets... he described lots of surprising things that inadvertently make there way into the bags. The lighter stuff gets burned up and carried away with the chaff.

[PeterG]

I have never seen any sort of live bugs in green coffee bags. Occasionally, we get spiders in the green coffee room (the same kind you get in your house). I like to freak people out and tell them they are "Sumatran Jumping Spiders", then throw a piece of twine on them while they're not looking. Works every time!

Foreign matter shows up in coffee bags all the time, especially in coffees from Indonesia. I have seen or heard of:
-bullets
-teeth
-coins
-bottlecaps
-a machete
-corn
-a dessicated frog.

Back to the topic, I wouldn't consider infestation a problem at all. Although I have heard of coffee being fumigated, I know it is not done on a large scale because I have never seen or have any direct knowledge of it happening. I know they fumigate some imports into Mexico as protection against the Broca beetle, but they would have no reason to fumigate for this market. In any case, they would not be able to fumigate Organic coffee with pesticides, and even though I do 75 percent of my volume in certified organic, I have never seen a bug.

Bug holes in coffee are mainly from the aforementioned Broca beetle in Latin America, and the Antestia larva in Africa. Both bore into the coffee seed while the coffee is still on the tree.

Storing coffee in impermeable (plastic) bags would be worse, since green coffee is relatively moist. Mold and mildew could be a major problem.

PG

[Kaarina]

I used to work for a consulting company, and in the 90's we did a project in a brewery in Russia's St.Petersburg. They kept their beans in a poorly constructed shed with open doors and a lively community of birds scuttling in and out. When I asked the production manager what on earth are those birds doing there, he looked at me like I had just failed a biology exam and informed me that they are eating of course, they like the beans. The fact that after feasting there are also plentiful droppings did seem beside the point so I kept my moralizations to myself....