Ochratoxin A is present in most of what we eat and drink, but in extremely small quantities. As with many other compounds, there appears to be a threshold effect for toxicity, and it doesn't accumulate in the body. Light roasting appears to reduce the amount in coffee by at least half, Starbucks level roasts by more than 90%. Looking at the raw greens, you're going to have to roast pretty dark to get something that approximates coffee anyway.

Alan

I'm not picking out this lot to say it has anything. I'm not even implying that it does. I'm simply sharing information about fungal and bacterial contamination that is associated with poorly handled coffee ( or in a broader sense, many foodstuffs). That can happen anywhere, and from what the literature shows, it's rather pervasive. It's in meat, cocoa, dried fruit, and many other crops. A sterling locale like Boquete would be the last likely place one would expect to find this sort of contamination. But that's probably because if they're testing their products, they're testing the ones that go to market and have proper levels of moisture before being shipped. Not something that looks like it was picked up with a shovel out of an outhouse.

In all likelihood, the biggest downside to consuming something like this will most likely be the taste. And if there was any contamination, very dark roasting will reduce the toxins to a large degree, but it will not eliminate them.

TomC wrote:Do whatever you want, and don't take this as alarmist, but I wouldn't consume any coffee that I didn't know if it was properly dried and I would strongly caution anyone else from doing it just for the sake of novelty.

For me, this raises the question about whether it is ever dangerous to drink poorly processed coffee. Have there ever been reports of serious illness from drinking coffee that contains any of these known contaminants (other than a toxin that wouldn't be inherent in poor processing or natural processes like rotting)?

another_jim wrote:Triage has no market. It used to sold as coffee for the poor domestically. Thanks to economic progress, even they don't drink this stuff any more, and it's used as fertilizer.

I've heard these coffees referred to as sweepings... as in the rejects are swept up and bagged. Maybe the best thing to do is just use this as a learning experience, you've got to process the green coffee, experience green coffee in parchment, you could use these greens for seasoning a roaster drum or breaking in the burrs of a grinder, and eventually as compost. No need to just toss them.

yakster wrote: No need to just toss them.

Have you ever had just one stinker in your drum or cup? They are known as stinkers for a reason, and there about 30 of them in the picture. I'd leave this lot to a roaster with a really good afterburner. As to the cup quality ... it might leave you wishing for a toxin to kill you now.

by another jim:
"I'm not sure about life threatening toxins; but in the picture you have about 30 full blacks and 20 full ferments. A single one of either disqualifies a 350 gram sample from being regarded as specialty grade; 3 disqualify it as C grade. Looking at the rest of the beans, I';m fairly certain what you have there is a bag of triage; that is everything that's left over after the usable coffee has been removed -- unripe beans, rotten beans, fermented beans, broken beans, fungus eaten beans, bug eaten beans, etc. Hand sorting won't do any good, since there is nothing in the picture except rejects."

by alan frew:
"Looking at the raw greens, you're going to have to roast pretty dark to get something that approximates coffee anyway."

Just for the sake of clarity and to avoid any confusion (at least on my part), the pictures I posted previously were of beans still in parchment, not what I would call greens. The "blacks" were fully dried cherry fruits dried to leathery plum stage, while the rest of the darker beans were beans in parchment stained (some quite darkly) by mucilage that dried on the beans and was then rinsed off. Here is a pic of the greens after parchment removal. Other than a brownish tint to the silverskin which is still on most of the beans, the beans themselves appear fairly normal, although in my inexperienced opinion, of a lower quality.

Hard to tell from the pic; but you might want to remove any beans which are entirely reddish or black, or have spots in those colors.

How did you get the parchment off? And did you roast them yet?

Sorry for the very late reply. Was out of action for a couple of weeks (which had nothing to do with the coffee, honest). So after trying a couple different techniques, I ended up just taking about a 1/2 cup of beans at a time (I discarded all of the whole dried cherries) and I would cup my hands, and rub the beans together between my palms quite firmly, kind of like trying to grind them together, letting them slowly fall out on to a baking pan. After each handful, I would get about twenty or so green beans. The ones that were too stubborn to come apart, I just set aside. I started with a full 1 gallon baggie full of parchment beans and after about an hour and a half, I had a little over 300g. My palms were pretty raw by then so I waited a couple days and did some more so that after sorting and culling, I ended up with 420g. I roasted them two nights ago and brewed a cup tonight. I was actually pleasantly surprised. Not much aroma, but nice florals up front, medium bodied, balanced, with a nice finish. All in all, a much better cup than I was expecting, and definitely worth the effort since I thought the whole thing was actually kind of fun.