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Is this mold?

Postby open_linux on Wed Oct 19, 2011 8:55 pm

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Is this what mold looks like on green bean?
one image is under uv light and the other is under white light.
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Postby another_jim on Wed Oct 19, 2011 9:14 pm

The mold taints on green coffee that are illustrated in the classification literature are rusts, i.e. reddish discolorations on the bean. I haven't seen anything like this on coffee; instead it looks like the sort of penicillin molds you get on rotting oranges. But whatever it is, there's no way it can get as far as this on something dry -- these beans must have gotten wet during shipping or never been dried.
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Postby cannonfodder on Thu Oct 20, 2011 12:57 am

Ewwwww. Time for the trash can.
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Postby iginfect on Thu Oct 20, 2011 6:59 am

FWIW, we use a Woods lamp (UV) at times to examine skin lesions. If it is visible under the UV, it is a fungal infection.

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Postby yakster on Fri Oct 21, 2011 5:16 pm

I've had mixed results with UV lamps as the normal chaff and silverskin of the coffee seeds can look like mold under UV light. The problem is probably lack of training and knowing what to look for, I usually rely on visual inspection under a magnifying desk lamp when culling greens.

I did recently find a really ugly bean in the Ethiopia Tchembe N2 Natural batch I was roasting, so strange I wasn't sure it was a coffee bean until I cut it open. I should probably look at it under a UV light.

Sorry for the poor photography, that's a Droid phone with a 10X jeweler's loupe magnifier held in front of the lens to take a macro picture.

Image

Image
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Postby open_linux on Sun Oct 23, 2011 8:03 pm

Thank you all for the informative contents.
This bean is from a reputable vendor, it came in small jute bag, wich i found kind of cute and set it aside.
The problem is I forgot it... for 3 years.
Now I know that beans are a perishable commodity, and that aging process of Sumatra is not about forgetting bean :oops: .
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