I was doing my weekend roast as usual. I decided to roast first some Yemen Ameera and I did checked the beans for damage. I pulled about 5 beans out. Then I did some Nicaragua and then some Costa Rica without checking the beans. When I did the Costa Rica (last), I noticed that two rocks had fallen out of the metal tray right underneath the drop door. I checked the rest of the beans but nothing found. I'll be double checking as I use the beans. These rocks would have hurt my K10 if not caught in time. I feel lucky



More reasons to cull the beans. I'll keep the rocks as a souvenir.

I've put the rocks back in the beans to take a pic. Can you find the rocks?



Cheers

Normally those two would've been buried and unseen. Now, I check my beans before I roast because I too have found rocks.

I roast 250g batches in my poor old Hottop D. While it comes up to temperature I spend the time sorting throught the beans and pulling out anything I don't like the look of. I nearly always find rocks in the Ethiopian Harrar I love but not many in the others. I also only dose 1 shot at a time into the grinder and watch carefully as I poor them in. I did once find a small stone this way so they're pretty easy to miss. I'm yet to grind one - cross-fingers.

I hadn't found any rocks in quite a long time until the other day. While picking out some of the many defects in a batch of Yemen Haimi pre roast I found 2 small stones.

It is not surprising to find what looks like rocks in Yemeni coffee. Often what seem to be rocks are bits of concrete from their very old and crumbling drying pads. Fortunately the ones that get by pre-roast culling are small and grind easily because they tend to be crumbly, at least compared to what a rock can do.

Since the two "rocks" were still on my roasting table I gave them the hammer test. One light tap & they crumbled so I'd say you were right about them being old concrete. Still I'd rather keep them out of my grinder & my shot.