I hope someone can enlighten me. I just bought some Ethiopian Harrar greens from a supplier I don't normally use. I've roasted 2 batches in my Hottop D just as I normally would do. They roasted as I would expect and I dropped them just as they were entering 2nd crack. All was fine. Then I tried to use them and found that water would just run through. The grinder was, at that time, dialed in for Ethiopian Harrar beans I had been using from my usual supplier. So I tightened the grind. I ended going 6 notches tighter on the Major just to slow the flow down! Even then I got no crema and every shot I've pulled with this bean, at any grind, has been undrinkable. The weird thing is that they behave like beans you might buy from a bulk bin in a supermarket that are 2 months past roast. They were 5 and 3 days past roast. They smell nasty when you grind them too. I've now gone back to my usual beans and everything's peachy so I'm confused.
I was wondering, if the greens are old, would they behave like this or am I barking up the wrong tree? The other possibility is that they've sold me Harrar but really they're some other bean. They're horrible whatever they are. I'd be grateful for any suggestions.

The stale beans that I have used showed themselves in the roaster with fewer and less dynamic cracks. If they behaved as you would expect in the roaster, and when in the green they were a normal color, they probably aren't terribly stale. Maybe some of the bean experts here can give you more specific info if you have some specifics on the beans (crop year, estate source, etc.). Contact the seller and ask them directly. Maybe they have some further info.

How does the green smell? If it has any off aromas, they will end up in the cup.

Old green roasted here is less interesting than fresh, but not awful.

The only really stale green I've tried was roasted by a friend who got the beans included at purchase with his small electric home roaster (I think it was an -iRoast) some years back. When he ground and brewed it as drip coffee it was very flat and uninteresting in the cup with a muted flavor profile. Not noxious - just dull.

Thanks for your replies. I think perhaps my stale bean theory doesn't hold water. It was just the perplexing behaviour of the beans in my espresso that made me wonder about that. I have tried emailing the vendor to ask what might have happened but I'm yet to hear back. The trouble with buying green beans in this country is that none of the vendors I've found give specifics about crops and estates. I suspect most buy their beans from larger importers. The other issue I suppose is that I buy in small amounts of 6-8 kilos at a time so I only have the vendor's word that the beans are what they say they are. This bean behaves like no bean I've ever roasted and certainly not like my beloved Harrar. I'll keep trying to get an answer from the vendor.

Aged beans do need a very fine grind for espresso. But they look pale and won't have a first crack when roasted. The other possibility is Sumatra coffees. These crack vigorously, and are very green; but also need a very fine grind for different reasons (a lot of Robusta genes, probably).

If your beans tasted like dried out leather, they are old Harar; if they taste like swamp and sewage, bad young Sumatra. Either way, they will probably taste best in the garbage can.

Thanks Jim. They may well be old Harrar then. And I think the garbage is where they'll end up.

samgiles wrote:They roasted as I would expect and I dropped them just as they were entering 2nd crack. All was fine. Then I tried to use them and found that water would just run through. The grinder was, at that time, dialed in for Ethiopian Harrar beans I had been using from my usual supplier. So I tightened the grind. I ended going 6 notches tighter on the Major just to slow the flow down! Even then I got no crema and every shot I've pulled with this bean, at any grind, has been undrinkable.

What about your other roast parameters? Like total time, and time between segments? It may be a shot in the dark (as it was for me then), but I've had several fruit-bomb naturals (Panama Elida most recently) that seemed to behave well outside my accustomed envelope. I suffered many trial roasts and many over-bright, grassy, harsh, underdeveloped shots, even when bean color was not aggressively pale. To oversimplify, I basically settled on roasting longer and slower, ending probably a couple of minutes before 2nd, using the balance of tartness vs. roastiness in the cup to determine my preferred end temperature. This treatment would BAKE most of my other beans, but here it delivered sweetness, aromatic tangy fruit, syrupy body and decent crema without the nasties. The best shots came ristretto-style: ground finer, dosed higher, and extracted longer, despite which, they seemed immune to bitterness.

On the age issue, my experience, FWIW, with older beans is one of increasingly muted flavors: less of the good stuff, but not more (or new) bad stuff. They just got boring and generic.

Something weird.. Today, after some hot summer months without roasting coffee, I -tried- to roast some coffee from an unsealed tight air bag. This bean usually reach FC at 200°C, however the beans from the closed bag has not reached FC until 220°C! I finish the roast at 230°C without reach SC!

I repeated the roast... again the same, FC @ 220°C

What happens? Stale beans? Or perhaps beans with too much moisture?