I have ordered the same beans for months and this time around there seems to be a bunch of beans that appear to be just the shell. This is what they all typically look like:



There are some like these mixed in this time, small amount, but enough to have a few in each dose:



Is this a bean defect, roasting issue, or just a normal thing that I have not noticed before in these numbers?

Thanks!

Ken

Those are "ears" or "shells" - they're considered a minor green coffee defect. They tend to roast darker than normal beans in the same roast due to their lower density. I don't worry about them.

Thanks Craig! Really appreciate that you took the time to let me know what they were.

Ken

Ken5 wrote:Thanks Craig! Really appreciate that you took the time to let me know what they were.

Ken

Oops, I had thought that this was coffee that you roasted at home - but is this coffee that you purchased roasted?

If it is the latter, then you should see very few of these in purchased specialty coffee. https://royalcoffee.com/grading-green-c ... l-defects/

Yes... bought as roasted beans. This is not normal for this roaster, so hopefully it was just an off day.

Thanks for the link, had no idea there was so much to go wrong when it come to beans.

I just had a Kenya that was roasted by a very good roaster (not me ) and by my estimate there were about 2 shells for every 15 grams. Basically 2 shells for every shot I pulled. I take them out. This coffee, sans shells, was excellent as espresso and superb as a pour over.

Funny thing is, today I decided to save them and when I have enough I will pull a shot of just them or mostly them depending on how many I have.

I likely won't get to do this until middle of next week but I will try to report my findings.

As a generalization, I find that shells show up more often in green coffee sorted to be sold as peaberries, typically Africans from Tanzania or Kenya. The way that sorting of green coffee is typically done in those countries can result in the peaberries and ears being sold lumped together. While a peaberry is by definition a coffee cherry that yields a single bean (instead of two), sometimes peaberries are beans that grow inside an ear.

There's nothing inherently bad about ears, but they do roast differently, and so are considered a minor defect. (A perfectly-sorted coffee would have all the beans the same shape and size, etc.) I'll be interested to see how much of a difference in taste, if any, that you find.

LBIespresso wrote:I just had a Kenya that was roasted by a very good roaster (not me ) and by my estimate there were about 2 shells for every 15 grams. Basically 2 shells for every shot I pulled. I take them out. This coffee, sans shells, was excellent as espresso and superb as a pour over.

Funny thing is, today I decided to save them and when I have enough I will pull a shot of just them or mostly them depending on how many I have.

I likely won't get to do this until middle of next week but I will try to report my findings.

Well, I did it. I pulled 1 shot that was 6 grams of shells and 8 grams of good beans. Not terrible but terrible adjacent. I could taste the potential of the coffee but it was burdened with a flatness and more bitterness and astringency than all of my other shots. Not blind. Not scientific. But there you go.

Thanks for reporting back!

Wonder what a shot would taste like if one removed all the shells and just ground the core of the bean? Wonder if that would be an easy thing to do? One day maybe I will try that.