Did you include the weight of the bag?

No, I didn't include the weight of the bag. The bag weighs about 30g and if I had included it I wouldn't have started this thread.

The label says "pesso netto 1000g e", which I believe means net weight.

I've never bothered to weigh retail coffee to see if the bags are accurately labled or not. On a related side note, many years ago in our family coffee shop, we were not allowed to weigh out coffee beans for bulk sale at the counter without paying an exorbitant amount of $ on a calibrated scale and licensing with periodic inspections. But were allowed to pre weigh bags of beans in the back room with a uncalibrated kitchen scale and sell them. We always added an ounce to every bag.

HB wrote:OT: We had a similar train experience in Italy.

After spending a few months living in Vienna, I was accustom to trains that departed precisely on time. Locals joked that a sure sign of a tourist was someone waiting by the tracks peering in the distance for the train. While traveling through Italy, we had to connect to another train and it was only a 10 minute difference between the (Austrian) arrival and the (Italian) departure.

And you know who got the trains to run on time in Italy...

We always purchase from the same roaster and the weight is usually within 5g net weight of the beans. We also get a great price and they live just 5-houses down the street so no gas and very little time is involved. This week we got 2-different types of coffee, both roasted on the same day we received them. They also usually fill the bags with as many beans as the bags can physically hold and at a $25% discount. An all around good guy.

Typically the bags weigh 13 to 13-½g. Net weight of the coffee can be anywhere from 454g to over 500g. So the bag weight, worst case scenario is about 3% of the total weight or less.

I always weigh both the bags and net weight of the beans. This is another reason for wanting a scale that can be calibrated and have a set of calibration weights. Ratios might be good enough for pulling shots but not for knowing exact weights.

The exact weight also tells me how many shots I have left from each bag as I blend my own coffees. Kitchen sometimes looks like a Compounding Pharmacy; I hate the drudgery - but love the coffee!

BaristaBoy E61 wrote:We always purchase from the same roaster and the weight is usually within 5g net weight of the beans....

...Net weight of the coffee can be anywhere from 454g to over 500g.

How can the weight be within 5g and also vary from 454 to 500g?

Do they fill and then weigh and mark that as opposed to selling a pound bag?

jpender wrote: How can the weight be within 5g and also vary from 454 to 500g?

Do they fill and then weigh and mark that as opposed to selling a pound bag?

It's usually the owner, our neighbour that fills the bags for us and then weighs them. Price is by weight, less 25% price on the bag, no tax.

That's easier, weighing and labeling vs. labeling and then trying to fill to that weight. The first method all you need is a scale and a pen. The second method is a too tedious to do as more than an occasional thing. A professional roaster with any sort of volume would presumably have some sort of machine to do it. So why is the roaster in my case underfilling? Do they have a crummy machine? Do they even know?

jpender wrote:I'm not in the habit of weighing the beans in a bag of roasted coffee. But recently I repackaged a bunch of coffee and took the time to weigh out the portions exactly. And I found that these bags were 2-5% underweight (20-50g out of 1kg). That seems like a lot to me and if the coffee weren't already a good value I might be upset. But instead I'm just curious. Is this common? I have no idea how coffee is packaged.

that variance is disappointing, especially across more than one bag. that could be 1-3 shots missed. if it was some loss and some gain you would forgive the variance but all loss may suggest they are undershooting or need to at least recalibrate their method. They may do volumetric dosing if it's by hand then it could be human error, it's it by machine then they need to recalibrate the machine.

with an average of 33g a bag under for every 30 bags produced they would save an entire kilo of coffee. that compounded to say 1000 bags a month then it's a savings of 33 bags of coffee. Per year it's 400 bags of coffee. if they are charging $30 US per bag, then it's a $12,000 savings. Or another way to put it, if they correct the issue it's a loss of $12,000 a year.

I would email them to see what their answer is. since they are all consistently underweight maybe during transportation there is a loss of moisture/gasses that they can be explained or maybe they don't know and need to recalibrate so would welcome the information.

I can't say that their coffee bags are consistently underweight. I can only attest to the few I've measured. Loss of moisture doesn't make any sense. Loss of CO2 will happen but that would be an awful lot of CO2. I have a 1kg bag with a net weight of 947g. That's hard to explain by loss of gases through the valve.

It's very nice coffee and, even a few hundred beans short, it's still priced fairly. I just wonder how often this happens. I'm going to start weighing my cereal. :-)