Update: You can go here to how I was able to get most of the parchment off.

So, one of my coworkers brought back a gift to me from one of our partners in Guatemala.

I've been home roasting for going on 15 years but I've never gotten beans like this:



I'm guessing the outer skin (cilium?) was never removed. Why would they leave it on? How do I get it off? Should I just throw some of these in my HotTop and see what happens? Fire hazard?

I think those beans are still in their parchment. You can roast in parchment, someone at GCBC distributed some beans in parchment a few years ago. I'll see if I can dig up the thread, it might be helpful.

Here's an article from Sweet Maria's on roasting in parchment coffee.

http://legacy.sweetmarias.com/RIP_Coffe ... Parchment/

RobertL wrote:I think those beans are still in their parchment. You can roast in parchment, someone at GCBC distributed some beans in parchment a few years ago. I'll see if I can dig up the thread, it might be helpful.

Twas I. Guity as charged. It was a Colombian in parchment.

I roasted in the parchment; unique experience. Keep a very close eye on it, using Sir Thompson's guidance from the link above. Achieved 1C plus 2:15? and dropped. Loved it; sweet, unique cup.

Gentleman, thank you so much for the insight and advice. "Parchment" was the key term I was missing! Going to go read your article now!

Darn. Now I want to try it.

So is there any way to mill off the parchment at home if I decide not to roast with it on?

Currently researching bike tire tube parchment milling...

I had some parchment coffee laying around -- Colombian.

Roasted 225g on our 500g roaster. Had a bit too much heat, End of drying at 4:45, first crack at 7:30 and dropped at 9:45. First crack was clear, resonant, but without that "popcorn spark" often heard on most beans.

Serena and I will cup Thurs and post some impressions.

Boldjava wrote:I had some parchment coffee laying around -- Colombian.

Roasted 225g on our 500g roaster. Had a bit too much heat, End of drying at 4:45, first crack at 7:30 and dropped at 9:45. First crack was clear, resonant, but without that "popcorn spark" often heard on most beans.

Serena and I will cup Thurs and post some impressions.
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Thanks for sharing; I look forward to hearing how it tasted!

So after a fair amount of research on the internet, I came up with quite a few ideas of how to home-mill the parchment off of the green beans.

1. Squeezing in your hand, and turning one hand while squeezing to add friction
2. Same as the above, but with grippy gardening gloves
3. Using some sort of grating implement
4. Using a modified blender

A: Hand squeezing
This obviously takes a ton of work to do. The batches have to be small, and you need to apply significant friction or pressure to get the parchment off. You have to play with the friction/pressure ratio, but the best I could do was marginal at best.


B: Hand squeezing with gardening gloves
These gloves have rubber dots on them to allow a greater grip on the parchement; the theory is that it would remove the parchment faster with less effort. Unfortunately, it wasn't much better.


C: Use some sort of grating implement
I found this hand-turned grater, called a Molli. It has a drum with a hand crank, then a body that fits around the drum with a fold-away chute, and a tongue that depresses in the chute whatever you are grating. I put a small handful of beans in the chute, then used one hand to crank and the other to put pressure on the tongue over the beans. It was a very bumpy and messy process, but the results were much better.






D: Use a modified blender
I found one post on the web where someone recommended grinding the cutters in a blender blunt and then using the blender to mill the beans. Thankfully, my Blendtec blender already uses blunt cutters (it uses high speed to "tear" rather than "cut" they say).

I filled it up about a quarter-liter full, and pulsed about 8 times. They came out pretty good.







I then pulsed another 12 times with the same batch. Of course there were a few duds, but they came out really well.

I used a fan (and my own lungs) in my backyard to blow the loose parchment out of the bowl, agitated, then blew some more. This is the result:


Pretty good! I picked out any of the duds, as I still want to try roasting at least one batch with the parchment on.

Hopefully this will help someone out down the line if they want to repeat the process.