# Green bean defects



## cengland117 (Apr 11, 2020)

Hi,

I recently picked up a kilo of washed green beans from Uganda Rwenzori. I picked these because a) I have not dealt with Uganda coffee and b) they are old crop (2018) and I was interested to see what this meant in the cup.

The beans are graded as A + and had an SCA rating of 84+. SL14 and SL28 varieties. The greens are very pale compared to fresher beans which I assume is a result of being older. But they are also riddled with defects. From a 250g batch, I picked out 30g of nasty looking beans. A lot of partial blacks, chipped and broken beans I assume from a mechanical element of the processing. Widely inconsistent sizes. A bit of beetle damage. Immature beans too.

So I guess my question is, how many defects are too many defects at which point feedback should be given to the supplier? These are nasty looking but I am unsure as to whether these beans were ever good quality and the ageing process has killed them (which would be understandable) or they were low quality following export from the origin country.

Any thoughts would be welcome.


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## RDC8 (Dec 6, 2016)

cengland117 said:


> Hi,
> 
> I recently picked up a kilo of washed green beans from Uganda Rwenzori. I picked these because a) I have not dealt with Uganda coffee and b) they are old crop (2018) and I was interested to see what this meant in the cup.
> 
> ...


 Hi there; you have probably picked these up from the same place I received mine! I have gone through 30kg of these over the past 6 months and have found the quality to be generally acceptable. Always a few odd ones that I have needed to pick out. I think it's a bit hit and miss with the qualitity of their beans - unless you are prepared to pay more for their specialty ranges (and even then I have had a few dispoointing surprises). Suggest you take a few pics, send them to where your bought the beans, and maybe they will send a replacement.

Good luck


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## cengland117 (Apr 11, 2020)

Do you mean you have had 30k of the Ugandan or a mixture? I have had a couple of micro-lots from them which have been high quality so I am wondering if it is just this particular bean...


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## RDC8 (Dec 6, 2016)

30kg of the Uganda. It was my best seller when I did a few farmers markets before Christmas. (wow! nearly 7 months ago!)

Maybe you just got a bad bag.


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## Beeroclock (Aug 10, 2015)

I'm guessing you bought these from Small Batch - I've become increasingly disappointed with them over the last year. They're sitting on a lot of old stock and still charging silly prices for it.


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## cengland117 (Apr 11, 2020)

Beeroclock said:


> I'm guessing you bought these from Small Batch - I've become increasingly disappointed with them over the last year. They're sitting on a lot of old stock and still charging silly prices for it.


 Yes that is right. Hmmm may have to have a look around then. Do beans just show more defects over time? Are old crop beans ever usable?


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## DavecUK (Aug 6, 2013)

cengland117 said:


> Yes that is right. Hmmm may have to have a look around then. Do beans just show more defects over time? Are old crop beans ever usable?


 No they don't show more defects over time. crops from 2019 can still be absolutely fine. A lot does depend on storage though and whether they are hermetically sealed, or well sealed, in say ecotact or grainpro.

I keep coming back to the thread in case you decide to post up some photos...assuming you have a smartphone.


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## cengland117 (Apr 11, 2020)

DavecUK said:


> No they don't show more defects over time. crops from 2019 can still be absolutely fine. A lot does depend on storage though and whether they are hermetically sealed, or well sealed, in say ecotact or grainpro.
> 
> I keep coming back to the thread in case you decide to post up some photos...assuming you have a smartphone.


 Thanks, good to know. I think I have just got a rough bag. Here is 11g I pulled from a 100g sample.


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## DavecUK (Aug 6, 2013)

cengland117 said:


> Thanks, good to know. I think I have just got a rough bag. Here is 11g I pulled from a 100g sample.
> 
> View attachment 42261


 Do you mean you randomly grabbed 11g out of 100g and this is what you got, or you sorted this 10g from a 100g sample?

Either way 10% like this would probably fail to meet speciality grade criteria.


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## Rob1 (Apr 9, 2015)

Beeroclock said:


> I'm guessing you bought these from Small Batch - I've become increasingly disappointed with them over the last year. They're sitting on a lot of old stock and still charging silly prices for it.


 Yeah I used to buy from them 10kg at a time. It was obvious they were selling commodity grade stuff along with speciality and the only indicator you'd have was the price. My experience was if you don't spend more than £10 a kg with them it's going to be commodity stuff. I had one bag that was about £75 for 10kg and I went through the entire thing in 500g batches picking out all of the defective beans to end up with about 700g-1kg wasted. But the coffee that wasn't insect damaged, cut in half, small or immature was fine. It roasted really evenly once I'd sorted it.

The started listing coffees from Falcon at one point at a premium price, I bought one or two of them and was impressed but I went back to their website a while ago and couldn't tell if they had stopped getting them in or not. It seemed to me they had redesigned their website, removed the separate green bean categories, and lumped whatever stock they had from falcon in with everything else. You could find it by searching for Falcon with their search bar but otherwise you'd have to wade through all of the crap they were offering.

Just been back to their website now and it seems they've brought back the categories again. Weird. It seemed like their speciality wasn't selling properly and people had stopped buying the commodity stuff when they realised what it was and they wanted to mix it all in again.


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## cengland117 (Apr 11, 2020)

So I measured 100g and picked that lot out for obvious issues but I feel if I was being picky, 50g could have been removed.

It was labelled up as 2018 crop so I didn't expect much and the price was reduced to reflect that. But, it is a little concerning if this stuff was really being advertised for the original price of £11 per kg in this condition.

This all being said, I also have a few kilos of Colombia micro-lot stuff from them which is very high quality where it is hard to find a defective bean. You win some you lose some.


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## Beeroclock (Aug 10, 2015)

cengland117 said:


> So I measured 100g and picked that lot out for obvious issues but I feel if I was being picky, 50g could have been removed.
> 
> It was labelled up as 2018 crop so I didn't expect much and the price was reduced to reflect that. But, it is a little concerning if this stuff was really being advertised for the original price of £11 per kg in this condition.
> 
> This all being said, I also have a few kilos of Colombia micro-lot stuff from them which is very high quality where it is hard to find a defective bean. You win some you lose some.


 Personally - I'd send it back or at least phone them up and question it...I don't think that's acceptable. The direct trade Colombians - have been decent - but they started off at £12-£14 a kilo!

They buy a lot of coffee from Falcon - it's worth checking out the price differential and then you can make an informed decision as to whether it's worth your while spending the money.

For example I bought a fair amount of Guatemala Red de Mujeres (which was excellently the way) coffee from them last year - I think it started out at around £50 for 5kg and then went up to £12 a kg. Looking at the new crop just landed at Falcon - they list it at £6.63 a kg - obviously you have to buy a 69kg bag...


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## DavecUK (Aug 6, 2013)

Beeroclock said:


> For example I bought a fair amount of Guatemala Red de Mujeres (which was excellently the way) coffee from them last year - I think it started out at around £50 for 5kg and then went up to £12 a kg. Looking at the new crop just landed at Falcon - they list it at £6.63 a kg - obviously you have to buy a 69kg bag...


 That's what I do, I get 2 or 3 sacks and split it with a few people. Sure it's 180Kg - 200kg of coffee that arrives, it's really heavy and is an initial layout of £1600 or more....but once split a few ways it's not too bad. When I set up and ran a greens club (not for profit) green coffee buying. I used to get about 420 kg and then it was bagged up into 20kg lots with a mix of coffees in them e.g. 7 x 3kg bags or whatever.

I've been surprised Dalian owners and roasters on this forum don't get together and form a little buying co-operative of 3 or 4 people.


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## Beeroclock (Aug 10, 2015)




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## DavecUK (Aug 6, 2013)

Beeroclock said:


>


 I meant to use the word "more"


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## Rapid (Jun 12, 2020)

So in summary what do you guys think happened here? OP said "The beans are graded as A + and had an SCA rating of 84+"

If the age doesn't affect % of defects, did they just lie in the description?

I'm not into home roasting (yet....) but I love the commerce side of business in general, along with coffee of course so it's a interesting topic to me.


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## DavecUK (Aug 6, 2013)

Rapid said:


> So in summary what do you guys think happened here? OP said "The beans are graded as A + and had an SCA rating of 84+"
> 
> If the age doesn't affect % of defects, did they just lie in the description?
> 
> I'm not into home roasting (yet....) but I love the commerce side of business in general, along with coffee of course so it's a interesting topic to me.


 84+ is not considered speciality grade, even so if you get that many defects per 100g it's not good

You have to remember coffee is packed in other countries, sometimes all the bags are good and a bad one is slipped in, in the hope importers won't notice, sometimes shit happens....who knows. As always if a roaster gets a bad sack of coffee, it can be £500+ worth of coffee...so they will call the supplier/importer.

I remember once complaining to an importer about the quality of a coffee, they checked their stocks, took it off the speciality list and reduced the price as well. In that instance they would have taken the hit as the importer. The importers work in good faith and batches they have checked and cupped, as always sometimes what's delivered isn't quite the same, or portions of it.


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