Ive gone to Plastic Storage....your thoughts !

[redzone121]

From time to time I have been getting a (for want of a better word) "burlap" taste in my Syphon and pour over. I have sorted the gauze flavour by leaving it go a bit manky, but for some beans there still remains a little dry sack taste.
I have also noticed some dis colouration, green slowly turning lighter green and generally colour fade? Its always some of my older beans (heading toward the 10-12 mth mark) so I am going to have a play with food storage conatiners as pictured.

Appreciate your thoughts and own experiences  

Cheers

Chris

[A_M]

Re: Ive gone to Plastic Storage....your thoughts !

From time to time I have been getting a (for want of a better word) "burlap" taste in my Syphon and pour over. I have sorted the gauze flavour by leaving it go a bit manky, but for some beans there still remains a little dry sack taste.
I have also noticed some dis colouration, green slowly turning lighter green and generally colour fade? Its always some of my older beans (heading toward the 10-12 mth mark) so I am going to have a play with food storage conatiners as pictured.

Appreciate your thoughts and own experiences  

Cheers

Chris

You will need to manage moisture content...

There are some interesting storage containers that are used to store greens in the fridge... These have a number of breathing holes that can be opened / closed to assist in regulating moisture..

[bolb]

Re: Ive gone to Plastic Storage....your thoughts !

There are some interesting storage containers that are used to store greens in the fridge... These have a number of breathing holes that can be opened / closed to assist in regulating moisture..

This would be an interesting test, we use them for fruit and veg but i dont know that i have seen a container that stores more than about 1 - 2kg and from memory they are not cheap either.
Personnally i have not noticed any tainting of flavour from the calico bags and all greens i get even direct from the roaster i decant into the calico bags.

Mal

[A_M]

Re: Ive gone to Plastic Storage....your thoughts !

There are some interesting storage containers that are used to store greens in the fridge... These have a number of breathing holes that can be opened / closed to assist in regulating moisture..

This would be an interesting test, we use them for fruit and veg but i dont know that i have seen a container that stores more than about 1 - 2kg and from memory they are not cheap either.
Personnally i have not noticed any tainting of flavour from the calico bags and all greens i get even direct from the roaster i decant into the calico bags.

Mal

Yea... My wife is fanatic about fresh vegies...

One could just drill a couple of holes and use some bungs to try to manage teh regulation...

Any number of items come to mind... Oh a plastic top from a salt shaker etc... Or even the cable access plugs they use on desks... The good ones have the ability to close off when not being used... Thus you could regulate the access to AIR..

[Thundergod]

Re: Ive gone to Plastic Storage....your thoughts !

Would not the moisture content remain the same if the container is closed?
Whereas the moisture content in the calico bags could vary.

A roaster I know sometimes seals green blends together for a few days so that the moisture content of the individual beans reach an equilibrium before roasting.

[A_M]

Re: Ive gone to Plastic Storage....your thoughts !

Would not the moisture content remain the same if the container is closed?
Whereas the moisture content in the calico bags could vary.

A roaster I know sometimes seals green blends together for a few days so that the moisture content of the individual beans reach an equilibrium before roasting.

It is a complicated issue.. And I dont have all the answers..  ;D

My understanding is it is not unlike many other seeds and fruit that give off gasses / moisture etc...  If it is not flushed / managed it can hasten the ripening / ageing and or other detrimental effects..

The org post was about the perception that the beans may be taking on something from teh bags etc..  I know that with mine the outer bags (more exposed) have on occasion looked to have a slight level of mould on them...  Not un like what can happen the leather in a humid atmosphere.


As to pre mixing... This is a significant issue in items that may be at different levels and or have the ability to cross the barriers.  IE. many biological items have one state when in a single concentration but when other items are introduced; through many processes, take on electrons and other minor changes of the surrounding products.

Thus, I can see moisture content needing to be stable; if one is the manage teh roasting process consistently..  But I doubt that too many electrons and or other components would be able to cross the skin and outer barriers of teh green beans, in teh first instance.

Its all in the science  

[hazchem]

Re: Ive gone to Plastic Storage....your thoughts !

Id say that all the beans in the container on the left, with the red lid, look like they have been adversely effected and could be poison. I suggest sending ALL of them to me for immediate assessment. Ill check and make sure they arent poison, but it might take a few roasts to find out ;D

[redzone121]

Re: Ive gone to Plastic Storage....your thoughts !

Yemen yes a dodgy lot, I wouldnt want you to take any risks on my behalf ;D

[luca]

Re: Ive gone to Plastic Storage....your thoughts !

Green storage is something that has been the subject of a fair bit of interest amongst roasters that buy really top quality coffee.  The coffee sacks traditionally used have the great advantage of being strong and cheap, but roasters buying coffee for its distinctive flavours have understandably questioned whether or not a small increase in expenditure on packaging could better preserve the qualities that they have been paying a premium for.  To this end, we have seen a few experiments with things like vacuum packing, flushing and storage in impermeable material.  George Howell of Terroir Coffee in the USA had a great quoteable snippet on this during an interview.  He responded along the lines "the extra cost to me is something like 5%; in commerce everyone believes in insurance, so if you are buying coffee for its flavour, you would be crazy not to try to preserve it."

Generally speaking, I think that it is fair to say that many of these experiments have concluded that there are benefits to be had in using different packaging from the traditional sacks.  More specifically, the benefit is that the cup quality degrades less over time.  This is less of an issue for roasters that turn over their inventory very quickly.  It is probably also fair to say that much of the interest has been in changing storage methods at origin rather than once the green arrives in consuming countries.  Some flavour and aroma will have been lost if the coffee has been shipped and stored in traditional sacks prior to purchase here.

One storage method that has gotten a bit of popularity amongst some of the roasters that I have spoken to is storage in specially made plastic bags, which I think are manufactured to have a fairly low gas permeability.  These bags have the advantage of being affordable, so roasters who have contacts at the point of export can realistically get their stuff shipped in them.  Conversely, if roasters pick up a really nice lot off the cupping table in Australia and it has been shipped in traditional sacks, they can re-bag it.  Im not 100% clear on how the bags are usually sealed.  Obviously vac-packed coffee is vac-packed, so I imagine that sealing the bags totally isnt much of a problem.  However, I think that some of these bags are often just tied up quite tight.

When I did the coffeelab course earlier this year, green storage was the subject of a lot of discussion.  Most of the coffee that we tasted had been stored in things other than traditional bags and the coffee that we tasted was certainly vibrant, fresh and distinctively flavoured.  From memory, the coffeelab position was that the plastic bags fended off flavour degradation for about a year, really beaten only by a system that they had worked out in which a tonne or two of green was stored in a particular foil-lined container and flushed with gas, which kept coffee good for two years.  At SCAA, one of the lectures that I went to presented the results of a study that they had done where a coffee had been cupped in Peru, then shipped to the USA in three different types of bag; the traditional sack, a traditional sack with a plastic bag inside it and a traditional sack with a fibreglass insulation sack inside it and the plastic bag inside that.  When they arrived in the USA, they were cupped blind.  I dont have the scores to hand, but I do remember that the insulated sack did best, followed by the plastic, followed by the traditional sack.  Theres certainly something quite amazing about the smell that comes out of a 60kg bag of green stored in plastic ... it tends to be lush, rich and vegetal; a sweet aroma like a bunch of fresh peas, and certainly a far cry from the faint, dull and waxy aroma that you get from old coffee that has been stored in traditional sacks for a while.

I havent been buying much green recently, but I have taken to storing it in plastic bags.  We will see what it is like in six months ... if it lasts that long.  I suppose that I should really store some in a breathable fabric bag and do a head-to-head comparison in six months.  For what its worth, Im putting my nice new stuff in zip lock freezer bags that seem to be made of fairly heavy plastic.  Another interesting thing to try would be to keep those bags inside an esky to try to even out temperature fluctuations.

Cheers,
Luca

[redzone121]

Re: Ive gone to Plastic Storage....your thoughts !

Cheers Luca, its something I looked into early in the piece on the Homeroaster web site, one of the guys was vac sealing in plastic (very nice set up) while a couple of others were using glass jars kept in retired stand up fridges. I am definately getting bag flavours in older beans, so it will be very interesting to see how this goes.
I like the zip lock idea as it wil take me a while to stock up on enough plastic containers ;D

Chris

[Thundergod]

Re: Ive gone to Plastic Storage....your thoughts !

Definitely food for thought.

I might re bag some of my Kimel and see if theres a taste difference down the track.

[muppet_man67]

Re: Ive gone to Plastic Storage....your thoughts !

On the subject of aged greens. We often treat greens on this forum as if they have an almost infinate life and dont degrade much at all. Anywhere from 1-3 years seems to be a widely held consensus as an acceptable usage window.

It makes little sense that with our fanaticism over the age of ground and roasted coffee we pay little care to the age and storage of our greens. It makes sense that if we accept that green coffee declines over any period of time, then we should also accept that this decline is most likely gradual. In essence it should lead us to a conclusion that fresh is best.

It also makes sense that better storage should have a significant effect on green bean degradation. My storage regime is less then ideal, Whilst my beans are stored indoors they are subject to temperature and humidity fluctuations from seasonal, daytime and night-time heating and cooling cycles.

2 years ago I went through a period where my green consumption reduced considerably and it took me almost 18 months to get my stash back down to a level where I was once again sticking my head into beanbay. I was roasting coffee up to 2 years old.

I have to say that I did notice a decline in flavor in the older greens. Coffees that were once blowing me away became average and a little flat. I noticed a big jump in overall cup quality when I finally got some fresh stuff a few of months ago.

My conclusion to this for my own personal exercises is that Im better off trying to limit my greens to what might be consumed within a 6 month period. Perhaps I should also be taking a more pro-active approach to their storage. Wine cellar anyone?

Lucas observations about the sealed packaging that more growers are starting to develop also rings true for me. I was lucky some time ago to be able to stick my nose in some freshly opened Mountain top. The strong aroma of freshly picked garden style peas was intense compared to the bland character of most other greens I have come across. Interesting to read last month in Beanscene that Brazil Datterra are also using a similar packaging now.

Back o/t. If better storage allows a bigger stash and more variety to choose from at any one time that thats a win.

[acoggins]

Re: Ive gone to Plastic Storage....your thoughts !

Thats it. Im rebagging all my green stash, Schapelle style. Anyone got a boogy board bag they can spare me?

;D

[A_M]

Re: Ive gone to Plastic Storage....your thoughts !

Thats it. Im rebagging all my green stash, Schapelle style. Anyone got a boogy board bag they can spare me?

;D

What about a boddy bag ?