Old beans?

[greencardigan]

Im in the process of building an air roaster and will need a fair amount of green beans for testing/profiling.

Any ideas where I can get reasonably large quantities (maybe 20 - 30 kg) of green beans cheap? It doesnt matter if they are old out of date beans.

[Andy]

Re: Old beans?

It doesnt matter if they are old out of date beans.

I could never see the sense in testing with anything but good beans. I have heard people talk about "seasoning beans" but apart from burning them you really need good beans with a correct moisture content to learn anything about the profile if you ever want to use those profiles again.

Just last month I ask a new commercial roaster with a similar question... "can I expect to make great wine from bad grapes?"

Do yourself a favour (and a flavour) and grab some beans that you want to drink, that way your profile testing will show the best profiles that gave the best results.

The few dollars a kilo saving on old beans will just mean you have to start all over again with some good beans to later build a profile. Grab something cheap from BeanBay, your local roaster or even ebay but just dont bother with old beans.

...of course you can ignore all that if you want to come to The Snobbery and sweep my floors.
8-)

[greencardigan]

Re: Old beans?

...of course you can ignore all that if you want to come to The Snobbery and sweep my floors.
8-)

 I was in Geelong a month back.  If I had known about The Snobbery I may have taken up your floor sweeping offer or at least stopped for a visit.

True, I could probably use good beans for roast profile development but Im likely to burn some bean as I test out the capability of the roaster.  Trying to find out how fast I can ramp the temps up etc.

[Thundergod]

Re: Old beans?

Trying to find out how fast I can ramp the temps up etc.

Andy can probably confirm but Id bet old beans will ramp at a different rate therefore a waste of time, effort and dollars.

[Fresh_Coffee]

Re: Old beans?

........True, I could probably use good beans for roast profile development but Im likely to burn some bean as I test out the capability of the roaster.  Trying to find out how fast I can ramp the temps up etc........

At risk of repeating.....use qualities of the the type you expect to be using once up and running or your "capability" and "ramp up rate" data will be crap.

Regardz,
Attilio

[phrostyboi]

Re: Old beans?

sell the burnt ones to a certain large coffee mob... people wouldnt notice the difference