Hollow Beans

[seamad]

Roasted some Zimbabwe Chimanimani this morning and got lots of hollowed out beans, never seen so many from a roast before. Profile was pretty standard for my roasts. What's the cause, and is it a problem ?


Some normal beans and hollowed out ones from the same roast.

[coffeechris]

When you say a lot how many are you talking about? I see them often from certain beans I roast and yes some more than others. However in contrast to the amount roasted at the time i wouldn't say its ever over 5% if that.

Your roasts looks good by the way

Cheers,

Chris

[seamad]

I think it would have been close to 10%, can't tell now as I've blended it with another 2 roasts...
I do see some hollow beans from time to time, never on this scale though. Will see what happens next roast with this bean and take more note of the hollow ones

[jabbba]

I had the same issue with the same bean. I think there was just a bit too much power for that bean so I used a different profile second time. No issues after that.

[Andy]

Roasted some Zimbabwe Chimanimani this morning and got lots of hollowed out beans, never seen so many from a roast before. Profile was pretty standard for my roasts. What's the cause, and is it a problem ?

Some normal beans and hollowed out ones from the same roast.

Hi Seamad,
Coffee "shells" are a naturally occurring thing on the coffee tree and not something you have done during roasting. These are not unlike the natural growing oops of the "peaberry" beans that you will find in with normal flat beans.

Some "seeds" don't develop as they should and wrap-around the rest of the seed. These separate in the roaster and then because of their low mass they roast darker and stand-out.

Problem? Not really, apart from roasting darker and maybe over-roasting on a darker roast... but even then you might find that they give interest to the roast by blending different roast depths of the same bean.

The shells are quite common in high grades of bean sorting because the shells tend to be the same size as the largest beans so they end up in the AAA size grades of coffee. In our current BeanBay offerings the Peru, Kenya and the Zimbabwe are all large sorted and will contain some shells.

Don't get too hung-up on them, judge it on taste!