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  • #16
    Originally posted by 338 View Post
    I thought this was going to be a thread about a religious order operating in Africa

    In this extremely politically correct world just wondering if it still appropriate to name an undesirable bean after a minority religion?
    Is this still politically correct?

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    • #17
      Originally posted by CafeLotta View Post
      Is this still politically correct?
      Given some of the descriptors contained in some of the articles referred to in several posts above, it could very well be the origin of the term...

      Mal.

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      • #18
        Originally posted by 338 View Post
        I thought this was going to be a thread about a religious order operating in Africa
        ...in a 'home roasting - tips, tricks, and ideas' forum?

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        • #19
          Originally posted by woodhouse View Post
          ...in a 'home roasting - tips, tricks, and ideas' forum?
          Well, despite being teetotallers, the Quakers got heavily involved in brewing and selling beer...figuring that it helped reduce consumption of hard liquor. Maybe they thought coffee was an even better option?

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          • #20
            John Cadbury started as a tea, coffee and chocolate merchant, so it's possible.

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            • #21
              Whatever we are going to call these little buggers, the batch of Harrar I roasted today is the worst yet: 21 g of the pale-beans-that-I-think-answer-the-description-of-Quakers-but-Andy-doesn't out of 500g green weight, so more than 5% of the yield of usable beans*. One good thing is that this is enough to run a direct single batch comparison which I'll do once the good beans outgas later in the week.

              And no, I don't think it's my process, a batch of Limmu done immediately afterwards yielded ~2g of pale beans, so about 1/10th the quantity from the Harrar. I use similar roast profiles on these two beans. On the other side of the equation, when I bought Harrar as roasted beans from Andy they also had a high proportion of pale beans.



              * With 16% (80g) roasting loss the 21g of pale beans means the final weight of usable beans was ~399g.
              Last edited by Lyrebird; 28 January 2019, 11:45 AM.

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              • #22
                I roast a fairly wide variety in my Coretto, 750 grams of green about every 10 days and see very few quakers, most roasts none, every now and again I find the odd one or two, though its a rare occurrence.

                I've been home roasting for about 11 years.

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                • #23
                  Originally posted by Yelta View Post
                  I .... see very few quakers, most roasts none, every now and again I find the odd one or two, though its a rare occurrence.
                  In my experience, Ethiopian beans, especially naturals, do contain a higher number of quakers than other origins.

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                  • #24
                    Interesting! over the years the Ethiopian beans I've roasted are Sidamo naturals Ardi, Gambella sundried, Biftu Gesha sundried, Gambella naturals, I imagine sun dried qualify as naturals, have never experienced a problem with quakers, being a naturally frugal person I would certainly have noticed if there had been, to be fair, have never roasted Harrar.

                    This AM I roasted 750 grams of Ethiopian yirg special prep with 10% Robusta, (I know not natural processed) the slight unevenness is down to the Robusta, regardless turned out pretty much as I wanted.

                    Will make a point of including some Harrar with my next order and give them a go.
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                    • #25
                      Update to this: I've just done my first batch of the Bensa Sagara and they're almost as bad as were the Harrar.

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                      • #26
                        The plot thickens!

                        My latest roast, 750 grams of Ethiopian Gambella Sundried is very uneven, certainly not Quakers, however a good percentage were much lighter than I'm accustomed to.

                        My roasts are normally very even, was quite surprised at the way this batch turned out.

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                        • #27
                          Happy Birthday to a 12 month old thread.

                          Originally posted by Lyrebird View Post
                          I've just done my first batch of the Bensa Sagara
                          That's the very same Bensa Sagara that just won a Bronze medal milk based and Silver medal in espresso in Australia's biggest roasting competition and I didn't remove any of those light beans before or after roasting.

                          Again, the light colour beans you are seeing will most likely not add any bad flavours taints to a coffee. Pull one out, chew on it, tastes like cornflakes or at worst like the bran in sultana bran.

                          The gotcha with internet regurgitated misinformation is that it keep perpetuating, some might call quakers cereal flavoured beans, others rancid peanut flavours the difference is vast and the term annoyingly ambiguous.

                          If light coloured beans give you an OCD twitch then sit there rocking back and forth while removing them or better still don't buy any of the wonderful natural or dry processed beans as without density sorting in water tanks during processing you will always get density variation in the roaster.

                          It's possible to remove the higher density beans with a finely tuned destoner but as mentioned, it's a fairly pointless exercise if drinking coffee was your goal.

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                          • #28
                            Originally posted by Yelta View Post
                            The plot thickens!

                            My latest roast, 750 grams of Ethiopian Gambella Sundried is very uneven, certainly not Quakers, however a good percentage were much lighter than I'm accustomed to.

                            My roasts are normally very even, was quite surprised at the way this batch turned out.
                            As a matter of interest, this roast turned out to be very good, regardless of the lighter beans, in fact I suspect they added to the complexity of the brew.

                            No more grumbles from me about Ethiopian naturally processed beans.

                            Andy! its a shame you deleted post #27, it was very informative.

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                            • #29
                              Echoes of a debate that comes and goes in the wine industry. Some think that picking at a range of ripeness levels gives a range of flavours that increases complexity. Some think that getting the fruit evenly and optimally ripe will allow the vineyard to show its best and a good vineyard will give a complex wine. I am firmly in the second camp but there are winemakers I respect who are in the first.

                              Similarly, I prefer my Ethiopians with the Quakers removed but you may prefer the coffee with them included.

                              A chacun son goût.

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                              • #30
                                Quakers (especially in Harrar)

                                What you guys are seeing are NOT quakers. A natural processed Ethiopian is a good place to find a quaker, but if there were any present it may be at the level of 1-2 beans per kilo, not 5% of the roast. I know Andy buys a variety of different types and grades of coffee, but if he’d ever ended up with a coffee that contained 5% quakers he wouldn’t sell it and he would never buy that coffee again. I have no doubt that you are getting different colouration of roasted coffee, this is part and parcel of roasting a natural processed coffee, but let me repeat - they are NOT quakers. There are two things that could be causing the unevenness you see in the roasted coffee. The first and most likely is coffee that hasn’t fermented evenly due to the processing method. No matter how much attention a natural process coffee gets its almost impossible to generate perfectly even fermentation due to the very nature of how it’s done. The second is different ripeness levels. The lighter beans could be less ripe than the rest. This doesn’t necessarily make them un-ripe and it definitely doesn’t mean they’re quakers. The Royal Coffee article that was linked above contains some good info but assumes a level of knowledge. In saying that it does give some of this detail and it contains a big clue in this photo that they posted -



                                If you want to know what content of quakers the Harrar you have contains (if any) then roast a small test batch past second crack. Any quakers present will still be light and orange-yellow while everything else will be very dark and oily. I’m not saying you won’t find one, but it won’t be 5% of the roast.

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