Coffee Forum & Reviews > Beans > Home Roasting Forum > Stereo Microscope
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Old 08-13-2010, 06:17 PM   #1
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Default Stereo Microscope

For my roasting work I just purchased a stereo microscope. I only wanted a student grade unit and found one (in Canada where I live) on sale.

What fun. My main purpose is to study the defect beans.



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Old 08-13-2010, 06:48 PM   #2
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What's your hypothesis?
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Old 08-13-2010, 07:35 PM   #3
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No hypothesis. There are a number of documented studies on how defects effect flavour. Black beans as an example add a sulfur aroma that makes the coffee smell rancid.

Roast magazine is the main source for such information. This article by Willem J Boot is an excellent one.
http://www.bootcoffee.com/ROAST2.pdf

It points out how defects effect coffee. I have a jar where I put my defective beans. Some of the green beans I have are not sorted well and require removal of defects before roasting to get a good flavour. As I remove them I put them in a jar so that when I got my scope I could have examples to study.

The key beans to watch for are blacks and sours. Sour beans are yellowish and if you scratch them on sandpaper they smell like vinegar. It is very important to remove these and blacks. Those have the greatest impact on flavour.

If you want to do home roasting on a budget, some of the lower quality control beans are interesting. The key is you have to do a defect removal before roasting. To clean a 300 gram batch of defects takes about 5 minutes.

One of my favorite beans is Kenya Mbuni. I call it the Sh*t that is left. Here is why

Coffee is hand picked with only the ripe beans picked. The picker squeezes each bean looking for the right feel and pulls off the ripe ones. They fall into a basket.

It is only economical to pick a tree 4 times. On the fifth they strip the tree of all cherries even if rotten or under-developed. These cherries are left to rot then the beans pushed out and left to dry in the sun. The defects are sort of removed and the resulting coffee sold. The coffee is low grade and I find about 3% of the beans are defects.

I do a careful defect removal and then roast the remaining coffee. It is peasant coffee, very full bodied. I find blending this with a mellow bean like a Papua New Guinea make an interesting coffee unlike what you usually find.
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Old 08-14-2010, 03:41 PM   #4
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That is interesting. So you are taking what would otherwise be a waste product and turning it into something usable?
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Old 08-14-2010, 03:58 PM   #5
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No it is still waste. What is important to understand is how defects effect taste and which ones are critical to remove.

"Premium" coffee landed in NYC can have 23 class 1 defects per 300 grams and still be called premium. Speciality coffee can not have any class 1 defects.

Some defects effect taste more than others. Black beans and sours are the worst. When you evaluate green beans to buy it is important to do your own analysis of defects and not rely on the defect ratings
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Old 08-15-2010, 04:24 PM   #6
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I'd like to have one of those for my home brewery!!

Rich, are you going to publish your work? Sounds interesting!!
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Old 08-15-2010, 05:11 PM   #7
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Dunerunner

I bet it is the same situation with beer ingredients.

Yes I do publish what I find out. With the scope I can view the beans. Now I am looking for a macro lens for my camera so that I can capture some of the images. My goal is a complete software system for roasting and cupping. I document my findings in my Coffee Troupe blog.
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Old 08-16-2010, 04:58 PM   #8
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Very curious how much you paid for that and where you got it from. Been wanting to get a good quality microscope myself.
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Old 08-16-2010, 05:29 PM   #9
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Paid $325 Canadian from Sale

I am in Canada. There are many places in the US who sell similar units
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Old 08-25-2010, 04:35 PM   #10
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It would be cool to have the microscope feed to a USB port or such.

I bet it would be expensive.


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