Greetings Dear Readers,
Before it arrives steaming and aromatic in our mugs, coffee goes on a mythical journey. It begins as a tiny cherry on a remote misty mountaintop stopping in a picker’s bag, a drying patio, a processing center, a sea-borne container ship, and, ultimately, a green warehouse before becoming the drink we all know and love. On such a journey one is bound to pick up traveling companions, and the coffee bean is no different. To counteract the presence of such foreign objects, we use a machine known as a destoner in the roasting process. The destoner is a device that passes roasted beans over a series of magnets using a current of air. The magnets pick up any metallic debris present in the coffee while the flow of the air assures that any other objects are left at the bottom of the destoner after the coffee is gone. It’s always an adventure to clean out the destoner and see what kind of magical items did NOT end up in the coffee. This blog will be a small sampling of some of my favorites. I hope you enjoy!
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- This is the opening of the destoner. You can see how the cooling tray empties into it
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- Metal is easily picked up by the magnets. We get nails of all shapes and sizes!
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- Beans come in all kinds of colors!! I usually don’t eat these though…
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- Someone had a hard time getting back into their car…
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- Most of the items are unrecognizable and out of context. But you can see a button!
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- I always try to figure out just where the chunks of wood came from…and why these shapes?
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- Some of the debris is obviously man-made. Please note that the shell casing was empty before roasting!
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- My personal favorite…our beetle mascot Adonis.
We should add that a lot of debris is also caught prior to roasting while opening bags and loading our green bean silo. Another interesting fact I learned is that stones may beef up the income of a picker who’s getting paid by the wieght of the basket he or she picks. Sadly enough, pay for pickers can often be very low. This makes it all the more important to pay fair prices for quality coffee and operate with transparency to see that the money goes to these workers as well… That is a major factor in direct sourcing relationships.