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Post by Michael on Oct 6, 2010 11:57:53 GMT -5
I noticed a picture on Sweet Maria's Coffee today that shows finding "bad beans" among normal ones using an ultraviolet lamp. Here is the picture and a link to the original page: www.sweetmarias.com/Macro_Coffee_Images09/Pages/32.htmlHas anyone tried this with cacao beans? I don't have a UV light to test with (yet).
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Post by Sebastian on Oct 6, 2010 14:30:16 GMT -5
Depends entirely on the type of defect you're trying to find. UV will highlight only a very narrow range of things...
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Post by daniel on Oct 18, 2010 18:22:08 GMT -5
I went through a kg of beans by hand to see how many were bad. Found about a dozen moldy and webbed beans; It was pretty scary! Also, this can't be good for the taste.
Sensors are getting much cheaper, so it's getting financially reasonable for hobbyists to build sorting equipment.
Sebastian: what will it find? Are there better/cheaper techniques? What would it miss?
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Post by Sebastian on Oct 18, 2010 18:54:53 GMT -5
Not sure how you;d use that. It will detect excitable material on your shell, which you remove. Generally speaking, the shell is full of ALL KINDS of nastiness. You have no idea. It's one of the many reasons you want to winnow effectively. However, if UV is showing you what's on the shell, and you're getting rid of the shell, it's not a very useful tool for determination of good product, unless you use it on your nibs.
What will it find? Certain types of molds, bacteria, and toxins. What will it not find? Almost everything.
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Post by daniel on Oct 19, 2010 14:33:16 GMT -5
Ok, fair enough. Are there any non-destructive means you know to detect the beans blighted by the most common problems? The webbed and dry beans were significantly lighter, so that would require weighing them and estimating density. Hey, that's what computers are for As to mould, maybe using UV light after roast and shell removal?
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Post by Sebastian on Oct 20, 2010 5:25:34 GMT -5
eh, x-rax xtallography will probably tell you something, NIR will - depends on how much money you have just laying around to burn on toys. personally i'd go with statistically sampling beans and using a guillotine, then giving all the money you saved on not buying a NIR to me but that's just me...
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