Quakers

Systemic

Fishing out three quakers from my morning pour over dose had me thinking. Does anyone else bother doing this? And as quakers are defective, should the roaster account for this - i.e. compensate by adding a few grams more to a pack. I can’t think of another product that is supplied with an amount of defective elements in it for which the punter still has to pay.

dfk41

Systemic Weights and Measures act!

MWJB

If they’re easy to pick out, I grab any obvious ones, but if too slippery, then in the grinder they go.

I also find it strange that specialty coffee roasters expect you to do this.

Most bags I get seem to be 3 or 4g overweight anyway, so that probably does cover the quakers.

DavecUK

MWJB I also find it strange that specialty coffee roasters expect you to do this.

I think because they are small roasters they don’t have the specialised kit that the huge commercial companies have where they can remove the quakers electronically.

Cuprajake

I get a few quakers a bag usually. I pick out the obvious ones

DavecUK

Cuprajake I get a few quakers a bag usually. I pick out the obvious ones

You see them at the world barista championship sorting through their beans,

MediumRoastSteam

I don’t bother. It all adds up.

Rob1

I pick them out. The SCA requires specialty coffee to have a maximum of 5 Quakers (= 1 defect) per 350g sample, so if you’re paying for specialty-grade coffee you should not be seeing many at all.

PaulL

I used to watch Dave chuck them but ignored them when roasting myself until realising they have not caramelised and now I throw them. For the expense of decent kit and good beans (whether roasting or buying) seems daft not to throw them.

LMSC

It doesn’t bother me! The only thing I tend check are stones.

Ernie1

I don’t see as many Quakers as I used to.

Shame really, was never for me but they were always very polite.

JonWoo187

Haven’t bought roasted coffee in quite some time and as long as I have hands and a pulse I won’t again, bwahaha… having said that, I’ve noticed that for the past few yrs I’ve been seeing more quakers in the green I buy. Not a terrible amount at all, just notice more now than in yrs past. I buy quality offerings from respectable green sellers in the states and of course they can’t nitpick every bit they pass along. I honestly have no doubt the lame pandemic with labor, etc. to likely be the main issue. Maybe less people involved trying to deal with supply/demand, possible gnarly weather as well… all surely adds up to getting things to market with a bit less involvement? I basically sift through the green before dumping into my roasting setup and might toss one now and then. If any readily appear during the roasting as in just failing to develop then I’ll toss afterward, but realistically it might be 1-2 per 200 gram batch, so I can certainly live with that for the cost I’m saving at this point. It is an agricultural product after all, handled by lots of humans and I’ll take that over mass produced/machine sorted crap any day.

wintoid

What do you mean by quakers?

wintoid

Ahh google still works… well that was a new one to me, now I know what to call them. I thought we were talking about porridge.