Curious what the prevailing attitude is or “scientific” thought process is regarding roasting organic beans in the same bullet after roasting non-organic beans. Should one roast a small, waste batch of organic beans, don’t worry about it, clean the drum out? Curious what people have done and why.
I can tell you the official stance of certificate mongers. You shouldn’t roast them in the same roaster. And now, I will tell you the part of logic and sanity. On those temperatures it doesn’t really matter. Then you must look why your coffee is not organic, but it is. For example, all of Yemen coffee is organic, regardless of what it says. In Ethiopia around 95% of coffee is organic. You have around 764.863 ha of planted coffee, out of which only 182.963 ha are certified. Here you can find some data.
The important thing is not to buy from large plantations and big landowners. There you’ll find more pesticides and other trash than coffee. Once you buy from a small producer, even if it’s not organic, regardless of certificates, you won’t find so much poison in them so you may consider them organic. But the gist of it all is that with those temperatures the contamination, if not bought from large plantations where plants flower 3-4 times a year, is in fact non existent. Even something much more contaminated would have trouble passing through if you roast it dark enough.
1 Like
Thanks for the quick reply and candid comments along with the additional reading. So far I have been going under the assumption that the roasting at high temps are likely diminishing any potential for contaminant residue but that was only my theory. I do roast anywhere between light to dark with most of my lighter roasts coming from either Peru or Ethiopia so the reading was helpful. Thanks again!