I spend more time sorting out and removing undersireable beans than I do roasting, about 45 minutes for every pound of coffee roasted is spent sifting through and taking out bad beans.
I have noticed that whenever I buy pre roasted coffee there are a lot of quakers and damaged beans mixed in. It’s part of the reason why I stopped buying roasted coffee. This applies straight across the board, no matter what I spend on “specialty” coffee, the one exception being The Coffee Project in NYC.
What I wonder, now that I have a whole community of coffee roasters to potentially engage with is, how much time if any do you spend on sorting out the less than ideal beans, and how much do you usually loose in weight?
For clarity, I usually loose between 13 - 16% total weight in roast and then another 5 - 10% after sorting.
Best Regards!
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I’m sorry I can’t remember the exact video, but there was one by the Mill City Roasters or Sweet Maria’s where two guys were talking about that and one of them said: “I just leave them in.”. I’m with that guy. My personal opinion, which shouldn’t have any influence on anyone else, is that I’m not able to perceive such a great difference in cup to be worth the trouble. The quaker rich lower grade (still pretty high compared to other coffees) Yemeni coffees are spectacular with or without them. I repeat, it’s just an opinion, but if the coffee is really, really good, a few quakers can’t ruin it. Actually, for coffee to be considered specialty it must have less than 5 secondary defects, in reality from 1 to 5 depending on the defect, every 350g, which is 0.77lb. That means beans. Even if you’re roasting a full load, you shouldn’t find more than 14 defective beans, which would amount to 3-4g or around 0.0023lbs. I’m sorry, I got carried away, but it came to me while I was writing and it’s important that you get your money’s worth. I drink a lot of naturals, but I’ve never seen 5-10% defective beans. I know unripe beans (quakers) are considered fault and not a defect, but even so 5-10% is a lot. I mean, they are cupping the coffees after evaluating the green. I apologize again for the sharp turn I took.
How to Grade Green Coffee - Size, Defects, Scoring Quality. — ROCC
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Noooooo!!!
5% - 10% loss from sorting sounds absolutely over the top to me, unless you source really poor quality beans, which I do not think you do.
Even worse, 45 minutes of sorting would totally and utterly suck all the joy of roasting out of me!
I am with braca. While I do sort out typically 1-2% of beans for quakers and defects while the Bullet cools down, I also doubt that I could taste the difference, if I just left them in.
If I was your neighbour, I would stop roasting coffee myself and just ask for your discarded beans. 
To be fair, I would also offer to do a blind tasting of coffee with you, where we try coffee with and without fully sorted beans to see whether or not you yourself would notice the difference.