Chaff... innocent byproduct or scourge of roasting?

[replicant_argent]

Okay, maybe overstated a little.
When roasting this morning, I was thinking about the amount of chaff left on your finished roasts. When roasting, different coffees definitely don't have the same level of residual chaff, or even the same amount of chaff blown off the bean in the roasting process.
I typically dump the beans into the cooling unit, and stir it a bit. Some chaff probably goes into the vac chamber, but some remains. When bottling the beans for rest/storage, I will sometimes run the beans through my palms a bit to release some clinging chaff, but don't fret too much about it.

Any thoughts? Does chaff residual affect the flavor of the beans? In tasting some of the chaff from this morning, (purely curiosity talking here, of course) I didn't get any coffee flavor, or anything that was predominant, such as a burnt taste, but I did notice it tasted slightly burlappy or baggish, and maybe a slight amount of bitterness.

[DennisP]

Was wondering about this myself. I noticed when I ground my new roast this morning there was some ground up chaff in there.

[raisin]

I've read that the chaff is basically flavor neutral and there is no need to get anal about it's removal from the beans.

[Mister Moo]

"Cosmetic Catastrophe."

[EvanS]

Originally Posted by replicant_argent

....I will sometimes run the beans through my palms a bit to release some clinging chaff, but don't fret too much about it....

you sure do fret about it a lot more than I do

Truthfully I went thru the same thing a few months ago. Did a little cleaned/not cleaned comparo and came up "inconclusive".

[Jmurman]

chaffe will put some lump in your dump!