Green coffee developer

On a whim I just decided to try green coffee beans....

I took 1/3 cup of green coffee beans and put them into my whirly-blade grinder... it sounded like grinding rocks and the result was a mixture of powder, broken beans and whole beans:



A side benefit was that is scoured my coffee grinder so it is all clean and new looking ( but I wonder how dull the blades are now! ):



Then I poured boiling water over the result. After it cools I'll put everything in a bottle and let it steep for a few days.



Based on the legendary (there was a url link here which no longer exists), I expect this will work just fine to develop film if I add a little carbonate of soda. Not sure yet what I will try to develop or if I really want to put this goop into my developing tank... probably not. I think I'll make a pinhole paper negative and develop by inspection!

Just a lark. Now what should I make a photograph of to test it?!!

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Ned, we'll want to see plotted curves you know, otherwise we can't possibly take you seriously ...

thanks for doing this ned !

pdeeh i was thinking the same exact thing !

- J

I dabbled with a developer made from Instant coffee. I didnt keep notes, but I think the recipe called for instant coffee made with robusta beans (yuck!) and borax. It was for a photography class, and the instructor was really in to experimental stuff. I dont recall being a fan, though. If you've got good quality green beans, I think they're better used roasted and brewed.

hi alabammacoffeebean
you might have used washing soda ( sodium carbonate )
rather than borax, but i could be wrong !
usually the coffee developers are made with instant coffees ( the cheeper the better ! )
and i agree, YUCK, we were hit with really bad weather last week .. no power for 3days or more ..
no coffee joints open no expresso machines too lazy to stoke the grill for a cup of coffee so i
brewed the instant i used to make my developer with, it was terrible, much better for film
( it might have been terrible because i just used 140ºF tap water to make it with )
YMMV

Update: the crushed/ground beans swelled up and absorbed ALL of the water. I added more water and now it is steeping. It looks like thick strong dark green tea.

And of course I tasted it.... not pleasant...Strong green coffee bean flavor.

These beans are left over because the roasted coffee did not have much flavor and not much caffeine. So they are kinda the opposite of robusta.

pdeeh, no problem, I'll get out my crayons and plot some colo(u)rful curves. Curlicues or spirographs or maybe an abstract.... hmmm....

jnanian said:

hi alabammacoffeebean
you might have used washing soda ( sodium carbonate )
rather than borax, but i could be wrong !
usually the coffee developers are made with instant coffees ( the cheeper the better ! )
and i agree, YUCK, we were hit with really bad weather last week .. no power for 3days or more ..
no coffee joints open no expresso machines too lazy to stoke the grill for a cup of coffee so i
brewed the instant i used to make my developer with, it was terrible, much better for film
( it might have been terrible because i just used 140ºF tap water to make it with )
YMMV

Click to expand...

you might be right. Might not have been borax. But, when I did this experiment, I was a lot dumber than I'd like to admit, so I might have used borax regardless of what the instructions I found said

Green Coffee Does Work!

I guess it's not a big surprise, but the developer made with green coffee beans works! At least with paper, it is similar to developer made with instant coffee and carbonate of soda.

Here is what it looked like after steeping in the bottle for a day:



After filtering, there were 9 fluid ounces of liquid. The beans became pale and lost their green color:



I used one ounce to do a coin test. A test strip was exposed to room light with a coin on each end.

On the right side I used 1 oz green bean tea and 0.66g soda. Under a safelight, after 4 minutes I could tell it was going to develop more than soda alone. After 7 minutes it was easy to see it was getting black, and after 10 minutes it was still getting darker and I thought it had reached a black. Then the left side was also developed for 10 minutes, but in 1 oz of water with the same amount of soda added. You can clearly see that the green bean side was more active than soda alone:



But that's not the end of the story! This is a very strange brew! When you first mix in the soda, it turns a bright orange color, just like orange juice. Then when you use it to develop the paper, it turns a dark almost lime green color! Also, after mixing the soda in, you can see it turning darker orange as you watch. The soda must activate something that oxidizes quickly. However, between 7 and 10 minutes development the color is already dark green but it is still developing the paper, so the dark green color might not be directly related to development activity. It would be interesting to know what's going on with that color.


Here is the bright orange color just after adding the soda:



And here is the dark green color after developing a piece of photo paper for 10 minutes:



I made 3 pinhole paper negatives this afternoon at the beach. Unfortunately, midday at the beach in the summer is tricky with paper negatives and I overexposed the first one terribly. The second one was also overexposed but might be salvageable. The third one came out well and I'm hoping it might have a "suggestion" of sand, sea, and sky for the current MSA.... we'll see.

I used 1/3 cup of the green bean liquid for each. For the first two, I added one teaspoon of soda. For the third one I added 1/2 teaspoon*, and my impression was that this might be better ( hard to say since it was also the only one not overexposed.... but my gut feeling was that there was nearly as much development due to the coffee, but less initial "haze" due to the soda, and that it was cleaner and under better control for development by inspection. ) I developed each for 10 minutes.

If you try this, I recommend starting with 1.5 teaspoons ( 8 g ) soda to 8 fl. oz green coffee bean "juice" ( about 235 ml ) and adjust from there.

The negatives are drying now and I'll post the two that were not ruined later tonight or tomorrow.


*(technical detail): I made a mistake when I did the coin test. One teaspoon of sodium carbonate weighs about 5.3 g. I intended to test at a concentration equivalent to 3 teaspoons per 8 oz., but I forgot to multiply and so the coin test was done with only 1/3 the concentration of soda. I realized this after I'd already developed two of my paper negatives, so that's why I reduced the soda for the third. I think as well as overexposure, there may be some fogging on the first two. The third one looks clean, like the coin test.

Watching with interest.

Here are the two photos

Such as they are!

This one is pretty badly overexposed, but it was developed with the concoction in this thread:



And this one was exposed pretty well all things considered ( bright sun at the beach and a thin marine layer blasting UV! )



So there you have it. This was just a "proof of concept", probably these could be dramatically improved by working on the formula or adding a touch of vitamin C or some such.... but I think the question of whether green coffee beans can be a developer is answered!

ned !

this is fantastic, thank you for doing this experiment

but tell me, now does it smell ?
if it doesn't smell rank, i don't know if i want to use it

john

It doesn't reek like "normal" caffenol... it smells strongly like green coffee beans... kind of a "grassy" "vegetable" smell. So if you want your darkroom to stink, this won't be the right developer for you!

NedL said:

It doesn't reek like "normal" caffenol... it smells strongly like green coffee beans... kind of a "grassy" "vegetable" smell. So if you want your darkroom to stink, this won't be the right developer for you!

Click to expand...

I have a very active gag reflex so the lack of 'stink' is a good thing for me.