Dry Beans — Processing
Metadata research draftEvidence limits
⚠️ Status: drafted from the literature survey. The postharvest chain for dry beans is more tractable than chia/amaranth (a manageable pod → kernel). Values Unknown until grower/practical + experimental confirmation.
dry pods → shell → winnow/clean → sort → dry edible beans
Shelling / threshing
Section titled “Shelling / threshing”- Shell by hand (opening pods, or beating on a tarp) or with small-garden threshers. Time per kg —
Unknown/Needs experiment; expected far less than tiny-seed crops. - Dry pods release the hard kernel easily at full dry-down (comparatively easy vs chia/amaranth).
Winnowing / seed cleaning
Section titled “Winnowing / seed cleaning”- Separate bean seed from pod fragments/chaff by winnowing and screens. For a staple this is manageable (bean seed is large enough to clean with a hand sieve). Existing handbooks cover small portable/benchtop seed cleaners (not yet captured in this sweep — a source-type gap; see
sources.md).
Sorting / grading
Section titled “Sorting / grading”- Remove damaged, shriveled, or split kernels; size/grade. Dry-bean grading
Unknown.
Grain-use processing (food forms)
Section titled “Grain-use processing (food forms)”- Soak + cook — the staple end-use; soak/cook studies exist (e.g., by bean type/moisture/storage time:
10.1111/j.1365-2621.1979.tb03796.x). Beans are kept as dry beans (not oilseed/pop-style).
Equipment
Section titled “Equipment”- For a few kg: tarp + sieve + hands; nothing exotic.
Human-scale experiments
Section titled “Human-scale experiments”- Candidate
EX: time and loss to shell a few kg by hand; log inopen-questions.md. Needs experiment.
Structured-data impact
Section titled “Structured-data impact”processing.threshing/cleaning/winnowingindata/crops/dry-beans.yaml.