All About Coffee (pics)

Yesterday we visited a coffee plantation right in Antigua. It was only ten minutes from where we are staying, and we went with a guy who is starting a coffee import business in New Orleans.

We went on a tour lead by a guy named Carlos.


First, we watched a short and cheesey video about coffee growing in Antigua. It was fun to see the silly eighties hairstyles, but not all that informative. Next we hopped into a van and drove to the lower part of the actual plantation. It's the end of the harvet season, but there were still plants in all stages. We saw coffee flowers, which look, smell, and taste a lot like honey suckle, and we saw coffee berries, which are green when unripe, yellow when they're getting there, red when their ripe, and shriveled when they're over ripe. First Carlos showed us the actual berry. He had us take them apart and explained that there are four layers that need to be removed before getting to the green bean stage that is ready for roasting. First there's the outer skin, called the cherry layer, then a sort of slimy sticky (and sweet!) layer that I can't remember the name of, then there's the parchment layer, and lastly the the silver layer. The last two layers you really only see once the beans have been dried.

I remember when I worked at Peets hearing about shade grown coffee, and this was indeed shade grown coffee. The trees they use for shade are planted at the same time new coffee plants are planted, but they grow much faster. The tree they use is actually native to Australia, and bears flowers but not big fruit. They used to use mango trees and avocado trees, working a kind of double harvest. The problem with that was that the coffee plants would have to compete for nutrients in the soil, plus fallen fruit would make the soil too acidic. The flowering trees didn't have this problem, plus they have the added advantage of attracting birds, which in turn eat insects that could harm the coffee plant. Pretty cool.



Carlos explained that at this particular finca, the picking season is from November to March. Each bush winds up being picked several times as the berries mature, so the harvest takes a while. The people who pick the coffee berries are mostly indigenous folks from the mountains. He told us that because many of them live far away, they move to the finca for the season and live in refugios, shelters, for the time that they are picking.
Whole families come, and the kids pick coffee too. We were told that the school year is set up for this, (this is similar to why the school year in the states is the way it is too...) and that having the kids work allows the family to make more money, as they are paid by the pound. I'm not sure what to think about all this, because as much as he was trying to frame it well for us, I still see kids working and living in shelters away from home. It's more complicated than that of course. It's different standards and a different way of life. This isn't the United States. This is Guatemala.

Next we moved to the nursery where we saw new plants. They actually make each plant by hand, grafting the more flavorful arabica plant onto the sturdier robusta roots. This is done by hand by four women who can produce thousands of plants each per day. There are several million plants on the plantation, and each has about 8 to 10 years of production before being removed and replaced, so there is a pretty constant turnover rate of plants.






We got back in the van and came to the processing area of the whole deal. There are three aspects to it: wet mill, dry mill, and roasting and packing. During the wet mill stage, all the beans are chucked into a vat of water. The good ripe ones sink, the less ripe or too ripe ones float to the top. The floaters and skimmed off and set out to dry. These are sold to other companies for use in lower quality and instant coffee. The rest of the beans are run through a machine that removes the cherry layer, which is collected and used as fertilizer. They are then put into big vats of water and left for 40 to 48 hours to loosen the next layer off. Once that layer is removed, they are put in the sun for 8 to 14 days. They are on clay tiles and are raked every two hours.




When they are dry, they are put into sacks. Some of these sacs are exported, the parchment and silver layers staying on to increase shelf life. Others stay at the plantation. They are stored in these stacks until they are needed, at which point they are taken to the dry mill. Dry milling removes the parchment (which is saved and used for bedding for the resident mules, which are, by the way, named after U.S presidents and their wives...) and the silver layer in order to bring the bean to the green bean stage. Then another machine sorts the beans by size into three categories, the largest being elephant, the smallest being peaberry, and he middle size the standard size. Then the beans are put onto a conveyor belt and hand sorted to take out any bad beans. After all of this, the beans are sent to roasting and packaging.

Next we checked out the roasting area, which smelled wonderful. Carlos showed us the machinery that roasts, grinds, and packages and then took us upstairs to the tasting room. They have one professional taster who tastes every single batch of coffee before it is sold anywhere. He will spend all day tasting (and then spitting out) coffee. He's got 27 years of experience and can pinpoint problems in a batch anywhere from the picking (too ripe or not ripe enough) to the drying, to the sorting.

We ended the day sitting at the restaurant and drinking, of course coffee.

The other highliht of Antigua is the people we're meeting. It's a very international city (which is bad too, as I've barely spoken spanish here...) with a lot of travelers. We're getting the skinny on the best places to visit and the best places to stay.

Today we go check out Camino Seguro, a possible volunteer place. Antigua is nice, but I'm realizing again what I realized in Mexico. I'm not so good at just hanging out and doing nothing.