Matias from Down to Earth coffee in Costa Rica posted some nice images of his coffee trees in full bloom. A Magical Time at the farm. This is our second wave of blooming in the last three weeks and everything indicates that we will have a healthy, plentiful harvest starting in late December. Matias >…
Category: Growing and Harvesting
Different Sizes of the Green Beans
Matias Zeledon of Down to Earth Coffee in Costa Rica posted an interesting picture of coffee beans with different sizes on the branch. This is an example of why you have to hand pick coffee to only get the ripe cherries. Here is Matias’ description: Happy to see the coffee healthy and developing well in…
Coffee Tree Flowers
In February the coffee trees flower in Costa Rica. Here are shot by Matias Zeledon of Down to Earth Coffee in Providencia, Costa Rica. The air is sweet with the smell of jasmine.
Weighing and Hulling (Removing the Parchment)
When the beans are at 11-12% moisture, they are removed from the parijuelas and bagged. Each bag has the parijuela number that it came from. The bags are then weighed and the results logged. Coffee beans have a hard shell covering the bean. Here is the coffee bean anatomy introduced in the Processing the Coffee…
Drying the beans
The product of coffee cherry processing is bags of wet coffee beans. These new beans are about 2/3 water. Green beans ready for roasting need to be 11 to 12% moisture, so a significant amount of water has to be removed. While large commercial processors will use a power unit, small operations use the sun….
Processing the Coffee Cherries
Once the cherries are picked, the beans are removed and then dried. Processing involves separating the coffee beans from the cherry. Removing the beans from the cherry can be done in several ways: Ferment-and-Wash Method Machine-assisted Wet Processing Dry Process Ferment-and-Wash is used mainly at large coffee processing factories. On the farm, the crop was…
Picking Coffee Cherries
My first real coffee activity in Costa Rica was picking and processing coffee cherries. Processing removes the beans from the cherry. After an eye-opening drive to the plantation, we rode down the driveway to the parking area beside the house. It is difficult to show in the pictures just how steep the side of the…
Coffee Tree Final Transplant
In the previous post, “Planting New Coffee Trees,” I discussed coffee seeds, planting the seeds and transplanting the seedling pairs. In this post, I will show how small coffee trees are transplanted to their final location. After being transplanted, the coffee tree will take two years to start to produce coffee in a small quantity….
Planting New Coffee Trees
In this article I will discuss coffee seeds, planting the seeds and transplanting the seedling pairs. In the next post I will show how small coffee trees are transplanted to their final location. Seeds While it is possible to grow a coffee tree from green coffee beans, the germination rate (percentage of beans that sprout…
Coffee Trees and Cherries
Enough with transportation, let’s get on to coffee. As someone who grew up in North America, I had preconceived idea of what a coffee tree and coffee cherry would look like. I know cherry trees, so I envisioned a tall tree with a fruit rich in pulp. Coffee trees are about 6 feet tall. If…