Coffee Info

Coffee Info was Originally Posted on August 24, 2007 by lavarock

I have some coffee trees at the top of the farm which are the basis of the seeds for the next planting of coffee. Coffee trees don’t need to be replanted every year; rather I am starting a new area for coffee and it will come from seeds. I could have just bought plants, but they are many dollars each and I will need thousands when I am done. Thus it is easier to grow my own.

I bought a pulper a few weeks back and tested it at a friends farm last week. Today was my first opportunity to pulp some of my own beans and it went quite well.

Coffee grows on new growth and when ripe looks like a small cherry. When it is very red, we pick it, wash it off and then pulp it. Pulping is the removal of the outer skin and can be done by squeezing the cherry by hand or in larger quantities by using a pulper. The pulper I have is a heavy box with a wheel inside. The wheel looks like a round cheese grater with little nubs all around it. The cherry goes down a chute where the nubs rip te outer covering off the beans. The outer covering goes down one way and the beans go down the other. The beans look like wet peanuts at this point and are covered by a sweet sticky muscilage.

The beans will be left in a water bath over night where the sugar begins to ferment and break down. In the morning I’ll wash the beans off again and spread them out to dry. They have to have a cover over them if it rains. Some people have a permanent roof and others have a sliding one they can draw over the beans. These beans will be left to dry until they get to about 12-15% moisure content. At that point, they are called parchment and if stored property, will be good for perhaps a year and a half.

When it comes time to roast, the parchment will be milled where the outer covering is removed and the green coffee bean is left. You could store the green beans, but they won’t store as well and must be used in about a year.

Green beans are then loaded into the roaster and the temperature raised until the beans start to expand. The internal moisture will cause steam, the oils and caffeine and such will come out of the bean and they will darken. Depending upon the roast, they may crack one or twice. The crack is a bit like popcorn exploding except not as dramatic.

Kona coffee tastes best at a medium or slightly darker roast; certainly no where near the type of roast that Starbucks uses. As coffee beans start getting oily and really dark, you begin to taste the charcoal rather than the taste of the origin of the coffee. Why buy a premium coffee only to charcoal it?

Anyway, speaking of roasted coffee, I have some freshly roasted medium roast I’d be happy to ship to you (US only). I just picked it up yesterday at the roaster. Just go to http://ItsKona.Com and buy away!

For those wondering how Koa the farm dog is doing, just fine, thank you! He loves his fresh food diet and this afternoon I gave him an avocado which he devoured! I’ll uplod more photos of him to the website soon.