Drying

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Drying was Originally Posted on September 4, 2013 by

I took lots of coffee to the mill to be, well, milled! Milling removes the papery-type parchment covering from the beans, revealing their green color. I will receive the milled coffee back Wednesday or Thursday.

This is my first real crop; last years being fairly small but now many of the trees are full height. I am told that it is better if the beans sit for a while, however there are many suggestions about coffee which may be more like wives-tales. I will immediately begin to test roast the coffee beans to try to determine the exact roast to bring out a good flavor. On the Hawaiian coffee I have been selling, that roast level was a full-city-plus, just before 2nd crack and early enough in the roasting process that there is no oil on the beans.

I have been roasting here at home with a small tabletop roaster. It works very well, but is made for home use and thus is limited to about a pound of coffee at a time. Because of the nature of our beans, the recommendation for “island” beans is that we put less beans in to roast so that they come to the right temperature. In my case, the maximum amount of beans I can put in at one time is 12 oz and that gives be 10 oz of roasted coffee (after moisture is roasted out). So an order of 1 pound takes 2 roasts at about 25 minutes to roast and 10 to 15 minutes to cool.

Home roasting is efficient for home use, but not efficient for a business. If I want to have coffee roasted quickly and efficiently, I take it to the professional roaster up the street. That is a couple day event and the minimum they can roast at one time is about 18 to 20 pounds. Since I don’t like to keep roasted coffee here longer than a couple of days, I use them when I have larger orders.

Once I test roast, I expect that I will have them do the first roast for me, because I have orders backing up which will all need to be shipped soon.

One other problem is that I am out of 1 pound bags. I can buy some locally and may do so, but I prefer to get hundreds at a time at the lower price. Lately I have filled orders using my secret process; I ship two 8oz bags instead of a 1 lb bag. It takes more labels and costs more, but I’ve been too busy to price shop, and I did have 8 oz bags handy.

I am calling the first main crop RESERVE because it is still limited in quantity. I will probably change the name to ESTATE before I’m done, though as it is more descriptive of the coffee.

As the coffee will be graded, I’ll take the lower grade and call it Hawaiian and make that available too. Even though it may not make the stringent criteria to be called Kona, it will still be better than many other coffees not grown here.

To wind up this discussion, as I was pulling the coffee off the drying deck, the pickers called and are heading back. Just when is anybodies guess, but I told them I am ready for them again.

Well, It’s 3:30 in the morning and I’d better get to sleep. The dogs will have me up in a few hours to go out. They eat, sleep and go out. It’s a vicious cycle that is hard to break them of :-)