biological processing. Monsoon processing happened pretty much by accident because, in the early days of sail, coffee cherries harvested in Asia had to wait out the monsoon season before they could be transported. So, they would be stored in huge, open-sided warehouses, where they would swell and ferment. Biological processing was also a serendipitous discovery, but it has recently become somewhat controversial. It is accomplished by wild( or domestic) animals eating the yummy cherries, digesting them, and‘ discarding’ the seeds. The perfectly processed seeds are then picked out of the scat. This produces a great coffee – but for one very important reason. The animals are choosy, and they pick only the best, ripest cherries to munch so they pre-select the finest coffee. Since the movie The Bucket List, one biologically processed coffee – kopi luwak – has become extremely popular and very expensive. So, enterprising – and not too scrupulous – farmers are imprisoning hundreds of civets in tiny cages and feeding them haphazardly harvested coffee cherries, and selling the resulting s ** t as high-priced kopi luwak.
• Angelo Angelo is most is most likely likely to to process his his coffee by the dry or fully washed method..
Drying
Once the bean has been separated from the cherry, it has to be dried. There are three methods. Patio drying is simply spreading the beans on a cement or clay floor and allowing them to dry in the sun, regularly raking them to prevent clumping. A similar method, known as African raised bed drying, involves laying the beans out on raised beds of some kind of mesh, and also turning them regularly. One advantage of this method is that it takes up less space, as the beds can be stacked like bunk beds.
An enhancement of this method, which is used in very rainy regions, involves covering the beds with a huge roof and sides that can be lowered for rain protection, or raised to allow airflow. These structures are called parabolic dryers, and they’ re not very high tech, so it’ s quite likely that Angelo will have built one in his back yard. For both these methods, drying takes between two and four weeks. Large-scale coffee producers tend to machine dry their beans in huge contraptions that look very much like giant tumble dryers – a process that is completed in 24 to 48 hours.
Selling and storage
Angelo is lucky that he lives in Mexico, where there are companies dedicated to sourcing speciality grade coffee. So, he can take his carefully nurtured and processed beans for assessment. If the beans have zero major defects, and an acceptable minimum minor defects, they will go through a secondary process of roasting, cupping and scoring for taste. If Angelo’ s beans score 80 or more according to the Speciality Coffee Association( SCA) cupping score sheet, they will qualify as speciality grade coffee, and will fetch a premium price. As Angelo heads home, smiling, with his donkey, Dapple, the beans will be milled, sorted and graded.
Unfortunately, this system is not as efficient in every coffeegrowing country in the world and, in some cases, the grading takes place later – often after the coffee has been sold to a co-op or a government board – so the farmer is not directly rewarded. But this is changing, and the move towards conscious consumerism has increased the demand for speciality grade coffee with a verified chain of custody and provenance.
Milling, sorting and size grading
After the lot has been sold, the dried and denatured cherry is milled to remove any remaining pulp and the parchment, and the beans are pre-sorted using a gravity bed and screens. They will then be further sorted either visually or by an optical sorter, and graded according to size and defect – or lack thereof.
Then they get packaged and transported to the purchaser, who – in the case of Angelo’ s speciality grade beans – will be a speciality coffee roaster or distributor. This special coffee will then be sold in smaller lots to speciality artisanal roasters who will lovingly bring out the best quality of the beans, and will sell them freshly roasted to a small, discerning market – people who can taste the difference between Angelo’ s tenderly nurtured coffee and the somewhat less gently produced mass-market coffee. They will take the coffee home, carefully grind it just before brewing it using their current favourite method, and savour every sip.
And Angelo, high on a mountain in Mexico, will be lovingly tending his coffee trees – as will his many counterparts in Africa, Asia and South America. Speciality coffee is a growing trend. Italian Lifestyle JHB: 011 447 4703 | CT: 021 425 6169
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