Check out our Shipping Rates - ship up to 20 lbs for $8.99 I have yet to harvest a crop from my homegrown coffee plants. But I did bring back some coffee cherry on a recent trip to Costa Rica, and after planting some, I had leftovers. What to do?
Well, why not wet-process the coffee?
This is coffee seeds after the skin is removed... in parchment, coated by mucilage.
I started by removing the seeds from the outer skin of the cherry and fermenting in a bowl with just a tad of water (I used non-chlorinated water to allow the fermentation to proceed unimpeded). Then I scrubbed the loosened mucilage off the coffee parchment layer, and left it to dry for 30 days.
At that point I had dry "pergamino"that was ready to remove from the parchment layer and roast
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I did that using my high tech "rub your palms together" method (as I have seen many coffee farmers do with ease - it is NOT easy for a novice like me though. |
Then I was ready to roast my bumper batch of .. what is that ... something like 15 seeds??? Unfortunately I found it tough to roast 15 seeds. I started with the Freshroast, but then switched to a Rosto. |
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Finally I had an acceptable roast, and ground the coffee to cup it. Why use the cupping technique? Because it wasn't enough coffee for any conventional brew method! |
Actually, it wasn't even enough for cupping, which requires 8-10 grams. So I ended up with 1/2 a cupping cup. Hey, it worked... (Picture shows the coffee in the first 2 minutes, before "breaking the crust") |
The results - actually, it was really good! This was La Minita of the arabica cultivar caturra and had decidedly more "fruitiness" to it than a true La Minita coffee. But I liked it. It was not fermenty tasting, as I anticipated (since my fermentation lasted 72 hours! The normal fermentation at a wet mill is 18-22 hours or so.)
I can't wait for my trees at home to produce!
-Tom 4/16/04
This page is authored by Tom Owen and Sweet Maria's Coffee, Inc. and is not to be copied or reproduced without permission.  |
