Coffee planting: coffee farm treatment in Nicaragua

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The water tank in front of us is a density classifier (density syphon). No matter which method the coffee fruit will be treated later, all red fruits should be screened here first. And the workers are piercing left and right between us with arms on their heads? It is the coffee fruit that has just been picked from the mountain.

Stunted or inferior fruit floats to the end of the tank. The coffee collected from there is directly labeled as commercial grade and sent to the processing plant. As for those who sink underwater, they are eligible to participate in the next round of screening, but they will not be able to tell whether they can become boutique coffee until they are processed.

Density classifier screening good fruit

Some of the fruits that stand out from the classifier are transported to the depulper for peeling and pulp. The so-called "honey-treated" coffee (honey process) describes coffee as sweet as honey, not really processed with honey. Peeled but still sticky? The coffee core of the pulp is directly dried and some fructose will be absorbed by the core. This method has different names in different countries, such as pulped natural, semi washed and so on. Among them, in Costa Rica, where the government strictly controls the use of water, coffee farmers have created honey treatments named to retain "different thickness of flesh", including yellow honey (yellow honey) and red honey (red honey), which have the thinnest pulp layer, and black honey (black honey), the famous owner of last year's national COE champion La Brumas de Zurqui. Traditionally, Nicaraguan coffee is mainly washed with water, but because the trend of "honey treatment" has become popular in China and the United States in recent years, some batches are "tailor-made" at the request of buyers.

Most of the kernels after beating will stay in the cement pool for 8 to 12 hours of aerobic fermentation. At this stage, coffee beans are wrapped in shells like melon seeds (parchment coffee) until they are exported. On the outside, there is a layer of pectin (mucilage) that is difficult to scrape off with a knife. The biggest purpose of fermentation is to decompose and wash away pectin before it gets moldy, which is called fully washed processing.

Good bean precipitate trough bottom

Will the fermented coffee be filled with clear water in a long sink? Wash. The workers stirred the coffee in the sink like a dragon boat with wooden boards in hand.

"Why? The farther away from the sink, isn't it cleaner and of higher quality? " Are there any group members looking forward to it at the end of the slot? The current arrives.

The leader of the treatment group said with a laugh, "the heavier the beans are, the better the quality, so they precipitated at the bottom of the sink a long time ago." What floats to your side, we call it butter grade, which is used to make instant coffee! The best, on my side, is for the competition, followed by boutique and commercial drinking with local people. "

Cleaned beans and sun-treated fruits are transported to a treatment facility at the foot of the mountain for a drying process of 1 to 2 weeks. When the water content is reduced to about 12%, it will be packed into the warehouse. We will discuss the sun treatment and the equipment in the warehouse separately.

Photo: Patrick Tam (owner of the boutique coffee shop Knockbox, approved barista of the American Fine Coffee Association and European Fine Coffee Association, American CQI recognition cup tester, Cup of Excellence's first Hong Kong judge)