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Coffee Processing Photos

Over the past two decades we’ve made several visits to two coffee farms owned by friends.  The Rodriguez’s small farm above Heredia and on our friend Jim Alafaro’s estate at Río Jorcó in the hills of Tarrazu – Costa Rica’s most coveted coffee producing regions. Anyone who’s interested can visit a farm and small processing plant on a coffee tour in Costa Rica.

Hand sorting - picking out the green coffee cherriesRio Jorco Estates has built a small craft processing plant that helps locals who are still operating their farms by peeling, drying, hulling and bagging their coffee as individual lots rather than mixing it all together in the traditional manner. Processing coffee from small lots separately means the local farmers have the opportunity to seek a much higher price from specialty roasters who seek out specific growing conditions for their premium coffees.

Processing the coffee from red cherries to green beans involves washing and removing the low quality fruits, peeling off the outer red skin (which is saved and composted to make fertilizer), scrubbing off the inner mucilaginous layer, sun drying the beans, fine tuning the moisture with a mechanical dryer, stripping off the inner parchment skin, and finally another quality control step on a vibrating table sorter.

The processed green beans are bagged in 50 kilo (110 lb) bags and stacked in the warehouse carefully separated by grower and specific plot on each farm.  Samples from the bags are pulled and roasted when premium coffee buyers visit for a tasting.

Below are a few of our photos showing the second part of the coffee process – peeling, drying and sorting.   Each of the photos links to a detailed description if you’d like to learn more.

See also the photo albums for growing and picking the coffee and the ritual that is cupping (or tasting) coffee.

picking coffee
Picking coffee is one of the most common jobs for illegal migrant workers
loading coffee truck
Loading a truck with coffee at the measuring station to transport to the processing cooperative
Hand sorting - picking out the green coffee cherries
Hand sorting – picking out the green coffee cherries
cajuela of coffee
One cajuela of coffee cherries. This measurement is only used in Central America. One cajuela is 17 liters (4.5 gallons). This is the steel version of the basket that pickers use to measure their fruit. A fanega is another unique term of measurement and is 250 kilos (550 lbs) of coffee
Washing the cherries
Washing the cherries
Coffee peeler
Coffee peeler – he peeler (top) passes the cherries between rollers and drops the golden beans into a hopper (below) that feeds into the aquapulper (right) which scrubs the beans to remove the mucilaginous layer
Cherry peels composted
The cherry peels are composted to produce fertilizer to feed next years coffee crop
Peeled coffee
Peeled coffee headed to mechanical demucilaging which will also remove the peels from the few beans missed by the peeler
Coffee processing plant
Coffee processing plant
Turning coffee
Turning coffee – Stomping grapes or turning coffee? Sue loved the feel of the damp beans between her toes
Coffee bean pedicure
Coffee bean pedicure – I wonder how long it’ll be before this shows up at mani-pedi shops in your neighborhood – the green coffee bean treatment
Sun drying coffee
The beans are turned several times while drying in the sun
Monitoring drying
The drying process is carefully monitored
Rows of coffee beans drying in the sun
Rows of coffee beans drying in the sun
Explaining coffee drying
Ruddy Azofefia explaining to Kathy how to tell when the beans have reached the perfect moisture content.
Stoking the fire
Stoking the fire – Jim Alfaro, the Patron of Río Jorco Coffee closing the door after stoking the firebox on the mechanical dryer. After the majority of the moisture is removed by sun drying the beans are passed through a tumble dryer to fine tune the water content. The fuel for the fire is mainly dried parchement (inner bean coating) and wood from pruning the coffee trees
Mechanical coffee dryer
Mechanical coffee dryer – sometimes when it rains a lot or when the moisture content needs fine tuning a mechanical dryer is used.
The inner covering of the bean is called parchment skin or pergamino and is removed by a huller. The dry parchment is used in the furnace to provide heat for the machine drying
Parchment removal – The inner covering of the bean is called parchment skin or pergamino and is removed by a huller. The dry parchment is used in the furnace to provide heat for the machine drying
Vibrating sorter
Coffee bean sorter. The tray shakes and the beans vibrate along the ridges according to size then drop down the appropriate channel
The final step before bagging the green coffee is the shaker table. The dried green beans are passed over the vibrating table that has a slight tilt and tiny ridges to push smaller low quality beans to the left and allow the premium coffee to pass on the right
The final step before bagging the green coffee is the shaker table. The dried green beans are passed over the vibrating table that has a slight tilt and tiny ridges to push smaller low quality beans to the left and allow the premium coffee to pass on the right
All sewn up
Industrial sewing machine used to seal the coffee sacks
Warehouse coffee
Warehouse coffee – Each pallate is marked with the specific farm, plot, and other information like elevation. For a cupping aliquotes are taken from several bags from each plot then mixed to give a random sample.
Warehouse full of coffee beans
Warehouse full of coffee beans
Rudy Azofefia has been the manager at Río Jorco for years and his son Rudy Junior was just awarded a scholarship to one of the premier roasting academies in France. He'll be taking over for pops some day. The warmest most wonderful people you could ever hope to meet.
Rudy & Junior – Rudy Azofefia has been the manager at Río Jorco for years and his son Rudy Junior was just awarded a scholarship to one of the premier roasting academies in France. He’ll be taking over for pops some day. The warmest most wonderful people you could ever hope to meet.

Ray & Sue

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