Thursday, 21 February 2019
Pereira, Colombia
Short 1hr lunchtime flight from Bogota to Pereira but the temperature increases by 15C and so humid now. Afternoon tour of the Finca del Café coffee plantation. 25 acre coffee plantation in the heart of the Colombian coffee region.
Read on, dear reader, you’re going to be educated now.
Am dressed up in typical coffee picker’s dress. Straw hat. Sash (for a reason I can’t fathom). Basket tied around my waist. Admittedly, they had to extend the string ‘belt’. The average Colombian coffee picker doesn’t have my girth.
Right. Pay attention.
The coffee berry has two beans. On rare occasions they find berries with one or three beans.
To start a new coffee tree they take one bean and plant it in a bed of river sand. This gives no nutrients and is loose so that when the bean germinates the roots are free to grow.
When the bean germinates, it sprouts a few inches with the green shoot pushing up the bean into the air. The sole nutrient is got from the bean. The bean is the battery for growth.
After a few weeks, the green shoot starts sprouting two leaves. This first pair of green leaves only get their nutrients from the bean, not from photosynthesis.
Eventually, the pair of leaves force the ‘parchment’ of the bean to fall away. The parchment is the outer cover of the bean.
After a few more weeks, another pair of leaves sprout. It’s this second pair of leaves that get their energy from photosynthesis (and I know my Biology degree cousin is tut-tutting at this description).
After a month, this small plant is transferred to a compost mix and grows with the nutrients in the soil, photosynthesis and water.
Once it’s a few months old, the sapling is then planted in the plantation to replace the 20 year old trees which are cut down as they’re too old.
After year 1, the tree is cut down to 30cm and it re-sprouts. After year 2, the tree is cut down again to 30cm and re-sprouts. It’s only in year 3 that the tree gives the best coffee bean.
The bean starts life as a flower which then grows into a green berry. Only when the berry is red, after about 9 months, is the bean ready for harvesting.
All harvesting is done by hand.
Once the red berry is harvested, it’s put in what can best be described as a circular cheese grater which takes the red outer shell off to reveal the bean covered in a mucus like covering.
The bean is washed in water for 24hrs to remove the mucus and then left to dry for a few days. This turns the outer parchment, which covers the two beans, a light brown colour.
The outer brown parchment is removed in a tumbler to reveal the green bean but this still has bits of parchment stuck to it so goes through another process to get rid of that and leave a clean green bean.
This is known as the ‘green almond’.
This is what is then roasted to give you the dark brown coffee bean you will all be familiar with.
This is then ground to give you coffee powder to which water at 90C can be added and filtered to give you a cup of coffee.
Now.
Next time you have a cup of filter coffee. Try this.
Take a first sip and use it as a mouthwash. It will taste bitter.
Take second sip. Tastes slightly different.
It’s only really the third sip that you get the real taste of the coffee bean. And it will taste naturally sweeter.
Once you’ve finished the cup, waft the cup about in the air.
Then take a sniff of the inside of the cup.
What do you smell?
Chocolate? Caramel? Smells sweeter doesn’t it?
Go on. Try it.
Back to Pereira and Hotel San Jose (http://www.haciendahotelsanjose.com/es/inicio.html), one of the oldest houses in the area, dating back to 1888. I’m in room 5. It’s under the stairs.
Feel like Harry Potter.
Plenty of gaps in doors and windows. Plenty of creepy crawlies. And mosquitoes.
Come out of the shower with no glasses on. Am incredibly short sighted. The room lighting is dim. Standing there wrapped in a towel. Not a pretty sight, ladies.
See a snake on the bedroom floor in front of me.
Absolutely crap myself.
Might have let out a little gurgle.
Find glasses to see what’s what.
And then.
It becomes apparent.
Not a snake.
My brown leather belt that has slid off the bed.
And relax.
One response to “61. Coffee”
Your coffee story has made me really appreciate my two cups of coffee even more . Great photos – you are a great photographer as well as an entertaining and informative writer. A man of many talents!