Well, I just came back from spending two weeks in Puerto Rico, checking up on how the coffee harvest is going. I have some amazing technicians working for me, but there’s nothing like being there in person to make sure things are going smoothly and all the data you think needs to be collected, is collected. After a few minor tweaks, I’m feeling really confident about the rest of the harvest and data collection.
So, what’s new to report? Well, the harvest is officially happening, and we’ve been able to collect many fruits from our farms. Of course, the same things that were happening last month are still happening, but we’re still able to collect some beans, which is better than nothing. I think we’ll have enough to be able to determine the effect of treatment (sun/shade and hand-pollinated/open-pollinated) on the quality of beans produced by Arabica and Robusta plants. I’m hoping we’ll be able to take it a step further, and also assess the effect of these treatments on the quality of the actual coffee produced, but we’ll see…we need a lot of coffee to make that happen!
In the mean time, we’re getting the beans ready for quality assessment through a wet-processing method. Since our harvest is happening on such a small scale, and we’re only harvesting the ripe berries, we have created a miniature wet-processing facility in our field house. It’s rustic, but it works!
Here are some images to show you what we’re doing.
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- Here I am in the field, checking if any of the coffee on our branches is ready for harvest.
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- We’re looking for a berry to be cranberry-colored. Too dark red is overripe, but any bit of beige is underripe
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- Once we get back to the field house, we put the berry in water, to see if any of them float. Floaters are excluded since that indicated a problem with the beans.
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- We squeeze the beans our of the berry pods, and usually there are two to a pod.
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- Sometimes, there are peaberries, which suggest poor pollination. One of the beans is smaller and poorly developed, while the other is almost completely round. We exclude the under-developed bean.
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- We put all the beans in a bowl with just enough water to cover, so that they can ferment for 24-48hrs. We know they’re ready when the bowl smells like overripe pineapple.
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- Sometimes, we collect quite a number of berries, so we keep them all separate…bowls and cups become scarce at the field house.
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- Once they have fermented, we wash the mucous membrane off the beans. The mucous should come off easily, if the beans have fully fermented.
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- We then put the beans in a food dehydrator at 95F for about 24-72hrs. The time varies with the humidity in the air.
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- We measure the humidity with a grain humidity reader. The ideal humidity is 11%, but anywhere between 10-12% is good.
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- Once they’re at the right percentage, we vacuum seal the beans with a label. Here we have the open-pollinated branches from tree number 3 at Mr. Papo Luis’ farm. The beans have to rest for 90 days before we continue with the processing.
It’s really exciting to have reached this stage of the processing. I was pretty worried when I went in September and saw so many damaged branches and berries. I’m feeling a bit more hopeful now!
Either way, I’m really enjoying this! How many people can say that they’ve processed their own coffee? I’m doubtful, but I’m hoping we’ll have enough so that I could even try a cup of our harvested coffee…wouldn’t that be nice? For now, I’ll just have to enjoy the coffee from the local cafes … here’s a pretty one from Clara’s cafe in Mayaguez 🙂
-Sara Guiti Prado- Ph.D. 