Panama Coffee Part 1

 Coffee Adventures took me to Panama.  This is hotel view of Panama City, very metropolitain.

 The next day had to take a puddle jumper to Boquete where the coffee farms and mills are located.

 This is a mill in Panama where green coffee is processed.  This is the site of our yeast trials. View from top down.

 The mill, looking from the bottom up.

 Large dryers.  Some parts of the world dry the beans out in the sun, others use dryers.

 Happy cows in Boquete.

 Hike to see where the trees are planted.

 In case anyone was wondering, Panama is gorgeous.

 Me, hiking.

 View of Boquete below.

October is still the rainy season, so one minute the skies were blue and clear and in 15 minutes, clouds rolled and and the sky open up and rain poured down.  They can get 6 inches in a day.

 OK, back to the mill.  Coffee gets picked during the day, and arrives at the mill around 5pm.

 This day it was a small batch the arrived in the back of a pick up.

 The cherries are unloaded into the holding bins.  Note the color.  It's the very first crop of the season and it's not all ripe yet.  There is still a lot of yellow on the cherries.

 These are just the seeds, after the skins have been removed.

 The two buckets on the left are yeast build up and the right is coffee beans, at this stage it's called wet parchment.

 Checking the temp of the yeast build up with a laser thermometer.

 Foamy buckets are a good sign of activity.

A small batch that doesnt fit in the dryer is set out in the sun to dry on mesh screens.  unfortunately it rained for about 8 hours this day, so the beans didn't get very dry.

More coffee coming soon . . .

-L