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

Coffee Education: Good Land Organics

My new job is taking me beyond wine into coffee, a beverage I know very little about. 

To help educate me I was sent to Good Land Organics farm in Goleta where farmer Jay is growing coffee where no one thought it would grow: California.

 The farm grows exotic fruits first and foremost.

 Dragon fruit.

 Finger limes, my new favorite.

 This was just picked from the tree, and the turgidity is enough to make the little pods pop out.  The limes reminded me of grubs, and after I opened one and put the contents in my mouth, it really felt like I was eating an insect.  A delicious citrus insect.

 Strawberry guavas.

Bananas. 

Avocados.

 Jay peaking at the cherries on a coffee tree.  This cultivar is very bushy and the cherries are hidden under the shade of the leaves.

At Good Land, Jay has planted several cultivars next to each other to experiment with what grows best.  If you look closely you can see that these two trees are very different.

This is yet a different cultivar that never turns red, but stays yellow.  Seeds = Beans!

The darker the cherry, the riper the fruit.  A single plant will have multiple passes to only pick the ripest cherries.  This is very different from wine, where once a block is ready, you pick it all.  I was surprised to learn how time intensive the process is.

 Freshly picked coffee cherries.

 This is me removing the skin from the beans, called pulping.

Then we put the beans in a little water and measure the starting pH.

 The beans undergo a short fermentation 12-36 hours (unlike wine which is 3 to 10 days).  The fermentation is typically perferomed by the native yeast on the fruit.  What we are experimenting with is inoculating with known strains.  The tub on the right has inoculated yeast, the tub on the left in native.  You can see how much more activity (foaming) is coming from the inoculated tub.

 The fermentation in wine is to produce alcohol, the fermentation in coffee is to clean the bean of the mucilage (slimy pulp) that clings to the seed.  The fermentation is "done" when the beans "feel" clean, that is, no longer sticky.  This is done by feel.  You stick your hand in and ask "are they sticky?" is the answer is yes, you wait, if the answer is no, the fermentation is done!

Then the beans are dumped on the screen and quickly washed.

 The beans dry on the racks for 7 to 14 days.  The beans look beige because they are covered by a layer of parchment.

 Then they are hulled.  This machine removed the parchment layer to expose the green bean.

Here you see the small green beans and yellow parchment layer.

And this is the genius way a small producer removes the parchment from the green beans.  She runs them in front of a fan.  The light parchment flakes fly off and the beans drop to the colander.

Then the green beans "rest" for about 3 months before they are roasted.  Unfortunately I did not see the roasting process.

 Then eventually it's time to evaluate the coffee through a cupping.  The involves pouring boiling water over the fresh grounds, letting them steep quickly and letting a cap form.  These steps are very time sensitive, note the iphone keeping track of the seconds.

 Then you use a cupping spoon to break the cap and the grounds fall to the bottom of the cup.  It's important to notice the aroma when this happens and then to taste, I mean, loudly slurp the coffee.  The louder the better!

 This picture really made me feel like I was in a farm.  Beans drying in the foreground, fruit pickers taking their lunch, and Jay's dog and his bbf the duck strolling through the middle of it.

 In a separate location Jay has a green house.

 Baby coffee plants.

The also do weddings!  Lovely place for a party.

View from Amtrak window.  Train ride home from Santa Barbara to San Diego.

I noticed many parallels between wine and coffee production.  There is a lot of overlap between wine nerds and coffee nerds.  I'm looking forward to holding nerd status in both.

-L

Museo del Vino and Deckman's

The Museo del Vino is a giant gorgeous building dedicated to wine education.

The inside has historical wine information and lots of information about winemaking.

But I prefer the architecture and the landscaping.

Out in front the have a garden of old winemaking equipment.

They've also layered the grounds with lots of texture.

Bottling equipment.  Old corker.

Tractor.

I love the use of stone and brick and glass and barrel staves.

Mosaic.

All the green is broken wine glass bottles.

Barrel staves and corks.


Valle de Guadalupe has some fantastic restaurants.
One of my first visits was to Deckman's.

Very casual but lovely setting.

The chef Drew Deckman preparing lunch.  Fresh ingredients and great flavors.

The eating area and kitchen are all outside.
It's a little hidden but worth the scavenger hunt to eat here.

And now this . . 

Small winery co-op in Baja.

-L