Fake Plastic Barrels

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