How quality coffee is produced:
The best coffee is naturally from a good plant. The best ones in Honduras are catuai, which allows for maximum taste with excellent production per branch bunching together for easy picking. If you want altitude coffee, this would be ihcafe 90, as it is better than burboun with a larger seed and better growing at a high altitude. Lempira and Don Ramon are options that are sturdier than the others, yet do not have the taste of catuai, nor the size of ihcafe90. Don Ramon has the added benefit of not needing shade and growing at high altitude, yet its flavor and quantity is not nearly as good as catuai.
The second part of quality coffee is the picking process. This means that the pickers must only pick red or yellow, for nance, cherries or grapes, as mixing in half ripe, dried on the stalk, or green beans hurts the process and ability to maintain a cupping without defects. The main problem is that few farmers pay for quality picking, instead favoring a mix of green and ripe coffee, so that they do not lose their cherries in the rain. Basically, the uniformity of ripeness and uniformity of flavor allows for the coffee to have a distinct flavor, instead of a general coffee flavor without the bouquet of quality coffee.
The next part is the depulping, which requires a machine to separate the green, dried on stalk, and overripe cherries from the ripe ones. The machine design does not guarantee quality, as many government contracts go to inexperienced poorly qualified architects, who built fcassa’s depulpers, so that it does not function properly. Instead it just throws out beans randomly the good with the bad. The one in Courquin does work, even discarding leafs, yet the workers continually dump the overripe coffee back into the normal part. This is largely due to their not selling the dried on stalk or overripe coffee to the local market or at a discounted price. Instead they let it rot in a trash can, not even using it for fertilizer. They process 600 gallons an hour of coffee, while ours does 250. Still, the best part of their depulper, is that it requires only two workers with the machine and two for the patio and one mechanic in case of problems, while ours has 10 + patio workers & without a mechanic. The whole contraption costs around $30,000, so the investment donated was improperly used thanks to the Honduran government’s involvement of an “expert architect”. This inefficiency has led some of the richer members wanting to invest in their own depulper, so that they could have a better coffee and sell their depupling services, basically making fcassa’s depupling redundant.
The best thing about fcassa’s processing is its top of the line Colombian drying machines. They maintain the temperatures between 20-30 degrees C without killing the seed, which kills the taste, while also not hurting or cracking the seed by much movement. All these are defects that can disqualify a coffee from a cupping. They take around 30 hours to dry, while raking the coffee in a circle gradually falling three levels before completing the drying process at 12-13% humidity. Guatemalans or “Chapines” come to visit our dryer, so that they can understand how the best driers of Central American work, cheaper than flying to Colombia. Unfortunately, the coyotes were buying semi dried under 50% humidity and dried coffee for basically the same price, which had a negative impact on fcassa, as associates saw the cost to dry as being an unnecessary expense. Regardless, the dryers were running and coffee is selling.
The storage and shipment are important as well, since over exposure to humid or hot temperatures damages the coffee. The best way to ship it is with the shell to retain the flavor and the beans alive. Naturally, it is worst to send them to San Pedro, due to its hot and humid temperatures, while Santa Rosa has a better climate to process it all. Nevertheless, Porto Cortes is the export location and is not ideal, yet the same throughout coffee country.
This is the part done in country. What part do you think is the most time consuming, contains the most risk or reward? Also what would you like to experience as a tourist, if any part of it? What seems to be something we could improve or alter in the process?
The second part will be regarding the processing part usually done abroad.
Pictures will come with a faster internet...
The best coffee is naturally from a good plant. The best ones in Honduras are catuai, which allows for maximum taste with excellent production per branch bunching together for easy picking. If you want altitude coffee, this would be ihcafe 90, as it is better than burboun with a larger seed and better growing at a high altitude. Lempira and Don Ramon are options that are sturdier than the others, yet do not have the taste of catuai, nor the size of ihcafe90. Don Ramon has the added benefit of not needing shade and growing at high altitude, yet its flavor and quantity is not nearly as good as catuai.
The second part of quality coffee is the picking process. This means that the pickers must only pick red or yellow, for nance, cherries or grapes, as mixing in half ripe, dried on the stalk, or green beans hurts the process and ability to maintain a cupping without defects. The main problem is that few farmers pay for quality picking, instead favoring a mix of green and ripe coffee, so that they do not lose their cherries in the rain. Basically, the uniformity of ripeness and uniformity of flavor allows for the coffee to have a distinct flavor, instead of a general coffee flavor without the bouquet of quality coffee.
The next part is the depulping, which requires a machine to separate the green, dried on stalk, and overripe cherries from the ripe ones. The machine design does not guarantee quality, as many government contracts go to inexperienced poorly qualified architects, who built fcassa’s depulpers, so that it does not function properly. Instead it just throws out beans randomly the good with the bad. The one in Courquin does work, even discarding leafs, yet the workers continually dump the overripe coffee back into the normal part. This is largely due to their not selling the dried on stalk or overripe coffee to the local market or at a discounted price. Instead they let it rot in a trash can, not even using it for fertilizer. They process 600 gallons an hour of coffee, while ours does 250. Still, the best part of their depulper, is that it requires only two workers with the machine and two for the patio and one mechanic in case of problems, while ours has 10 + patio workers & without a mechanic. The whole contraption costs around $30,000, so the investment donated was improperly used thanks to the Honduran government’s involvement of an “expert architect”. This inefficiency has led some of the richer members wanting to invest in their own depulper, so that they could have a better coffee and sell their depupling services, basically making fcassa’s depupling redundant.
The best thing about fcassa’s processing is its top of the line Colombian drying machines. They maintain the temperatures between 20-30 degrees C without killing the seed, which kills the taste, while also not hurting or cracking the seed by much movement. All these are defects that can disqualify a coffee from a cupping. They take around 30 hours to dry, while raking the coffee in a circle gradually falling three levels before completing the drying process at 12-13% humidity. Guatemalans or “Chapines” come to visit our dryer, so that they can understand how the best driers of Central American work, cheaper than flying to Colombia. Unfortunately, the coyotes were buying semi dried under 50% humidity and dried coffee for basically the same price, which had a negative impact on fcassa, as associates saw the cost to dry as being an unnecessary expense. Regardless, the dryers were running and coffee is selling.
The storage and shipment are important as well, since over exposure to humid or hot temperatures damages the coffee. The best way to ship it is with the shell to retain the flavor and the beans alive. Naturally, it is worst to send them to San Pedro, due to its hot and humid temperatures, while Santa Rosa has a better climate to process it all. Nevertheless, Porto Cortes is the export location and is not ideal, yet the same throughout coffee country.
This is the part done in country. What part do you think is the most time consuming, contains the most risk or reward? Also what would you like to experience as a tourist, if any part of it? What seems to be something we could improve or alter in the process?
The second part will be regarding the processing part usually done abroad.
Pictures will come with a faster internet...
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