How to make coffee

Most people know that Colombia is big in coffee, several things most people probably don’t know is that it’s second only to oil as a traded commodity, Colombia is the third largest exporter of coffee in the world, and exactly how Colombian coffee goes from a seed in the ground to a triple shot of espresso served at Starbucks.  Lucky for me (and you) I stayed at a very cool hostel, The Plantation House, the owners of which also own a small coffee farm and offer tours to explain the whole process.

How to make coffee

I’ll skip a lot of the more complicated and boring parts (like the different between the types, traditional variety coffee vs modern variety, the effect of shade, or the reason the roots need to grow straight down in order to produce quality coffee) and just move onto the basics.

So, the process starts with a bag of coffee beans that have been soaked, dried, and sorted.  The beans can either be moved onto the next process that results in an actual cup of coffee, or planted in the ground to start the growing process over.

Beans planted in the ground go through a delicate growing process.  To keep the roots straight they are grown in individually potted bags, before finally getting planted in the ground after a year.  Three to five years after the bean has been placed in soil, the coffee plant produces a flower and then coffee cherries.  Twice a year during the wet season (around November and May), they have a harvest and collect all the ripe red or yellow cherries, inside of each are two identical beans.

These beans are all collected, removed from the skin, and then soaked in water to remove the natural sugar coating each bean.  This soaking process leads to fermentation and alcohol.  The restaurant around the corner from the hostel makes a coffee wine from the alcohol.  We tried after the tour and it was really good, sweet, with a hint of coffee.

Coffee wine

After cleaning off all the sugar, the coffee is then dried, all beans with defects removed, and finally sold.  Strangely, there are tons of different types of coffee being grown, with red and yellow cherries, yet once the skin as been removed, all coffee beans look identical.  Hence, most coffee that people drink is a blend of many different types, and coffee isn’t sold on the basis of type.  It is priced how something rightfully should be, with bigger naturally ALWAYS being better, coffee beans are priced with big beans being the best and hence most expensive.

All the beans that result are where we started, those beans can either be planted it to the ground, or sold at market for profit.  The beans move from the farmer to another party, where several additional layers of skin are removed, and again defective beans are removed, leaving a green looking bean that is ready to be roasted.  The green beans last for months without spoiling, so the coffee that is being transported around the world are these green beans.  Coffee only gets roast right before it gets drunk, therefore the drinking country generally does the roasting.  A common misconception is that the darker the roast, the more bitter the coffee tastes, and the less caffeine it has, and vice verso.  So good coffee with a nice flavor is generally roasted mild, leaving more of the flavor and caffeine intact.

Massive tarantula

After the tour we all got to try a cup of fresh coffee that was grown on the farm and roast in town.  I’m not much of a coffee drinker, but it was very good.  We also had a chance to tour around the rest of the farm.

Bamboo forest

Pineapples grow a little strangely

Bananas were everywhere