outdoors,  travel

Doka Coffee Plantation Part 2

November 11, 2022 /

Did you enjoy Wednesday’s post about our visit to the Doka Coffee Plantation? Today is a continuation about how the plantation works. My husband and I really enjoy the tour and we have been loving the coffee we brought home. We love it so much we are having his best friend bring us some back when he goes.

Doka Coffee Estate is the oldest wet mill still working. The water is 12 feet deep and separates the good coffee beans for the lesser quality ones. The good coffee has more density and sinks to the bottom. The big red box above can hold 10 cajuelas and it takes 2 hours to process a whole day harvest here.

Separating the beans by quality

The water moves the beans through 7 machines. 5 of them remove the skin by friction and 2 separate them by size. The coffee beans are separated by size and quality.

Drying process

The coffee is mostly dried outside but can be dried inside in a drying machine that dries it at 60 degrees. The machine is water powered.

Beans stays in their parchment in bags for 3 months. Different processes create different flavors: full wash creates lighter color and the sugar is removed by fermentation. Medium color was semi washed without fermentation: it dries with natural sugar. That coffee tastes like chocolate. The dark natural ones are the ones where the red berry dried and after 10 days a special machine removes all skins: the beans taste like honey.

75% of the dry golden beans are exported while 25% is roasted with the brand name 3 generations.

We bought some peaberry coffee which is made from from the coffee beans that are round. A berry usually produces 2 beans, but the peaberry came from a berry with only one bean. This happens only about in 5% of the coffee berries.

Roasting

Remember how only 25% of the coffee beans are roasted? Different times create different roasts. French roast is a medium roast of 17 minutes. The house blend is more citric and less bitter at 15 minutes.

Every thing is used even the wood from the old plants! We enjoyed the feel of the beans, got to rake them and throw them for a picture opportunity.

On the way back to San Jose, we realized that a lot of the greenery/bushes we saw were coffee plants!

I hope you enjoy these learning journey about coffee. I actually did not drink coffee until after returning from France in 2019: I was in my 40s!

A bientôt!

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