Coffee tour

Antigua is in coffee growing area of Central America. The altitude gives cool nights, the rains fall in just the correct amounts at the correct time, and the soil appears to be perfect. We learned LOTS about coffee in two hours, at the finca, coffee plantation very close to the city. It's part of the tourism business of the city, not 'touristy' at all, but very well done. Stuart and I joined three other English speaking people for our 2pm tour...I would have done the spanish speaking tour, but Stuart wouldn't have gotten much out of it! And, I learned more in the English tour, too.

There are two kinds of coffee plants: robusta and arabica. The robusta grows in the sun, produces more poundage (read: more profitable for the grower), but is not as tasty. Much of the cheaper coffees in the world are robusta. Robusta is also the kind that destroys jungles, because it needs sun. The trees are much taller than the arabica plants, and more prone to damage from insects and disease, which in turn prompts the growers to use more chemicals. Arabica grows in the shade, produces fewer harvests in one year, but of higher quality beans. The bushes can get as tall as 10 feet, but here don't usually grow taller. There is one harvest a year, it runs from January to March. This coffee is harvested by hand, when the beans or cherries, are just the perfect maturity. Since arabica is grown in shade, it is the understory of the jungle, or other trees. At this finca, it was growing under papayas, avocados and jungle trees. The branches, loaded right now with the bright red cherries, were long and soft and remind me of a forsythia's habit, only taller and with a central trunk.

                                                                                                                                                       
Arabica seedlings are grown in pots, under shade until they are 5 months old, then they are planted.They begin producing at about 3 years old, and will produce for about about 45 years. I don't know how long the finca's keep the the bushes...I have to believe that the harvest drops as the bush gets older.

The cherries are harvested by hand, and put in huge cement tanks of water to soften the outer hull, and then are run through a mechanical hulling machine much like a large version of the machine that  ....invented in Wilmington for shelling peanuts.  Each cherry has two coffee beans in it.  The beans are then spread on the ground to dry in the sun.  They are raked several times a day for several days.  Stuart is pictured with some drying coffee....

The coffee is then roasted.  Roasting is a very complicated idea, even if the process is simple!  The roaster knows the sounds that the coffee beans make after a certain amount of time, and tastes the beans.  We learned that the darker the roast, the more bitter the coffee, and the less caffine delivered.  I took a photo of a chart, will find it and post it.  Very interesting!

I'm having a hard time with the technicalities of the site right now, so scroll down to the pictures below...
The chart at the bottom shows how much money the coffee brings.  The locals, who so heavily depend on the coffee harvest to buy bare necessities, get the least amount of the 'pie'.