nanson.ch coffee

A Visit to a Coffee Plantation

The plantation was around 2 hours drive from São Paulo. In terms of size and processing this place is anything but industrial. There are roughly 55,000 coffee plants, only enough to make around 500, 60kg sacks. Artisanal is the word that springs to mind as you walk through the process. A small shop in the nearby town of Itu provides most of the sales. Harvesting is normally May to September, so we were given a quick run through the process rather than seeing everything in full flow.

This is where it all starts as the berries ripen in the sun. Much like vines, it's around 5 years after planting before the first coffee beans can be harvested. The plant to the right is around 35 years old. With judicious beating of the tree, the beans fall onto plastic sheets. To separate the beans from other detritus e.g. leaves, insects etc. there's a great show to watch involving workers throwing the beans in the air with large round 'sieves' - catching the beans again as they fall and the wind taking all the light material.

Once the detritus is removed, you nead to put the resulting beans through a machine which both washes and sorts the berries. Unripe red and green berries are heavier so fall to the bottom for collection. It will take another week or so of sunshine to get them fully dried. The rest of the washed beans are raked out onto a large courtyard for drying in the the sun.

The next stage is to put the beans through another machine which takes the husks away from the beans, leaving bright creamy coloured beans - similar in colour to unroasted cashews - these are what are packed into 60kg sacks - the roasting being done later means that the beans still don't smell like coffee.

Beans will be sold like this, or roasted on a small scale as in the picture to the left. Above you can see the industrial scale weighing methodology - small scales and a spoon - excellent!

So what's the coffee like? The aroma is muted, slightly smokey, and there's a lovely bitterness to the taste. So an above average coffee for 5 Rials per pack or €1.5 - guess whos suitcase smelled of coffee for the return trip?