Processing the bean

[Presso]

Im in the middle of processing my first batch of beans.

I harvested them from trees at a mates place. The cherries have been pulped and are fermenting as we speak. In about a day or so Ill spread them to dry.

Does anyone know if it is really that important to separate all the cherry material from the fermenting brew?

Id like to wait until I spread it out and just sweep the dry bits up.

[grendel]

Re: Processing the bean

Wonderful!

Are you going to make it available on the bean bay?

I miss living in my old place in Qld because we had coffee trees there - and to think I didnt drink coffee at the time! My grandfather used to process it himself.

Do you know what variety of coffee it is?

[rice]

Re: Processing the bean

I cant answer your question about processing, but great that you are home grocessing, home grown coffee!

Do you know which cultivar the plants are?

Looks like youll have more than the 15 or so beans Tom from Sweetmarias ended up with!
http://sweetmarias.com/homeprocessedcoffee.html
http://sweetmarias.com/growingcoffeeathome.html

[Presso]

Re: Processing the bean

Id love to put it on bean bay. My reading suggests it will not be ready for roasting until Dec :-?.

Il know the varieties for sure by the end of the week, my mate has 8 different sorts of tree, we accidently mixed two varieties in the images above.

One baby bath tub yielded about 5kgs wet bean, this will make less than 2kgs apparently, the pulping took 5 man hours!

Im harvesting again on Thursday afternoon, the first batch is now fermenting, 24hrs of that and it will be ready for a bit of sun, I hope the weather clears!

[Presso]

Re: Processing the bean

The cultivar was "Arabica, Byron Bay Red"

Im on to my second batch, I decided to process these without fermentation.

Results to follow....

[grendel]

Re: Processing the bean

Just about rainy season over there - thinking on monsooning them?

[Presso]

Re: Processing the bean

Skies have been clear for a while, weve had a good bit of rain in August so I think the October wet will probably wait.

The "naturals" im doing at the moment are going to be a real problem, they are sticky and tacky even after three sunny days, Ive cracked a few shells and the results look promising, much darker blue-grey bean than those that were fermented.

I look forward to cupping both, side by side to find out the truth about the difference the processing can make on the same bean.

[Presso]

Re: Processing the bean

First batch of Byron Bay Reds have been roasted

[Presso]

Re: Processing the bean

What a process!

Sure makes me appreciate the price of a bag of beans

[Presso]

Re: Processing the bean

The naturals on the otherhand were a lot harder to shell

[grendel]

Re: Processing the bean

Noice!

looking forward to bidding for my 10 grams on the bean bay. . .

[Viviane]

Re: Processing the bean

Looks like fun

The 1.something kg of beans you finished with - how does that equate to the total beans of one tree?

[Presso]

Re: Processing the bean

I filled a baby bath(about 8kg) with red cherries to get 1850g of bean!

[Javaphile]

Re: Processing the bean

I read someplace that on average it takes roughly 20,000 beans to make a kg of roasted coffee.

Java "Thats a lot of picking!" phile