Growing coffee

[Luke_G]

Re: Growing coffee

wozz happennin man? is everything outta whack? or will these red cherries just hang around over the cold months until they ripen up properly in spring? does this sort of thing happen regularly?

It IS that time of the year actually....almost a month early but i was expecting it after the recent dry spell up here.

The tips of the branches are also going black and dying back ??

I have only had black leaves and ends 2 times...
The first time was frost
The second time i planted in soil that was too sandy and drained too much.
If you plants are still very light in color and almost yellow AM... this is likely the problem....otherwise...has it been cold enough there for a frost?

[Luke_G]

Re: Growing coffee

Actually now that i think of it AM...

I had blackness like u describe last year after i stripped my plants bare.
I figure it was because i had done nothing to them after stripping them. Lack of nutrients i assume? .. not a lack of water though.

FYI... i never prune my trees either. Im sure nobody pruned Ethiopian coffee trees before they were discovered and they lived long enough for that didnt they? lol

[A_M]

Re: Growing coffee

Actually now that i think of it AM...

I had blackness like u describe last year after i stripped my plants bare.
I figure it was because i had done nothing to them after stripping them. Lack of nutrients i assume? .. not a lack of water though.

FYI... i never prune my trees either. Im sure nobody pruned Ethiopian coffee trees before they were discovered and they lived long enough for that didnt they? lol

Mine is teh one that I rescued and was in hard rocky ground and almost no root system.

Came good and then all teh berries grew and expanded over night.. Been maturing for a while now. Then I noticed teh other day that many branches were dying back to the fruit.. I snipped them off.

Today I noticed a few berries going orange, so expect to see red soon.


Will send pics soon... But have to assume the tree had plenty of shock and may not behave as well as normal OR expected. Will be pruning after harvest.

PS. Got a triple basket.. Channeling.. Doubt I could; even if I wanted to..... Switches arrive this week. Should have enough for you, if all works out OK.

PPS. Still hanging out for that grinder

[tonyt]

Re: Growing coffee

i never prune my trees either. Im sure nobody pruned Ethiopian coffee trees before they were discovered and they lived long enough for that

the main problem i have with not pruning is that its a slow and scratchy job to pick the cherries by hand in the unpruned trees. no doubt thats a consideration in a plantation picked by hand but if my two unpruned trees do as well over two years as the two pruned ones, i might leave them to go too. they look a lot better when theyre big and bushy.

[Rolley]

Re: Growing coffee

Hey Everyone!

I just found out ...... (well i THINK ive found out)... something really interesting about my arabica trees..

See, one of my trees has never been able to ripen its cherries properly, well thats what I thought until this week. Id just assumed until now that the tree must have had some deficiency or something, which doesnt make sense because the other tree right next to it is exposed to identical soil, feeding, water and light (and produces fine cherries).

What the tree has been doing is getting a ton of cherries, which turn yellow, then instead of going to red they just dry off and rot like a normal red cherry would if you left it on the tree. It really surprised me this week when I decided to taste the yellow cherries - theyre perfectly sweet (tasting ripe), and formed like a normal ripe red cherry in shape, feel and size..... SO.... Im a bit excited because I think it means I have two varieties of coffee, a normal red ripening K7, and who knows what, a yellow catui, yellow gold or yellow bourbon variety! Ill have to harvest the yellow cherries and process them separately! I wonder if therell be any significant taste difference?



How cool.

[Thundergod]

Re: Growing coffee

Wow!
Mine have a few berries starting to go red.
I noticed some yellow ones. Now Ill have to go see if they are on separate trees.

[madpierre06]

Re: Growing coffee

Hey TG and Rolley, nice work from both of yous. Good luck with the fruit, have yas worked out what processing method yous will be using. Anything exotic, or plain old basic stuff?

[Thundergod]

Re: Growing coffee

As simple as possible for me.

[Rolley]

Re: Growing coffee

yeah I usually keep it simple. with the earlier batch of ripe cherries I tried full dried (with the skin on), but with the couple of bowls I picked the other day Ill go and do semi dried again, just pulp them on the the shed floor and leave them to dry out for ages

Its getting the parchment off thats the big pain (shudder).. heh.

[Luke_G]

Re: Growing coffee

Its getting the parchment off thats the big pain (shudder).. heh.

I totally agree!

I find it best to take the parchment off the first lot right before i pulp the second lot(roughly 10 days apart) on the same day.
It saves time and your not mucking around with it every day or so.

Congrats on the Yellows too Rolley.... im envious!

[Brewman]

Re: Growing coffee

My plan this year was to pickle some of my fresh green bean in 2 different liquids.

cider/sake coffee sounds promising.
innis & gunn in scotland mature their beer in whiskey vats, which makes a for a nice brew.

theres no reason a bit of experimentation shouldnt occasionally turn up something worth carrying on.

You guys need to follow up with BrewMan... He may be in a position to add some extra comment.

thats true - one of the things i was wondering about is how you tell barley is actually malting. do you see the little shoots, or are they internal and that is enough to convert the starches? coffee is not barley and would not operate the same way, but ill need to bone up a bit on malting before i try it on my beans.

if brewman is listening, what do you know about this?

Sorry for the slow response but Ive had to sacrifice my forum time for more urgent activities lately :-/

Coffee Cider/sake, Im making the assumption that you are intending to make this from the fruit rather than the bean?? This will be very simple and should be rather nice. Be warned that only a small portion of the sweetness from the fruit will survive the fermentation, however you will retain the aroma so essentially youll end up with a cider that smells very fruity but does not have a strong fruit taste. You can cheat and paturise (kill the yeast) after fermentation then add unfermented fruit juice- this is what a lot of commercial places do to get the strong fruit flavour.
Another option is to make a fruit mead (melomel is the real name ) these have the most glorious fruity taste and lovely mouthfeel but are a bit of an artform. However if you are really keen sling me a pm and Ill give you the details of two gentlemen that make excellent melomels (there are not many people that can make a good one - its a style of drink that is dying out, along with the knowledge of how to make them ).

If you are intending to use the bean for flavour in your beverige; roast it as normal, pull your shot then add this to whatever your making. Leaving fruit seeds/hearts in a fermenting liquor is fraught with awful tastes and in worst case poisons.

Determining whether barley is malting is easy As soon as you see the root shoot starting to emerge from the grain it is malting.
What is happening during this stage is that the seed is converting the grain centre into starches that the seed can use as energy to grow until the plant emerges from the soil. Unfortunately the plant doesnt convert it all to starch in one go, it converts some then starts eating while the conversion keeps going. The malsters art is to decide when to stop this process (by roasting) to get the most starch.
Some more useless info This same process also stimulates the creation of enzymes in barley. These are what make barley so important to brewing as very few other grains have the enough/any enzymes. If you just eat the seed it is horrible mushy stuff that has lots of energy and the taste appeal of cold porrige. The malted grain tastes yummy but unfortunately will not ferment as the yeast behaves like a spoilt child and refuses to eat it. The enzymes in barley convert the starches into sugars, which taste even yummier ( and a fair portion survives fermentation and keep the sweetness in beer). The grains without enough/any enzymes and can only be brewed when combined with malted barley  


ps Doh! there is one other alcoholic drink you can make with the coffee fruit, a lambic. This is a naturally fermented beer which is rather sour. The sourness is then offset by the addition of fruit. I know it sounds awful but it is actually very nice Try a peche (peach) or kriek (cherry) I think youll be pleasantly surprised - I was ;D

[Luke_G]

Re: Growing coffee

Im making the assumption that you are intending to make this from the fruit rather than the bean??

Actually no...lol
A roaster/grower i know gave me some coffee he had pickled in vinegar for a month before processing, drying and roasting.
The result was pretty average but it got me thinking...and now so have you?

I have access to tonnes(is in 1000s of kilos) of hulled fruit and was wondering what it takes to ferment it?
I have only ever had a quick go at making home brewed bear and i have made Sake the past few years.
The Sake needs a mold found only in a Japanese trees seeds called Kijin Koji....rare and expensive.
What it does it changes the starch in the rice to sugar and the sugar into alcohol in one process.

Not sure what needs to be done to the coffee cherries to ferment them?


PM sent

[A_M]

Re: Growing coffee

I have access to tonnes(is in 1000s of kilos) of hulled fruit and was wondering what it takes to ferment it?

AND

Determining whether barley is malting is easy As soon as you see the root shoot starting to emerge from the grain it is malting.
What is happening during this stage is that the seed is converting the grain centre into starches that the seed can use as energy to grow until the plant emerges from the soil. Unfortunately the plant doesnt convert it all to starch in one go, it converts some then starts eating while the conversion keeps going. The malsters art is to decide when to stop this process (by roasting) to get the most starch.

Some more useless info This same process also stimulates the creation of enzymes in barley. These are what make barley so important to brewing as very few other grains have the enough/any enzymes. If you just eat the seed it is horrible mushy stuff that has lots of energy and the taste appeal of cold porrige. The malted grain tastes yummy but unfortunately will not ferment as the yeast behaves like a spoilt child and refuses to eat it. The enzymes in barley convert the starches into sugars, which taste even yummier ( and a fair portion survives fermentation and keep the sweetness in beer). The grains without enough/any enzymes and can only be brewed when combined with malted barley  

So what we are talking about :

1: Some BEANS  

2: Some one soaking and coming up with a way to gauge / determine that a shoot is starting to emerge from the grain

3: Separating said Malted Coffee beans from  the other ones..

4: Preparing the Malted coffee beans

5: Roasting said coffee beans

6: Drink result  or Toss in Bin 69  = Do we try all that again  :


OR


The raw pulped coffee cherry and doing something to make a palatable drink from said pulp / waste product?

A Coffee fruit mead ?

http://www.brewboard.com/index.php?showtopic=68022

NOTE:  Polyphenols -- these include flavonoids, resveratrol, flavins, anthocyanidins, and catechins -- are available in all kinds of berries such as acai berries, blueberries and coffee berry as well as grapes, tea, wine, olive oil, and chocolate.

Most information out there is one of Pulp = Work... Surly there must be some better use for it  

[maheel]

Re: Growing coffee

what do they taste like raw? sweet ? any sugar in them?

if any sugar in them.
you could mash a couple of KG up.
boil it for an hour or so, strain it off (or not?)
throw in some yeast and maybe some yeast nutrients
(maybe ad a bit more fermentables (sugar / malt / dex)
let it ferment out

distill it off in a simple pot still.
drink crazy liquor

[Brewman]

Re: Growing coffee

what do they taste like raw?  sweet ? any sugar in them?

if any sugar in them.
you could mash a couple of KG up.
boil it for an hour or so, strain it off (or not?)
throw in some yeast and maybe some yeast nutrients
(maybe ad a bit more fermentables (sugar / malt / dex)
let it ferment out

distill it off in a simple pot still.
drink crazy liquor

Yep, its as simple as that. Any fruit with simple sugars can be fermented and distilled to make spirit. Making cider is much the same without the distillation.