Growing coffee

[tonyt]

Re: Growing coffee

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 niceTry a peche (peach) or kriek (cherry) I think youll be pleasantly surprised - I was

thanks brewman - one of my aims in life is to visit a lambic brewery in belgium, dodge the spiderwebs, breathe in the dust and try out some high-class sours. the best ive had is cantillon, but even some of them are pretty hard to take.
as for malting the coffee beans, ive had a lot germinate under the trees but never seen them actually sprouting. the coffee bean being bigger than barley, it would probably need a longer shoot than barley does to convert enough of the starches. ill just have to take a guess. there may be some info on the web - i havent got around to looking yet.

[A_M]

Re: Growing coffee

Picked a few this weekend but need to wait a few more days weeks before I strip..

Saw a few trees loaded with beans...

Bugger me if they are not locked up and belong to a Sponsor....


They were that dark and rich looking, some were even all dried up; I feel like doing a raid... But I wont..


I need about another 2 or 3 kg of raw cherries to get myself enough to finish teh mixed process (Wed and Mechanical) to allow me to have enough beans for a batch

Need to go and spot other trees growing in teh wild in Brisbane suburbia ;D

[Lacehim]

Re: Growing coffee

Got a dwarf coffee tree from Bunnings at the weekend. How many do you need for it to be worthwhile?

Says it fruits in the second year!

Any tips on planting?

[Thundergod]

Re: Growing coffee

Second year?
Maybe dwarf ones are different.
I think Im lucky I got some berries after 3 1/5 years.

Keep them out of the wind.

[A_M]

Re: Growing coffee

How many do you need for it to be worthwhile?

Depends on how heavy they fruit ;D ( don;t ya just hate me)

AND teh quality of teh cherries


I have 6 trees, but only ONE managed to produce ant cherries this year. Some one on a gardening show indicated that 4 to 6 trees in teh right conditions would produce two crops in a year and be enough to supply one home user for about 10months worth of coffee..


I have yet to find out any more or gather further info / evidence - But personal experience to date, says I will need more than 6 and more like 10 trees unless that get a very heavy crop and have at least two a year.......

[Luke_G]

Re: Growing coffee

The potted "dwarf" Arabica plant may fruit after 2 years. This could be because the plant is 2 years old by time you purchase it.

The first year of fruit is not worth while processing for consumption as with only 1 plant...its likely you will have enough cherry to count quite easily. Instead i would germinate as many as possible and boost the numbers for the following few years.

In full production you can expect a plant to produce around 400g of dried green bean per year ..sometimes less and sometimes more. Usually every second year is slightly less.

I Recently came across some old Arabica plants at my local TAFE and with trunks as wide as 15cm i would estimate there age to be around 10 years old. They are not producing nearly as much as they should but i pilfered some of the cherry anyway

[Thundergod]

Re: Growing coffee

Instead i would germinate as many as possible and boost the numbers for the following few years.

Exactly what I was thinking.
My two wont be enough even if next year is a heavy crop.

[tonyt]

Re: Growing coffee

My two wont be enough even if next year is a heavy crop.

my four trees have given 3.5kg so far this year - a month earlier than last year and there are still a lot of cherries, a lot still small and green. ill be picking till january i think.
6kilos of cherries gives me about 1kilo of dry green beans - about 15% of the cherry weight.
two years ago i got 18kg of cherries and 3kg of green beans, which with a bit of stretching i managed to make last a year, but i bought a lot of other coffee as well.
ive got two seedlings growing from cherries that i dropped while picking two years ago, but i dont expect anything from them for a while yet. one is about 40cm now and the other 25cm.
the biggest hassle is pulping them. even putting them in a bucket and pounding them with a piece of wood means youve got hours in front of the telly going through the mash one cherry at a time.
if anyone has any ideas for a simple home-made pulping system id be interested to hear about it.

i tried to germinate/malt a few early beans but no luck. ill wait till the weather heats up a bit and try again with some of the later pickings. it can take up to three months for the beans to germinate (bummer) and you can only expect 50% to sprout (bummer again).
this time ill spread them between two sacks (keep the light off them) and keep them constantly wet.
there is some talk of mimicking the kopi luwak taste by chemical means, i assume by the use of enzymes similar to the luwak gut.

[reddoor]

Re: Growing coffee

if anyone has any ideas for a simple home-made pulping system id be interested to hear about it.

I have a small Denlab modded with an electric motor which was originally hand cranked (will do about 70 odd kilos an hour - was about $800 second hand and probably too big for what you need) - anyway point is it was possibly also designed for olive de-pipping - maybe some second hand small (antique?) hand cranked olive pipper/cherry de-stoner thingo would do the job???

Just a thought - dont even know if they exist - will have an internet search tonight...

Or you could trick up one of those golf ball washers they have on golf courses

[A_M]

Re: Growing coffee

tonyt wrote on 24. Aug 2010 at 23:24:
if anyone has any ideas for a simple home-made pulping system id be interested to hear about it.

If ya in SA there is a neat Grape crusher that is going for sale..

That bay of need search for item... 190436274851

1: I want something a little smaller but in the same style I guess

AND THEN

2: I need a separator (the wife refuses to do any thing but enjoy the cup)

AND THEN

3: I want a better way to get rid of teh parchment...

Only done one tree so far and there has to be a better way : : :

[tonyt]

Re: Growing coffee

2: I need a separator    (the wife refuses to do any thing but enjoy the cup)  

AND THEN

3: I want a better way to get rid of the parchment...

yeah, my wife isnt interested in plunging into the red sticky mess either.
parchment is not a problem - ive got a food processor with a plastic blade which breaks the parchment off nicely.
then a wide shallow bowl and an electric fan outside blows the parchment away fast.
but anger management is right - theres gotta be a better way to get the beans out of the cherries.
something that comes to mind is a kind of screen with holes about the size of the beans, and a roller.
just got to get around to doing it.
reddoors olive/cherry pippers sound possible, although ive never heard of any.

heres a description of a hand operated one from india - trouble is the description is not that illuminating:

In a round disc there are slots of the size of coffee berry. Coffee berries are fed into the device through a side pipe. Operating the handles on either side rotates the wheels. The pulp on the coffee berries is separated by the rotating action. The peeled pulp being separated from the coffee beans will not get any damage due to the rotating action of the wheels. The separated coffee beans will come out through another pipe and be collected.

mmm . . . im sure it works in practice. maybe theres money to be made here. the first decent mini coffee pulper. ill think about it.

ah! eureka! its just come to me.
the blender with the plastic blade doesnt do any harm to the beans.
but it should turn the cherry pulp into a fine paste.
place pink mess on reasonably fine screen - say plastic gutter guard mesh - in a wooden frame.
hose down - hey presto!
clean coffee beans. three hours of tedium over in minutes.
ill give it a run tomorrow and see what happens. the main problem i can foresee is that the cherry pulp wont turn into a fine paste.

[tonyt]

Re: Growing coffee

yeah - it works.
not quite as i expected, but better than a block of wood and a bucket and hours of unspeakable sticky mess and hand separation.

ill do a picture of the next lot, but a test run with a small amount showed that the plastic food processor blades split the cherries, tossed out the beans and then left the cherries intact. i thought the processor might puree the cherries, but the way they end up - whole and deseeded, with very little mess - makes it easy to pick them out, leaving the seeds pretty clean. then you can either soak them a few days to get the mucus off, or dry them immediately with the mucous on for an earthier taste.

the plastic blades are supposedly dough making blades, if anyone wants to look for a food processor with this kind of blade.
our model is a mistral, recommended by womens weekly. probably only cost about $40, but does a great job. well see what happens when its really loaded up.

meanwhile, as far as i am concerned, this is a breakthrough in processing technology.

[tonyt]

Re: Growing coffee

theres bad news and . . . bad news.

bad news 1
my you beaut pulping system only works with a few cherries. large amounts still have to be laboriously separated by hand.
ive gotta get a pulper. but where? there are a lot on sale in india and china and i have made inquiries, but got no response so far. theres an australian hand pulper that sells for $750. you can get plenty of coffee from bean bay for that amount.

bad news 2
one of my trees is wilting. i dont know whether its nematodes in the roots or fusarium wilt. ive attached some pictures. does anyone know what it could be. it is affecting only one tree of my four, one of the middle trees.

[tonyt]

Re: Growing coffee

heres another picture

[A_M]

Re: Growing coffee

The unit I transplanted - Looked very much the same for some months and only now starting to recover.

Stress is all I can suggest. As to if it is Water / Soil Quality / nematodes in the roots or fusarium wilt - I have NFI, sorry to say.

Maybe another who has green fingers will be able to comment.

PS. Once I got the fruit off and a good serve of compost / mulch/ fertiliser and water (along with a prune) - Mine has started to look much better.