Growing coffee

[FGOB]

Not, pretty, not much but my first crop grown in Chatswood in Sydney. Not enough for the Behmor so I used the old iRoast. Fermented them for a week. Removed the parchment by hand after whizzing in a food processor with a plastic blade.

Waiting a few days to degas before trying it. https://vimeo.com/79623879

[Elvis3577]

Have dried the beans for a while now ( inside the house as I've only got like 20-25 beans that were not floaters ... )
How do you really know that they are dry enough i.e. not still too moist? ( without biting every single one ;-) )
Do you normally weigh them as soon as they come out of the wet fermentation process , and then weigh them again later to gauge the progress ?
Is it really crucial to get it dead right , or can you apply a law of averages ?

Any insight will be appreciated, thanks !

Ta , Elvis

[Elvis3577]

Thanks again Graham

Certainly helpful.
I've read about the wet and the dry methods. I guess I was just wondering if it is possible to refer back to the dry method after a failed wet one.
And how bad would it be if you just skipped to the next step ? What difference would it make ?
I also read on some coffee research website that you can't or shouldn't leave them in water too long ( like 72 hours ) because this can cause mould or fungus later in the process.

PS Not sure how I'm going to tackle the hulling etc. I've got no gear what so ever !
I'll have to get cracking , because the branches are loaded !!

Cheers E A P

[GrahamK]

I also read on some coffee research website that you can't or shouldn't leave them in water too long ( like 72 hours ) because this can cause mould or fungus later in the process.
PS Not sure how I'm going to tackle the hulling etc. I've got no gear what so ever !

I also read you should not leave in the water for too long. I imagine with small quantities it is possibly easier to keep a handle on fungus etc?

Hulling is a pain, and more of a pain than pulping. Many people appear to use a Kitchen Blender with either a plastic blade or take the edge off the steel blade. I use a converted old hand meat mincer, but quite frankly I think the blender option may be easier. I empty it all into a sieve then blow off the husks etc.

After all the hard work you really appreciate your little cache of final product, and then start dreaming of professional pulpers & hullers. To date I have not been able to justify the costs. It would be interesting to find out how much they paid for the last batch of pulpers they sourced for the FairCrack project recently. But there was no talk of supplying hullers. There is an Ozzy Coy that provides them (manual ones), but still way too much to justify the amount of beans I currently pick.

GrahamK

[FGOB]

In the end I resorted to an old Sunbeam food dryer I had in a cupboard to finish them off . I hulled mine by hand after a whiz in the food processor but have been told that rubbing them on concrete under a hessian sack works for larger batches. Planning to taste it on Friday. I will let you know.

[Elvis3577]

Just for exercise 's sake I started reading this whole thread from the beginning, and low and behold there was mentioning of the "Hartman" method ( page 2 ), which basically answers my question about the fermenting issues.
So by the looks of it it's okay to do half-half.

[Elvis3577]

I'll have a look on the most obvious websites for some gear.
I might get away with the conventional fan forced oven for roasting this time , but might keep an eye out for a popcorn popper over the summer/ Xmas period.
Maybe , just maybe I might invest in a proper roaster down the track when the other 6 trees that I've grown from green beans come into fruition.
But they are in ( far ) less than ideal spots. They're close to 3 years old and still only just over a foot high at best.
Plenty of time to experiment and learn ;-)

[Elvis3577]

Graham wrote :To date I have not been able to justify the costs.

I guess I'm on your side with that one. Although I'm okay with a hobby costing money, for the sake of having one.
But 2, 3, 4 hundred dollars buys a lot of roasted beans !
Add a little $34,- Sunbeam grinder , a filter and some boiling hot water straight from the kettle, and Bob = ur Uncle

[Elvis3577]

I realize this part is off-topic as far as growing is concerned.But this is what we all aim/grow for !
My wife urged me to have a go yesterday afternoon.
So we started peeling/picking the green beans by hand.
And it is a bit like picking some old skin or callus. It was a wee bit thicker than I expected and a bit surprised to see a 'milk chocolate' color inside.
Anyway placed it on a dish in the oven ( 250C ). Got the first crack in about 4 minutes. They started crackling and moving/wiggling a bit.
Then I must have had a second crack real quick after that, because I missed it ( in hind sight ). Let it go to 16 minutes , while dialed the dial back to 200 C a little after the first crack. Pulled them out , put them under a desktop fan, and I'm afraid to say ... they look like SC12...
Oh well , better luck next crop !?

I'll grind it this arvo anyway and post the finding.

Ta. Elvis

[Elvis3577]

Well that was quite disgusting. Even with a bit of sugar and milk.....
It was more like someone infused a burned wooden stick in a mug of boiling water...
very forgettable.

[FGOB]

Tons of crema, a little light in body, probably because I under dosed. Pleasantly bitter with a hint of cocolate. Not the best coffee I have ever roasted but certainly not the worst.

[Divey]

Hi friendz ...
I am growing coffee trees since 5 years. And this is very hard to grow in the begining but as well as its also a profitable business . Spray is very important for their well growth .

Okay, I have to ask a question. What do you spray the trees with?

[Elvis3577]

Just noticed two days ago that on the plants that I grew from beans, have got their very first flowers on them.
( pretty happy with that.)
Also I've re-planted a coffee plant that was not growing really wel under a gum tree.
I've put it in a fairly large terracotta pot, and moved it away , and it seems to catch on. Better colour and bigger leaves.
Good to know that's possible as well.

Cheers. E. A. P.

[herbie]

About 2 years ago we planted 2 Rojo dwarf Arabica coffee trees and they are now loaded with cherries. I picked approx. 1/3 about a month ago and ended up with about 120g of beans to roast. I have just finished processing the second lot and have about 160g to roast when they are finished drying and there are still about that much to pick again when they get darker red. The beans have been put through a plastic garden sieve to sort the smaller ones from larger ones, but even these are fairly small.
We removed the skin and pulp manually one at a time (time consuming) and then added small amount of rain water and allowed the beans to ferment about 48 hours. (I changed the water on the second lot halfway through- not a good idea as they did not ferment as well.) Beans were then washed with a pressure hose in a garden sieve till not slippery to feel and then put on a mesh drying rack for about 10 days to dry until they snapped when broken in half.
The first batch parchment removal (hulling) went ok by rubbing the parchment covered beans with the hessian backing on an old piece of carpet on the bitumen driveway. It took a fair bit of effort though. The second batch (which did not ferment as well) was harder to hull and so I tried a paint stirrer on a 240v electric drill (my cordless drill would not rev fast enough)and it worked a treat using a narrow 250 ml beaker. I drilled a hole in the lid for the stirrer shaft otherwise beans went everywhere with no lid. I feel I may have picked some beans too early because of the high percentage of small beans. I will not roast until I get 250g of either small or large beans hoping for an even roast. But it is fun.

[Elvis3577]

Hi Herbie

Your plants must have been semi mature I guess ?
It's looking very good, that crop. Bit jealous even ...
I just wanted to say that I like the drill with the paint stirrer/ agitator. I think I might try something similar this year.
Even though the average air temp has been a bit warmer than average this year , I've only got one maroon colored bean so far. Quite some cherries have gone of the dark green colour and look a bit green yellowish at the moment. But I guess weather should improve in about 6 weeks again.
Thanks for the hint.