Coffee anyone

This is the last special event of the trip. This is the the final week(that sounds ominous).
This week will be spent sucking it ll in,golfing and saying goodbye to our new friends.


Volcan is a beautiful green,lush,perfect climate to grow anything.  I'm glad we took the trip.This is the place to be a farmer.

The volano blew 500 years ago (it is due to go again,apparently although it is not on the active volcano list)and all the ash went southerly. We all know that volcanic soil is full of nutrients and receptive to growth. Anyway..I digress.

So here's the scoop as relayed to us by Emily at Janson farms here in Volcan Panama. All coffee comes from Africa. That's right Africa.

The indigenous coffees were all transported from Africa. The further up,in elevation, the less the yield. So it is more expensive but the bigger the "cherry",therefore there is more sugar.
The skin of the "cherry" is super sweet and high in vitamin C and it makes a great fertilizer after it is dried. The nitrogen content is very high.

The actual coffee beans(there are two in each cherry) is inside the fruit itself. It takes 5 years for a coffee plant to produce a fruit,so don't be in a hurry if your a farmer.I guess it like gensing,which takes 7 years.
The coffee tree has to be pruned to allow picking. If not, it grows to tall. The Panamanians are very short after all. Laugh now.

So here's the process in pictures and condensed for the reader.

After the cherry is picked it goes through a skinning machine to remove the outer layer.
Then it sorted by size.That's important at the roasting stage so all the beans are roasted the same.
That makes sense but did you think of it before?

Then the beans are dried in the sun.They contain about 30 % moisture. This is reduced to approx. 11%.

Then they are dried and the hull removed. The drier is 100 degrees F. They use the hull to fire the drier as it burns easily and it produces good heat.

The beans are then bagged and aged for 3 to 6 months. The beans are then purchased by a broker ie. Starbucks Tim Horton's etc. and roasted to their specifications. Each end user requires specific roasting requirements. Most North Americans prefer medium roast,apparently.

After the aging process,the beans are then bagged and shipped out to the consumers(brokers).

Here,at Janson farms,each batch is approx 100 lbs and is roasted in these small batches. The light roast is approx 20 minutes. The medium is about 30 and dark roast about 40. They tasted just awesome.

Janson farms have their own roasting facilities and roast their own as well as their end users by request.
Quite a bit goes to Denmark and Holland.

They label,open,fill,weigh and box each package by hand. It is not efficient to be sure, but it is" by hand".

Did you know there is an expiation date. 2 years. That's it, From picking to the last date.
That's not a lot of time considering the bean ages  up to 6 months. So the coffee you buy on sale is likely close to the 2 year mark.

There is an International competition and last year Janson won second place in the "Geisha" coffee category. This is a very specific bean and cannot be fairly compared to the standard Arabica or Robusto bean. Panama produces great coffee.

We got to taste different "Geisha"(that is actually a language change that makes it appear Asian but it is actually Ethiopian)  coffees and I preferred the natural,sun dried,coffee the the water cleaned coffee.

I found the latter very fruity. I did not like the espresso either. The straight up natural was my preference by far.

So go taste your Costa Rican,Hawaiian,Panamanian coffees and savour the flavor of Africa.
You will likely want 100  percent Arabica beans(higher elevation, lower yield) as opposed to the Robusto(low elevation, very high yield)as there is much more flavor and quality control in Arabica. You only need a very small percentage of Arabica beans in Robusto to make the coffee blend"legal".

That's probably more than you wanted to know but it just proves that I was paying attention.
You may want to experiment with your own blend now.

See you.