Know Your Joe!

While all of our friends back home were shivering in the near-zero temperatures, our family spent some of the very first days of January, 2015, touring the Dalton Coffee Plantation just outside the town of Antigua, Guatemala.  It was SPECTACULAR (even though, to be honest, we did get a little hot in the blazing sunshine), and I learned a LOT about coffee.

It was so sunny that Mark needed sunglasses. Check out the reflection in their lenses!

So, if you're not too mad at me for rubbing in our excellent climate here, please read on to learn a whole lot more about that humble beverage so many of us take for granted. (Sorry, I know it's long. But, it's very interesting information!)

This was our awesome tour vehicle, which picked us up in Antigua and took us to the plantation.

Cutie pies on the left side of the truck.

Cutie pies on the right side of the truck.

First off, you should know that coffee originated in Africa. The reason that coffee plants contain caffeine is to act as a natural repellent. In essence, we are the only critters who actively seek out this bitter plant. Most others avoid it like the plague. There are actually only a couple of animals who can and will eat coffee (outside of some nasty insects, of course.)

The first is a type of civet cat whose digestive system allows it to partake of whole, ripe coffee beans. If you're a real coffee connoisseur (or just ridiculously rich, given how expensive it is) you might have tried a cup of this special, Indonesian coffee. The process is pricey, but somewhat inelegant. After the cat eats the bean, it goes through its entire digestive system, and is <ahem> collected at the end of the process. Only then is the bean cleaned (one would hope), roasted, and sold.  

The other type of animal which eats coffee beans is the goat, of course. Legend says that this wild plant was a favorite of goats in Ethiopia. One day the shepherds noted how hyper it made the animals, so they took the red beans home and made their own infusion with hot water. Though it tasted terrible, it did help keep them awake. Eventually they sold the beans to a monastery, because the monks needed focus and energy for their work of copying scripture. Eventually, through trade, it made its way to Arabia, which is why the best quality coffee today is called Arabica.

There are four types of coffee plants. The two most common, which make up 80% or more of what we drink, are Arabica and Robust. Robust coffee is the only kind which makes a tree, rather than a bush. It is (as its name implies)  much heartier, and a much more prolific producer, but it's also a much lower quality of fruit and has 50% more caffeine than Arabica. When you get cheaper coffee, you're most likely drinking Robust coffee beans. (Unless, of course, you're drinking instant coffee, which we found out was really not made of much coffee at all, and was mostly chemicals and fillers like chickpeas or chicory.)

Welcome to the Dalton Coffee Plantation!

Anyway - back to the Dalton Plantation. Guatemala is one of the main producers of coffee in the Western Hemisphere. Even though it is a very small nation, its mix of mountainous terrain, temperate weather, and lots of sunshine make it nearly ideal for growing coffee. It should be noted that, aside from flavorings which can be added during the roasting process, the natural flavor of coffees comes from the conditions in which it was grown. The same plant, grown in two different places, would produce two different flavors. There are approximately eight "coffee zones" in Guatemala, though Antigua is considered one of only a handful of 'balanced' locations in the world. The coffee from there really is pretty spectacular and sought after.

Anyway - growing conditions in Antigua (and the rest of Guatemala) are *nearly* perfect. Nearly, I say, because it has one major drawback - volcanic soil. While this type of fertile soil is good for growing almost everything else, it has a tendency to promote nematodes. Nematodes and coffee don't mix.

At least, nematodes and the best types of coffee don't mix, unless you're willing to get creative. So, in order to maintain both high yields and excellent quality, producers in Guatemala have used an innovative grafting technique which pairs the roots of Robust coffee plants (which are immune to nematodes) and the stems and leaves of Arabica coffee plants (which produce better quality coffee) for the perfect combination! The process isn't easy, since it involves making a V shaped slit in the root plant, and a corresponding cut in the top plant, in order for the cores to fit snugly together. Then, a special tape is used to wrap the "new" plant. This process is done when the stems of both plants are about as a big around as the lead in a number 2 pencil!

If you look closely, you can see the graft on this little plant.

At the Dalton Plantation, they have a nursery where they start both types of plants, and do their grafting on-site. 100% of their plant grafters are women. It was discovered, after a process of trial and error, that when men grafted, they had a 50% survival rate. When women did the work, they had a 92% survival rate. Eventually they figured out that the difference was due in small part to the delicate hands and patience of the women workers, but mostly it was because of the difference in Ph between women's sweat and men's.

Every year the plantation has a contest to see who can successfully graft the most plants in 20 minutes. The winner, for the past 3 years straight, has been a woman who's worked on the grafting floor for over 35 years. In just 1/3 of an hour, using only her hands, a razor blade, and the wrapping tape, she grafted 84 plants, with a 94% survival rating. Wow!

Anyway - after the plants are grafted, they're left in the nursery for around a year, after which they're only about one foot tall. (Arabica coffee plants grow very slowly.) Then, they're moved to a production row, but won't being putting on the delicate, white flowers (called false jasmine) that turn into coffee beans until they're three years old. At four-years old, the plantation begins picking the ripe beans, though they're still not fully mature until they're five to seven years old, at which point they're approximately three feet tall.

Coffee plants typically survive here around 35-40 years, though they only produce for 25 or so of those years. After plants have reached around 12 years of age, their quality starts to decrease, so the plantation prunes them down to their original graft point, and then has to wait another four years for them to produce well again. In total, the plants are pruned three times during their lifetime.

This is the coffee nursery. The tiniest plants are newly-pruned. The taller ones around just under a year old. 

The annual cycle of the coffee plant is even more interesting than the lifetime cycle! Each year the plants start to flower in October. The fruits develop rapidly, and begin being ripe in November. (Incidentally, this is why the Guatemalan school year runs from January through November - so kids could be off to help with the harvest, just like the U.S. schedule!) The peak time for harvest is December and January, though it can last all the way until March.

Once the plant has flowered, it begins producing berries, which start off as green, then turn yellow, and are considered ripe when they are shiny and dark red, like a cherry. A mature (seven or so year old plant) will produce nine pounds of ripe beans, which will translate into only one pound of roasted, processed coffee! It takes 30-40 red berries to make each cup of coffee.

Because of the delicate nature of the plant and the fact that not all of its berries ripen at the same time, all of the coffee here is harvested by hand. The Dalton plantation has just under 400 acres in coffee plants, which must be grown in the gentle shade of other plants. The trees planted with the coffee  on this plantation are fast-growing and frequently pruned, yielding lumber as another cash crop.

This is our tour guide, Diego, holding up a ripe coffee bean. Behind him you can see an adult plant with red berries, ready to be harvested.

Each year the Dalton Coffee Plantation employs 200 to 300 pickers from the surrounding communities for its coffee harvest. It is stable, sought-after employment, and there are people who are 3rd generation pickers. In fact, coffee picking is a family affair. While the children are not officially hired, or expected to help with the harvest, families typically come together, including little ones on mothers' backs, toddlers in tow, and even the family dog!

Blue sky. Mountains. Coffee plants. Trees. Cut timber. Workers heading back from the harvest.

<sigh> There were some really little kiddos there.

It was conflicting to see children at a work site, but I had to keep in mind that this type of arrangement ensures jobs for the adults, safety for the kids (since they don't have to be left alone at home), and money to put food on the table. Plus, most likely, many of the little kids I saw along the road, walking to the coffee fields, are being taught by their parents how to harvest these delicate beans, which means they'll be more prepared to do well on the job when it's their turn to take over.

Each worker harvests 35-50 pounds of ripe coffee beans per day, and deposits their full bags on trucks like these, which are then taken to the on-site processing plant. 

While on the tour, we had the chance to pick our own ripe coffee bean. (It's a twist-and-pull process, just so you know.). Diego, our guide, explained to us that there are actually four layers around each coffee bean. The first is the red hull, which you can easily remove by just squeezing the bean. This layer actually has 40% of the bean's caffeine, and (when fresh) tastes and smells almost exactly like a red, bell pepper. The gift shop at the plantation actually sells coffee hull jelly, which we are excited to try!

The hull and whole bean.

Coffee cherry jelly!

The second layer is called the sugar, or mucilage, layer. It's kind of slimy. If you put a raw, hulled bean in your mouth it's quite sweet. Poor kids (especially those along for harvest) often chew on them as a kind of candy treat. We'll get to the other two layers in a moment.

While we removed the first and second layer by hand (or mouth) on the berry we picked, that's not the typical process! Usually the beans are sorted and taken for processing within an hour or so of being picked. The first process is a soaking, which causes the bad (light) berries (usually those that have been drilled into and eaten by bug larvae) to rise to the top. These are flushed into a waiting wagon, and will be used for very-low quality coffee or for compost.

Behind that back wall is the holding tank for the water and berries. The green tube going to the right takes the bad (light) berries outside.  The bigger, center tube takes the good berries to the wet mill and pulper, which removes the top layer of the picked bean. 

They had fancy machines, but most of them were old, since the process hasn't changed for decades!

After the first layer has been removed, the beans are transferred to holding tanks where they're submerged in water for 30 hours. This, apparently, is the exact amount of time necessary to allow some of the sugar layer to permeate the beans, giving them a hint of sweetness, and to have just a bit of fermentation begin. After 30 hours, the beans are drained, put into a centrifuge to remove any remaining mucilage layer, and then the drying process begins.

Here you can see the newly-drained beans after 30 hours of soaking. They're under burlap bags.

Drying here (like most other parts of the process) is both precise and scientific, and traditional and natural. Other (cheaper) coffees are dried mechanically. In this plantation, every bit of the coffee is dried in the Guatemalan sunshine, on huge drying patios made from terra cotta tile, which help absorb the extra water. Drying masters monitor the beans to get the moisture content down to 11-12%, which takes approximately 8 to 10 days. At night, they're covered to prevent dew falling on them. During the day, they're shuffled and moved every 45 minutes to ensure even drying.

The picturesque drying patios are a great place for a photo op. :) 

Our tour guide, Diego, standing next to the tool used to move the beans during the drying process.

Vast. Impressive. Beautiful.

Once the optimal dryness has been achieved, the beans still have two layers left. While they can be stored in this condition for up to eight months, they usually remove these layers almost immediately. The harder one is called the parchment layer, and is removed by friction in a dry mill. The last layer is called silver skin. Most also comes off in the dry mill, and the rest is burned off in the roasting process. In between, the coffee goes through a winnower which blows away powdered silverskin and any broken bits of beans.

A handful of newly-dried beans.

The parchment layer with the silverskin underneath.

Gold bean, bean with silverskin, bean with parchment.

 (Whew! It's been a lot of steps so far between ripe beans and cup of coffee. But wait, we're not done!) After the beans are dried and milled, they're sorted by size on an agitating table. The biggest beans are usually the most bitter. The smallest are the most acidic. For this reason, the medium-sized beans are the best. Often, people think that the best coffee only comes in whole-bean. However, blend master often combine just the right flavors of beans to create a sublime mix. Because these beans are different sizes, they are ground before packaging. So, if you're a 'whole bean only' person, you might want to reconsider!

These Oliver brand agitating tables sort the beans by size. 

After the beans have been dry milled, and sorted, they're called "gold beans." The plantation sells 75% of their coffee in this stage, because then buyers can choose to roast and flavor it however they want. Their biggest buyers are in Japan and South Korea.

The remaining 25% is roasted in-house.  The roaster can hold up to 200 pounds of gold beans at a time, and has three cylinders. The middle one is where aromatics can be added to change the flavor. The middle one holds the coffee, and spins constantly to avoid burning. The outer one is where the heat comes in, usually around 400 degrees Fahrenheit. The whole process takes approximately 25 minutes, and master roasters rely on their sense of hearing to know when the beans are roasted, since the separation of the two parts of the bean makes a crackling sound, not unlike the popping of popcorn.  After roasting is complete, the beans are put into a sieve-bottomed cylinder and stirred constantly for an hour or so until it cools to room temperature and is taken for grinding or packaging.

The actual roaster here is the green cylinder in the lower right hand corner. The round, silver thing is the cooling rack.

 Incidentally, the roasting process also affects the caffeine content. The longer you roast coffee, the less caffeine it has, since much of it evaporates in the heat. So, if you like a really strong cup of coffee, you sould choose light colored beans/grind, like an Italian roast. Medium roasts will have a medium amount of caffeine, such as French of City roasts. The darkest roast, Turkish roast, actually has the last amount of caffeine, though it does have a very strong flavor. We had the chance to try their city-roast. It was delicious!

Free hair nets!

Sarah actually really loves coffee!

Rebecca does not like coffee! Rachel does, though. Incidentally, we learned that you don't actually get any of the flavor of coffee in your first sip, only its intensity. It's not until the 2nd or 3rd sip that you actually taste the real flavor of the coffee!

After it has been tested by master tasters, graded (by number of stars), and blended (sometimes), coffee grown at the Dalton Coffee Plantation is sold through their online store.  Their finest-quality coffee is 5 star, 100% Arabica, Antigua-grown, and sun-dried, whole bean coffee. It's probably some of the best Java on the planet, and you can buy it and have it delivered directly to your door! I highly recommend them. :)

I got to try this amazing coffee after our tour,and can vouch for the fact that it's truly delicious!

Hope you enjoyed this plantation tour as much as we did, and learned a lot! Next time you're ready to take a sip of your first cup of the morning, you might stop to consider just how much goes into making a perfect cuppa joe!