The Wild Drink Blog

A while ago I posted a topic titled Cornish Coffee, it was about an idea that I had for harvesting, processing & roasting some of the coffee being grown right here in Cornwall at The Eden Project. Well things have moved faster than I thought, mainly thanks to Tom from Origin and the very kind people at Eden, namely Hetty & Craig.

Today Tom and I spent the afternoon picking coffee!

All of the coffee at Eden is located in the ‘humid tropics’ biome which ranges in temperature from 20°C-30°C (roughly). The biome is very humid and also simulates an altitude higher than its actual level. There are two seperate plantations of coffee, the first one is Robusta and the second (which I had not spotted before) is Arabica. The Robusta cherries which I photographed last time had hardly ripened at all and nearly all of them were green.

Then we wre introduced to the Arabica section which was much higher up in the dome, some of them were shaded by some large trees and there was a lot of them! I could not believe my eyes when I saw all the ripe cherries sitting on the branches and Eden were happy for us to go ahead and pick them. Ants and other pests are a big problem at Eden so unfortunately the plants need to be sprayed with friendly pesticides, the staff had avoided spraying the coffee in preparation for our arrival.

Picking coffee only 30 minutes from where you live is a very strange experience, i’d probably have to travel by plane for hours to see coffee trees in the wild so it really was a treat. Five of us picked about 1kg of cherries for about half an hour being sure to only take the ripe ones, there should be a lot more ripening in the next few weeks. We chatted about the plants, harvesting and up keep. For a short while it really felt like we were in Ethiopia up in the hills!

Now, obviously this is just the beginning of the process. I’ve already started processing the cherries before they start to rot, they need to be pulped, dried and then eventually roasted. Main barriers to cross include getting the moisture levels of the beans down to 10-12% (I have a moisture measuring machine on the way hopefully), drying them at the correct rate, and of course roasting them as best we can with only a limited supply. I’ll also need to go back for more in the next two weeks, judging by the amount of almost ripe examples there should be a big harvest next time.

I will of course blog the entire process and with any luck we will be able to create one of the first cups of coffee ever from beans grown in the UK.