The Wild Drink Blog

I was going to do the processing of this coffee as one post but it’s such an involved task that I think it deserves two.

It is very important that the freshly picked cherries are dealt with as soon as possible, once off the tree they will deteriorate and eventually rot quite quickly, which, if left to happen can affect the final quality in the cup. Some of the ones collected were a bit under ripe and I had one or two that were past their best so I disposed of them, only the red ripe ones are usable. I left the cherries to soak in slightly warm water for about 5 hours to soften up the skins ready for pulping.

Eden actually have an old pulper in their display area but it’s not usable so this job needs to be done by hand. This took me about two hours to do and it’s not because it’s hard to remove the beans, but because they are so damn slippery! The pulping process literally just removes the ‘fruit’ element of the cherry - skins and pulpy flesh, which actually tastes quite sweet when properly ripe. The slippery little blighters reminded me a lot of pumpkin seeds (but smaller) when you’re removing them from the pumpkin and they slide around everywhere, I had a few fly across the room so i’ll be discovering them for the next few weeks!

In the picture I had three plates laid out for beans. The plate on the right has all the beans which came as a set of three, the bottom plate is peaberries (single beans) and the plate with lots on is all the normal pairs of beans. I would estimate that 8% of cherries were triples and 5% peaberries.

So now i’m left with a tray of slimy little baked beans that need to be cared for like a newborn baby so that they don’t get mouldy. This image demonstrates what the fruit is made up of and the various layers and stages we still need to get through to get to a nice dry bean.

The sliminess (or mucilage) is the pectin layer, there are two options to remove it - fermentation or drying. Fermentation basically involves breaking down the carbohydrates in the pectin layer in fermentation tanks until the slime comes off, the beans are then dried. Dry processing is solely patio drying the coffee in the sun for between 7-14 days and turning it regularly to avoid mould.

You will need to tune in next week to see which method I am using and to catch all the fun and games involved in monitoring temperature, removing parchment and reading moisture levels.