A trip that seems like a million years ago, and really before the new phase of the Costa Rica “Micro Mill” had kicked in.
This trip seem like it was at the cusp of a transition from large lots marketed by region, to the small mill run on a 1000 KG per hour eco-pulper. The coops and huge private companies like Volcafe had the specialty market wrapped up pretty tight in coordination with a very slick marketing effort my the coffee association.
Selling specialty coffee
Specialty coffee was a term devised to mean higher levels of green coffee quality than average "industrial coffee" or "commercial coffee". At this point, the term is of... ...more by region, they developed a portfolio for each area, a brand identity. Ugh. Anyway the farmers weren’t really getting much out of it … not the small farmer anyway. And the quality of regional lots was pretty ho-hum, especially mixing the coffee that came from farms with Catimor
Ateng is a common name for Catimor coffees widely planted in Sumatra and other Indonesia isles.: Ateng, with several subtypes, is a common name for Catimor coffees widely... ...more type varietyA botanical variety is a rank in the taxonomic hierarchy below the rank of species and subspecies and above the rank of form (form / variety / subspecies... ...more coffee trees, and those more CaturraCatimor is a broad group of cultivars derived from a Hibrido de Timor (HdT) and Caturra cross, highly productive, sometimes with inferior cup flavor. The main issue is... ...more. Caturra
Caturra is an Arabica cultivar discovered as a natural mutant of Bourbon in Brazil in the first decade of the 20th century, but wasn't studied until 1937. It... ...more is a nice classic sweet coffee, Catimor’s flavor can be muddled by the RobustaRobusta usually refers to Coffea Robusta, responsible for roughly 25% of the world's commercial coffee. Taxonomy of Robusta is debated: some sources use “Robusta” to refer to any... ...more in its genome.
Anyway, this is a way-back archive travelogue of a cupping
Cupping is a method of tasting coffee by steeping grounds in separate cups for discrete amounts of ground coffee, to reveal good flavors and defects to their fullest.... ...more trip to Costa RicaCosta Rican coffee is typically very clean, sweet, with lots of floral accents. hey are prized for their high notes: bright citrus or berry-like flavors in the acidity,... ...more in 2007! Some fun pictures and captions from Sweet Maria’s of yore -Tom
and this is where i went, on a plane loaded with tourists of all types. costa rica, be prepared to be the s. florida of the new millenium. watch out coffee drinkers, farms are turning into subdivisions. 
to get this probat to costa rica, and set it up, a mere 12,000 bucks. but (the theory is) this roaster ruined all the samples. Well, not ruined, but there was a definite lack of sweetness in the coffees, and a sharp roast flavor. why? 
founding the mill with 116,000 colones, which would be about $58 bucks at todays exchange rate. I think you can spend 29,000 colones on appetizers these days. 
17 pulpers are installed to remove the skin from the cherry … that is huge folks. a small farm mill has one or two. but the mill is in great shape, and is very good at what it does. 
a nosey gringo jumps into the pile coffee coffee in the silo. hey, it wasn’t nice-looking parchment coffee so this can only improve the flavor. 
an easy way to count the amount of incoming coffee cherry at their receiving station 
the ambient thermometer (it’s cooling). anyway, the problem might have been the combination of propane (of dubious quality too) and solid drums. it might have been anti-scorching, or basically the inside of the bean roasting more than the exterior due to too much conductive heat. 
… and some towering bamboo, a pachymorph type, perhaps bambusa oldhamii . oh, that’s just a rough guess… anyway, it was a nice, swift cupping trip. 
my favorite thing to collect on trips, bottle caps. i usually say i am collectiong them for my nephew, if i am too embarrased to ask for them outright. 
saving the best for first. this is the best thing i saw on the whole trip. 
super-sackin’ . alot of coffee is stored in parchment in supersacks. a 20 bag lot can fit in one supersack, so this is good for the micro-lots. 
our first stop, cupping a few rounds at cafecoop outside san jose. here are town cuppers from the lovely west oakland Jeri (royal coffees top sales associate) and myself, and we both looked stumped. why? i will explain later. 
hullers for removing the parchment layer, the start of the dry milling procedure. coopedota does it all, and loads coffee into containers on site. 
the coop owns a coffeehouse in town under their offices. I liked the fact that “export quality coffee” means good coffee. it is actually a very accurate statement, since most coffee sold to “local markets” is of lower quality. there’s a reson people prefer nescafe to local coffee in many producing countries… sad but true 
educational poster at the coopedota office. 
the sign at the coop of naranjo coffee farmers. there are 2500 members, most with very small farms of 1 hectare. 
our first stop, a tour of the dota cooperative mill in the town of santa maria de dota. 
a little cupping at the naranjo coop after a long day. i think that dude max (brown shirt) was trying to intimidate me. what’s up with that? they had these funny pvc-pipe spitoons, the big green thing. 
gear drives on the drums. anyway, a simple fix would have been to roast larger batches, which would help dissipate all the heat stored in the drum metal. 
there’s a spot where you look down on the dota valley from one side, and walk over across the road and see this, san marcos de tarrazu. this is the tarrazu valley (the town is in the center, background. 
parchment, dried coffee husk, and a mix of both. the mix is burned in their special john gordon (british-made) coffee furnace, and so no wood or other fuels are needed … a fantastic system and the same they have at Rio Tarrazu mill (La Minita). 
in dota much of the coffee flower had bloomed a few days before. blossoms last just 3 days in dota. you can see the browning edges here 
the next day, we head up to the naranjo region. here is the town of naranjo. 
here is the receiving station, and you can see it is just one big trough. it makes for their great mill brands (hermosa) but here all the producers cherry are mixed. the new micro-mill is the alternative, and a much more fitting one for sweet maria’s interest in coffee. 
a bunch of losers from the US. okay, not really. but there’s a certain moody and dejected look in this picture. 
and here is part of their big mill, a huge beast, more like a refinery in appearance than a coffee mill. 
here is coopedota’s innovation: their new micro coffee mill or micro-beneficio, to process small lots of coffee from individual coop members. this is why i came down. 
back at cafecoop for more cupping, some sample bags of their customers. this one is palestine. 
these are the “candellas”, flowers about to open. these trees were caturra 
the trees nearby were just about to open their flowers, maybe the next day. 
roasting samples all day long. this is a brand new (like 1 week old) 2 barrel proabt sample roaster. good machine, right? 
historic photo of ox based transportation of coffee, from the picker’s basket to the coffee mill. 
bulk parchment coffee in its reposo, resting, 4 weeks or more, before final milling. 
the mill has a wide vision, looking for other products. one idea is to make the shade trees they intercrop with coffee pay, a second harvest. in this case it is a bean/seed, heguerilla, that has a high oil content and can be used for fuel oil. they also have an ethanol project from coffee pulp in the works. 
they use the new pulpers to remove the skin of the cherry – these use no water, which helps the mill to maintain high environmental standards, which are mandatory under costa rica law. 
our host at cafecoop, who refers to himself as “seabass” which is french for sebastien. how does a guy from bordeaux end up in costa rica? well, marriage is one good reason. and they don’t grow coffee in bordeaux. 
but we figured out too late. we cupped our way through all 50 samples of microlot coffees, picked out the best and culled out the worst, keeping in mind that under different conditions the coffees might be better. Now we will cup them all on our roaster in the US to pick the true gems. 
the beautiful town of santa maria de dota, looking down at it throught the coffee trees. most of the coffee is caturra and catuai. the valley forms a bowl, and is very high altitude, the highest for costa rica coffee (1500 meters to 1900 meters). 
and it didn’t help the roast much to have this document by the machine; the “starbucks roast curve”. I think this might be part of their “cafe practices” manual to instruct producers how to roast samples for cupping. really, it’s a pretty standard 13 minute drum roast curve, from initial temp of around 330, to just over 400. those are bean temp measurements. interesting they recommend some 2nd crack, and oils (aciete) on the surface of the bean. 
founded by this guy, who seems so natural and easy-going with that “come hither” smile. 
the cathedral of santa maria – seriously la cancha de futbol appeared to be in the center of town. or maybe i was confused. in cr their are intense small town futbol rivalries, as well as major ones. everyone in dota loves the team Saprissa. 
in the mall near bella vista estate, tres rios. tres rios is becoming a suburb. here we have a coffee kiosk where a coffee tree used to stand … there won’t be such a thing as tres rios coffee in a few years. 
their mill brand for primera quality, la rosa, being prepared for shipment to oakland. if only i had a white t-shirt on i could have asked for him to print it… 
one of the mill brands, actually their best brand. pooling coffee and offering the mixed lots as brands is a costa rican tradition, not the worst method, but not exactly micro-lot coffee milling. 
super-coffee-cherry-crusader. 
the coop is many things, as well as a bank for its members, asociados. 
my favorite bag design from the coop. Caracol means snail, but it is also the name for peaberry since it has a rounded, snail-like appearance. 
in the offices of cooppronaranjo, along with awards, a genuine starbucks soccer-futbol. actually, i would like to kick that thing around a bit. 
and the excellent coffee they produce. actually lot 299 is always bad, it’s just a bad number. i am a numerologist and a cupper. by the way sample no. 44 is always good. 
a very old 3 barrel probat sample roaster in naranjo. it will run forever. 
how you create tread on a step with your stick welder.
