| At Finca las Alturas de Puriscal, we are pleased to be able to serve our guests our own brand label organic coffee that we take much pride in growing, picking, processing, drying, roasting, packaging and merchandizing. The following is a brief photographic journey of our coffee production operation: | ||
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first rains in early april commence the flowering of the coffeeplants
and from April to early September, the coffee berries mature
and ripen. |
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Harvest is from September to January. Pickers have a large basket
(cujuela) hanging from their waist. Picking the berries and dropping
them into the cujuela, a good picker can pick from 10 to 20 cujuelas
per 8-10 hour day. This year the pickers receive 500 colones per
cujuela (450 colones = $1.00 US). |
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| This fancy looking piece
of equipment was designed and built by our son-in-law, Roger. It
actually fulfills two very important tasks; one, of removing the
berry casings and two, grinding the coffee for our many, satisfied
Costa Rica Estate Inn guests. |
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Once the coffee beans have been separated from the berry casings
and rinsed several times to remove leaves, casings and the honey-like
liquid that squeezes out of the ripe berry, the beans are put on
screens to dry in the warm Costa Rican sun. It takes approximately
five days of summer sun to dry the beans before roasting. |
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| This unique
roasting unit was also designed and built by our very capable son-in-law,
Roger. It is a propane barbecue that Roger converted to its present
use. We can roast about 2 kilograms of green beans at a time; it
takes roughly 45 minutes at approximately 400 degrees F. Once again
Roger has adapted another important part of the process into
the roaster so that we are able to remove the paper chaff from
the dried coffee beans prior to roasting them.
Once the beans are roasted, we let them "age" for a couple of days then grind them in our stone grinder and package the coffee for our customers and guests. At our Estate Inn, Patsy sews together souvenir gift bags to give a very unique packaging style for our guests. After three years of learning and perfecting our coffee processing
skills, we know how much care and effort goes in to the making
of a cup of coffee. We are also proud of the fact we have kept
our coffee plants free of herbicides and pesticides in order to
give our coffee clients the best cup of coffee from Finca Las Alturas
de Puriscal **Cafe** Puro and Organico. |
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