Coffee Waste: Where Does it Come From, Where Does it Go?

Another thing you probably never think about while drinking your cup-o-joe (I hate that term), is all of the coffee byproducts and waste that gets created during processing. These organic waste products can have great environmental impact in some coffee producing regions. Let's look at the typical waste products created by processing, and where they typically end up. Then we'll take a look at what practices Cuatro M use to decrease environmental impact, and increase sustainability.

WATER 
We can't get to the byproducts before talking about the number one most important resource in processing coffee: WATER. We all know water is becoming an ever-increasingly scarce resource all across the world, and in growing regions were very little water is to be found is were you'll find coffees being processed in the natural (traditional) dry method. Remember from my earlier blog post, this method is where you dry the cherry directly on the beans, without pulping it first. The problem is natural coffees only make up a small percentage of coffee produced in the world. The majority is processed using water. 

Where Does it Come From and What Role Does it Play?

Growing coffee, as with most agricultural products, relies heavily on rainfall. Luckily in most of the best coffee producing regions there is a naturally occurring, and somewhat predictable, wet season. It is this precipitation that feeds the coffee trees, allowing them to blossom, and produce fruit. Just as important as the wet season, is the dry season. It is during this period of time when coffee is typically processed, since there is more sun and heat available to properly dry the coffees. Now you may be asking, if coffees are processed during the dry season, where do they get the water? If you're super duper lucky, you may have a well located on your property, but this usually isn't the case. Most mills get their water trucked in from surrounding areas. That water may be coming from a river (though rivers are getting increasingly polluted), a lake, or most likely a well. 

There are two major functions of water during processing: de-pulping and washing. The depulper machine uses water to break up and flush away the pulp from the seeds, while mechanical washers and traditional fermentation tanks use water to wash or ferment mucilage off the seeds. Trucking in water can be expensive, and there's not always enough to go around. In countries like El Salvador, where most coffee is traditionally fully washed (fermentation tanks), there is a growing trend away from fully washed methods to new mechanically washed processing (which uses less water). 

So What is Cuatro M Doing to Reduce the Amount of Water They Consume?

1. They no longer use traditional wet fermentation methods, except for small custom orders. Instead, most of the coffee they process is washed by state-of-the-art mechanical washers, which use a fraction of the water used in fermentation tanks. 
2. 60% of the water they use, comes from rain collection tanks on their property. The rest gets trucked in from the city.
3. Over the past 6 years, Cuarto M has continually increased it's "natural" production. This year, 30% of what they produce will be natural processed coffees. 
4. Emilio Lopez, the owner of Cuatro M, is currently running trial experiments in processing coffee using enzymes similarly used in wine production. If this method is successful, he will be using a only a fraction of the water he currently uses with the machine washers. Not only that, but the end result should be cleaner product. 

*On a side note: it should be said that water quality has a large impact on coffee quality. The cleaner, the water the cleaner the coffee. This is why Cuatro M filters all of the water they use for processing. In addition to filters, Emilio recently installed ultraviolet lights inside the depulper, to further sterilize the water. 

Water Collection Tank #1

Water Collection Tank #2

The Byproducts

At The Plantation

Let's start at the plantation level, were the biggest environmental impact is made. The bigest problem in  agriculture is eutrophication, and coffee plantations are no exception. Eutrophication is what happens when bodies of water become over-saturated with organic nutrients (such as nitrogen and phosphorus found in most fertilizers). These nutrients, while healthy for plants, are hazardous to watershed ecosystems when they build up too quickly. Since these nutrients are food for plant life, organisms such as algae and plankton start to grow at an unsustainable rate. These organisms need lots of oxygen to live, so they end up suffocating out all the other living creatures in the watershed. This type of oxygen starvation is called hypoxia, and it eventually creates an uninhabitable environment. 

How Do Topeca's Farms Stack Up?

Luckily for Topeca's farms, eutrophication in not a big problem. Even though we use fertilizers on our trees, there exist no natural watersheds in any of the surrounding areas to the farm. No streams, no rivers, no lakes. That means no fertilizers running off into watershed systems. Instead they are only being absorbed through the soil, which will filter out much of the added nutrients before reaching well sources. Actually, much of El Salvador benefits from this fact. The biggest impact on rivers in El Salvador is not agriculture but lack of regulation, and the increase in poor community development along them. The rivers end up becoming landfills and sewage receptacles. (Not a good place to get your water for de-pulping)

At The Mill

There are three main waste products at the mill; Coffee Pulp, Mucilage Water, and Parchment

Coffee Pulp

This is the product you end up with after you've de-pulped the coffee: the skin of the cherry. Where does all of it go you ask? Well, many mills sell it off as compost for fertilizers and mulches. Some dump it and let it pollute ecosystems. A growing trend in the coffee culture is using dried pulp to brew a coffee tea: called Cascara. Emilio disagrees with this last usage. He feels since there is no regulation in the processing of cascara, it could potentially be a hazardous product to people's health. Pulp is by no means a clean product; it's full of bacteria. Emilio fears that someone is going to get sick very soon from drinking this tea. But each to their own. 

What Does Quatro M Do With Their Pulp?

They recycle. All of the pulp created by each harvest gets used as mulch for new trees. No one is drinking it...yet.

Mucilage Water

This is the water left over after de-pulping and washing coffee at the wet mill. Some people reuse it for processing, but that is a most unsavory method, as it is super dirty at that point. So most people just get rid of it. Here again we run into the problem of eutrophication, since this water is dense with organic solids and nutrients. Before regulation, a lot of mills in El Salvador were dumping this water into lakes. This is not the case today, as lakes are protected by the government. 

So What Does Quatro M Do With Their Waste Water?

First thing is first, they filter out solid matter and sediments with a sieve. Then the water gets transported to one of two mucilage pits. When the water soaks into the soil at these pits, they can then use the soil as a natural fertilizer. Pretty cool huh?

Parchment

Remember from my earlier post that parchment is the layer between the mucilage and the seed. Once dried, the parchment is then hulled from the seeds (beans) at the dry mill. The parchment accounts for about a fifth of the coffees weight when it comes off the patio. After hulling the coffees, you are left with a lot of parchment. So what do you do with it? Some mills sell theirs to chicken farms, where it is used as bedding for the chicken pens. And then sometimes the mills will buy it back, once it has been efficiently pooped on, and use it as fertilizer. 

How About Quatro M?

Would you be surprised if I told you they repurpose it? That's right all of the parchment created gets used as fuel for their mechanical dryers. That's a pretty sustainable system if you ask me. 

Don't let the picture I've painted above fool you into thinking this is how all coffee producers take care of their waste. Cuatro M is a best case scenario (and getting better all the time). Many producing regions, especially those in less developed places such as Africa or Indonesia, still face big problems when it comes to environmental responsibility. My hope is that with increasing coffee prices, the growing shift from commercial to specialty markets, and consumer/producer education, more steps will be taken in instituting sustainable practices in coffee around the world. 

*For more reading about recent water quality research in coffee producing regions of Ethiopia, read Lili Kubota's article in The Specialty Coffee Chronicle HERE.

A Most Unsavory Topic

Ok, so I felt I must tackle this subject. What subject you may ask? Why the Savory one of course.

I have noticed that in the past year or so a trend has been emerging amongst coffee tasters and buyers when at the cupping table. The word "savory" keeps popping up. It rolls off the tongue so nicely. It is one of those words that we all know what someone means when they say it, but then at the same time don't really have a clue exactly what they mean. I think it's safe to say that savory is much too broad a term to be using at a cupping table. Especially if one who uses the term, cannot describe what they are tasting beyond just that.

So I started rummaging through Google to find an definition of this word. Not to my surprise, I found no such definition that satisfied my need for specificity. In fact, one definition (Wiktionary), actually used the word in the definition: "3.) a savory snack." Isn't that rule number one of a dictionary: you cannot use the word you are defining in its own definition? The most popular definition I found was that "savory" referred to food that was not sweet. Well, ok, that leaves a whole world of other flavors up for grabs. Then I stumbled through some forums, where people debated weather or not it meant unsweet, or if it meant a pleasurable combination of sweet, sour, salty, and bitter; a richness of flavor. The latter definition would fall more in line with another term related to savory: "umami." This is a japanese word that literally translates to be "delicious taste." Again, not very specific.

So I kept reading into umami, and found that there might actually be some science behind it. Yet even with all the research showing that the tongue may indeed have umami receptors, the conclusions were later stated in the article to be "unclear." Wikipedia's article, which goes into pretty decent detail, with plenty of cited sources, said things that were very confusing logically. The introduction states that umami is a term used to describe the taste of glutamates, and nucleotides. But then another section goes on to say that "by itself umami is not palatable", but that it "makes a great variety of foods pleasant especially in the presence of a matching aroma." So now we are back to this synergistic idea that savory it is a term used to describe the richness of a food's flavor: a combination of flavors coming together to create an impacting palatable experience. This definition would include sweet. 


If it is true that glutamates and nucleotides have an altogether recognizable taste separate from sweet, sour, salt, and bitter, than I'll accept the term as a legitimate specific flavor descriptor. But from what I can infer, it sounds like umami is less of a taste and more of a sensation. I get the feeling that we all have a sense of what umami is, but don't really know how to describe it effectively. This is were I think the problem is. Savory seems to be too much of an idea of balance, or some sort of tactile experience.  If you put a solution of sugar in front of me, I'd be able to identify it as sweet; or a solution of salt, I'd say with confidence is salty. Citric acid I could identify as sour, and quinine would most definitely be bitter. But if you put a spoonful of MSG in front of me, my first reaction would not be to say umami or savory (but then again, I don't know. I've never eaten a spoonful of MSG...mmm). 


I'm not saying that you cannot claim a coffee has a savory quality to it. What I am saying is that it doesn't help me understand what you are specifically tasting. Most people feel comfortable leaving their description at savory, failing to go beyond that term and describe exactly what it is that makes what their tasting savory.


Even the list of foods generally thought to contain umami seems too broad and varying:  "fish, shellfish, cured meats, vegetables (e.g. mushrooms, ripe tomatoes, Chinese cabbage, spinach, celery, etc.) or green tea, and fermented and aged products (e.g. cheeses, shrimp pastes, soy sauce, etc.)"


Tracy Allen once told me, "if it's not listed on the Coffe Taster's Flavor and Aroma Wheel it doesn't exist." I tend to agree. 


We like to over complicate things. And it's usually never necessary. - I said that. 

Experiments in Coffee

I feel very lucky to be part of such an innovative and exciting coffee company. Every year I am continually surprised by the work that Emilio Lopez at Cuatro M is doing. From day one Emilio has been pursuing new ways to farm and process coffee, and each day that passes, his coffee seems to benefit from it tremendously. It's not that Emilio disregards tradition; in fact, he borrows a lot of knowledge from his elders, the ones who farmed coffee for generations before him. With that tradition in mind, he approaches his work methodically and inquisitively. He is not afraid to ask questions, to try new things, and to fail if he must. When you get him alone, around a fireside, with a few beers already down the hatch; it's no surprise that all he wants to talk about is coffee. He is obsessed! It's this obsession that makes his coffee top quality. Many farmers never interact with their coffee. They just own the land, and run the business. Not Emilio. He is at the farm everyday, often for 10 hour days. He's in the field demonstrating pruning techniques to workers, in the consejo cupping coffees everyday, at the pulping station making sure everything is working correctly, and on the patios sticking his hands in the parchment and bringing it to his nose for inspection.

It is a real mystery to me why Emilio has not gained more attention in the industry than he has. His coffee is stellar, his operations are immaculate, and his thirst for innovation is vast. He practically established the rediscovered trend of El Salvador natural processed coffees, which many producers since have tried to imitate, but lacking the knowledge and technique, failed to produce a desirable product. True, Emilio's notoriety has been picking up quite a bit the past 2 years, but I have the feeling he's really going to explode on to the scene in the next 2. It's only that he's been a step ahead of everyone else that he's gone relatively unnoticed.

Let's look at an experiment I recently had the privilege to take part in.

THE NATURAL VS WASHED DEBATE

                      Four varietals processed as naturals (upper right corner) and as washed (the 4 small squares in the foreground)

There are many people in industry that hold the argument that natural processed coffees take away from the terrior of a coffee, and that the only way to showcase the terrior is to wash the coffee. Some say that all naturals basically taste the same, and because of that you are unable to differentiate between varietals. To test this hypothesis Emilio harvested four different varietals off coffee from an experimental lot that he started 6 years ago and processed each as a washed coffee and as a natural coffee. This lot, which sits at a singular elevation of 1300m on el Manzano, contains four varietals that were planted the same day side by side. The coffee for this experiment were all picked and processed the same day. These varietals include:

1. Yellow Bourbon
2. Red Bourbon
3. Pacamara 
4. Kenyan

                                                                      Yellow Bourbon, Red Bourbon, Pacamara, Kenyan 

The cupping table was set with each varietal (each as a washed and natural) in a blind fashion. The test was to see if the varietal of each cup could be identified, and if the the washed and natural pairs could be paired. By cupping the washed coffee side by side with its natural counter part, we were able to directly taste if in fact the terrior was lost by the natural process.

It turned out to be a very difficult cupping. First of all, each cup tasted wildly different from the next, and some of the washed coffees tasted so sweet and juicy that some of us thought they were naturals. But after a few rounds, and some open discussion, we were all able to correctly separate the naturals from the washed. 

                          Sarah Mykkanen, Barista at Heart Coffee, Portland. And Brandon Smyth of Water Avenue, Portland 

Next was to identify the varietals. Again, this was more difficult than expected. The easiest to identify in both sets was the pacamara. It's crazy flavor profile and cup characteristics make it an easy target on any table. The washed coffees were for sure easier to identify. Everyone correctly guessed at the Red Bourbon, since we are all pretty familiar with it's profile. The majority of coffee grown in El Salvador is Red Bourbon.  The Kenyan and the Yellow bourbon threw us for a loop. We expected the Kenyan to be the brightest crispest coffee on the table, but instead it was the Yellow Bourbon that fit that profile. The Kenyan instead had a great floral bouquet, with aromas of tea-rose, and herbaceous tomato-like flavors (something I believe can be directly attributed to the El Sal terrior). 

Matching the natural sample with its washed counter part was by far the most difficult task. It wasn't that the naturals all tasted similar, because they didn't. In fact, it was that they tasted so much different from one another that made it difficult. It think it is safe to say the the terrior (as perceived in the washed coffee) was hidden amongst a completely new set of flavor characteristics in the naturals.

                                                                                     The four varietals on day of harvest 

So what conclusion can we pull from this? Unfortunately not a definitive one. This kind of experiment will have to be tested again and again, across many kinds of varietals, and across many different cuppers. I think it would make a great seminar/workshop at a future Roasters Guild Retreat or SCAA Event. 

Here are the statements that can be concluded from this particular cupping session. 

1. The natural processed coffees were easily distinguishable from the washed coffees. 
2. Amongst the naturals it was easily distinguishable that there was 4 distinct varietals present. 
3. Amongst the naturals the varietal identification was difficult, except for the Pacamara. 
4. Amongst the washed coffees it was easily distinguishable that there was 4 distinct varietals present.
5. Amongst the washed coffees it was easier to identify the varietals present

It seems to me that the whole debate boils down to personal preference. Those who do not like natural coffees will probably continue to nay say them. However, to those who say that you can't produce a clean, well processed El Salvadoran natural of high quality; I say bullshit. Emilio has nailed it down. The naturals coming off his patios are some of the cleanest, most flavorful, complex coffees you'll taste. 

My view on the whole debate is that we're comparing apples and oranges. Natural coffees and washed coffees are 2 different products, and should be treated and graded as such. What this particular experiment has shown me is that the natural process doesn't take away from a coffee's terrior perse, but rather changes the whole cup profile completely, thus making it a different cup of coffee. And I for one, am ok with that. As long as you do it well and the end result is tasty, then what is the big deal?

Jacked!

I just got done a morning of cupping 24 coffees! That's a whole lot of caffeine. Needless to say, I'm jacked. I tried some very good SHG natural Bourbons and some really flavorful SHG mechanical-washed Bourbons. Some solid 87's on the tables. For those of you who none of what I just said made any sense, don't worry there is a great place to go to learn about those processes. Visit Cuatro M Cafes website, it is actually very interesting and informative. 87 is a pretty high score when you're talking specialty coffee; 90+ is really few and far between. A coffee must score above a 79 to be considered specialty grade,  and most coffee sold as specialty falls somewhere around an 82 I would say.

As I mentioned in my last post, I'll be cupping through the entire warehouse while I'm here. That's basically everything that has been harvested so far this year, starting in October. In addition, I'll be cupping coffees just coming off the patios (about 10 a day right now), and yield samples from other farmers. Let me break down the process of what all that means.

When the coffee is harvested from the trees, they typically pick in one particular spot for the day. These spots are known as LOTS, or TABLONS in El Salvador. A plantation is usually divided up into many lots. A lot being at a particular elevation, position from the sun, soil composition, etc. A MICRO-LOT is an even smaller division of these lots. Different lots on a plantation produce different results in the quality and flavor of coffee across the same varietal due to many factors. To sum up all of these bio agricultural factors let's borrow a word from the wine world: TERRIOR. The terrior is what makes a lot of coffee unique from the others.

A good coffee farmer will pick from one lot at a time, and keep these lots separated. Though they often get mixed together as well. When a truck load of cherries arrive at the Cuatro M mill a 200 gram sample is taken to be processed, roasted, and cupped as is (without sorting out unripes, floaters, or over-ripes). This is called a YIELD sample. A yield sample lets Cuatro M, as well as the producer, know things like how much of the coffee they produced is of export quality, what the overall cup quality is of their entire yield, what the sugar content of the cherries are, how much pulp there is in relation to seed, etc, etc. All of these statistics get recorded, and made into portfolios, which are then shared with the producers at the end of harvest. Cuatro M runs a very transparent operation. In fact, no one else in Central America is collecting this kind of data and doing this kind of  in-depth research. Topeca Coffee is truly breaking new ground in the understanding of growing and processing good coffee.

Yield samples come in on Mondays, and are cupped throughout the week. Then there are patio samples which also get cupped. These are coffees that have already been cherry sorted and processed, and have finished drying on the patio. At Cuatro M every lot and micro-lot is processed and kept separate through the whole ordeal. Unless a customer specifies them to be blended, they will remain separated up until exported. Some lots are too big to be processed all at once. They get processed in BATHCES or PARTIDAS. This is what I'm cupping: every partida in the warehouse.

The warehouse is stacked to the ceiling with sacks of parchment coffee. There can be several partidas in one stack. This paper tag, has all the information about that particular coffee. The varietal, date harvested, date processed, the farm, the tablon, the partida number, which drier it was dried in, what patio it was dried on, and the amount of coffee in that partida. My job is to pull a diverse sample of each partida, with this:

                                                   una saca muestra

Then I take these:

                                                  muestras (samples, with parchment)

And run them through this:

                                                    a mini hulling machine

After that, I'm left with this:

                                                    green samples...yay!

But I'm not done yet. Now I have to clean each sample by hand, sorting out the excess defects.

Remember this is coffee that hasn't been sorted through the dry mill yet, so it still has quite a bit of defects. Once cleaned the samples are roasted in the sample roaster.

Now it's time to cup the coffees

When you cup a coffee you are looking to analyse several different attributes and flavor characteristics of the cup. First you analyse the FRAGRANCE (dry grounds): how intense is it, favorable or not, what specific smells are you smelling, and what is the quality (6-10) does it have? Then you pour water on the grounds to start the extraction and analyse the same things mentioned above. These smell in the wet grounds is called AROMA. When the coffees have properly extracted you skim any grounds or floating cellulose matter off the top and beging to analyze the flavors, and tactile experiences. When it's semi hot you look at two things, the FLAVOR, and AFTERTASTE. Again, is it good or bad, what specific flavors or category of flavors, and what is the quality. As it cools down below 140 degrees you then examine the ACIDITY and BODY. These two attributes increase as the temperature cools. Acidity is the perceived brightness of a coffee. Think of citrus fruits here, or the malic acidity found in apples, or phosphoric acid which is added to many soft drinks.

It's funny when you talk about acidity to the average American, they have no real reference for discussing it. No one ever mentions it when describing a food to someone. In fact, most people equate the word with bitterness, or acid reflux syndrome. Actually, only one type of acid in brewed coffee is attributed to perceived bitterness: quinic acid, which is reactive with oxygen. It's what you taste when you leave a pot of coffee on the burner for an hour and come back to it. However, most bitterness in coffee is caused by either improper roasting (burning) or improper brewing (over-extraction). It's the heavier organic elements, such as iodine and alkaloids that give a poorly brewed cup of coffee a bitter flavor. But ask a Salvadoran to describe a fruit that they are eating, and acidity is the first thing they describe; "es muy acido, el acidez es bueno. Es mas citrico de flores."

Body can be better described as the perceived tactile mouthfeel relative to water. Is it thin, or is it thick? After you analyse these four attributes, and when the coffee cools to below 100 degrees, you look at BALANCE, or how well those four attributes fit together as a complete coffee. After that, you look to see if it is a CLEAN CUP (are there any non-coffee flavors present?), a UNIFORM cup (is it uniform from cup to cup), and a sweet cup (is there anything taking away from the coffee's inherent SWEETNESS). The last score you give a coffee is your own personal score: the OVERALL score. This is the only subjective score. Then you add all those up to get a final score. In the case of the highest score I gave today, it was an 88, and the coffee was a natural processed HG Bourbon from our Ayutepeque plantation.

The really awesome thing about my getting to do this, is that I'll have the unique position to have tasted almost all of the coffees harvested this year. That means I'll know exactly what the most delicious lots are. So look out Tulsa; come March/April be expecting some spectacular coffees.

Seed-to-Cup: The Journey of a Cup of Coffee

It takes 00.5 seconds to say the words "Seed-to-Cup", and only 00.05 to read the words "Seed-to-Cup" on this page; but do most people ever really wonder how long that journey actually is? As I sat in the lab at Cuatro M sorting through samples of green coffee I had pulled from the warehouse earlier that day, staring into endless piles of green bean cleaning out any defects, it hit me just how many hands a coffee has to pass through before ending up in your cup. It's really quite astounding if you realize it. And to think for so long coffee producers were getting paid next to nothing for their hard work. Even with the coffee market as it is today with prices well over $3 a pound for specialty grade green, it still seems like very little to pay once you've had the chance to be involved at every step of the Seed-to-Cup process. In America, where we buy our food in clean, safe grocery stores or restaurants, it's easy to never once wonder where your food actually comes from. How many hands have touched that apple before you put it in your mouth? How many workers break their back day in and day out to pick, process, and prepare your food that you can literally buy whenever you want?

Coffee, as a commodity, get's bought, traded and consumed all over the world. It is, in fact, the second most traded commodity just after oil. The coffee one produces for the commercial market wins a pretty low price at the end of the day when you take into account the amount of labor and processing that must be done to make it exportable. If you are a specialty producer, producing coffee of high quality, separating micro lots, striving towards the best farming methods, investing in the best equipment, and investing in your employees from pickers to production; then that amount of labor and processing increases dramatically. Let's take a look at each step of the process so we can understand just how many hands a coffee passes through.

                                                     Step 1: The Nursery 

This is were the seed goes to begin it's life as a tree. In case you didn't know, it is actually the seed of the coffee cherry that we roast and brew to make liquid coffee. With care given by the farmer the seed will germinate and produce a sprout within 6 weeks of being planted. The young plant will typically stay in the nursery for another 4 months before it is ready to plant into the earth.

                                                     
                                             Step 2: Planting the Coffee Tree

Once tree is planted, it will take another 5 years to produce a profitable/quality yield of cherries. Depending on how well you maintain the tree and what farming methods you use, a coffee tree such as the acaia varietal shown above can continue to produce coffee for decades. The above photo shows a 3 year old tree, not yet producing.
                                                       

                                                                          Photo by Jeremy Charles
                                                       Step 3-5: Harvesting

Some coffee is picked by machines, like in Brazil for example where most coffee is grown in direct sun; however, the majority of coffee in the world is still picked by hand. That means a lot of people picking a lot of coffee. Take into consideration that each coffee cherry has only 2 seeds (or beans) inside of them, and it takes somewhere around 120 beans (that's 60 cherries) to brew only an small 8oz cup. Now think of how many millions of cups of coffee is consumed everyday. That's a whole lot of picking.

                                                         
After picking the cherries from the tree the workers will sort through what they've picked and separate the unripe from the delicious ripe ones.

                                                         
The bags of cherries are then weighed and loaded on trucks to be taken to the mill for processing

                                                                                     Photo by Jeremy Charles
                                                  Steps 6-10: The Wet Mill

When the cherries arrive at the mill, they are weighed, then ramdom samples will be pulled from the lot and the cherries will be graded by quality: better cherries fetch better prices. As soon as the cherries are graded and accounted for they get loaded into a hopper, ready to be fed through the pulping and washing station.

                                                                         Photo By Jeremy Charles

A state of the art mill like the one at Cuatro M has the ability to process coffee in several different ways. If the coffee is to be washed or honeyed, it first needs to be depulped. The depulper machine removes the skin from the beans preparing them to be fermented or washed.
       

                                                                 

The demucilager washes off the "fruit" around the seed known as mucilage.

Once washed, the coffees get spread out onto concrete patios, and turned over frequently to dry in the sun. Large Machine dryers are also used to expedite the process, and control drying and fermentation rates.

                                                a Guardiola horizontal dryer

                                                naturals drying on the patio            
                     
For a natural processed coffee, the fruit and skin is left on the beans, and are dried and fermented on the patios. Understanding and controlling fermentation is key in this process, especially in humid enviroments such as El Salvador.

                                      [pic of the dry mill equipment coming soon]                                                          
                                                  Step 11-14 the Dry Mill

When the coffee leaves the patio, it still has a layer of dried parchment surrounding the bean. at the dry mill machinery will hull the bean, destone the batch, and grade beans by screen size and density.

                                                  parchment coffee on the patio

                                               
The beans are stored in the warehouse with the parchment still attached. At Cuatro M every lot is kept separate in order to find unique batches of coffee that can be sold for higher premiums.

When a coffee is being prepped for export it gets run through the machines mentioned above, but also gets hand sorted to remove any defective beans. Specialty grade coffee only allows up to 5 full defects. It takes a lot of time and a lot of hands to sort through each bag of coffee.

                                 Step 15-20?: The Cupping Table and the Lab

The lab is the place where coffees are cupped, graded, and tested. It is equipted with sampler roasters, cupping equipment, brewing devices, espresso machines, grading tools, and all sorts of measuring devices. Every batch of coffee coming from the patio will be sample roasted, cupped, and graded. When customers come to the farm to purchase coffee, the cupping table is where they spend a good amount of their time. At the cupping table the customer and the producer taste and discuss the coffees in order to find out what the customer wants to buy.

My particular job down here now, is re-cupping coffees from the warehouse. I cup about 60 coffees in a week. I'll talk about that process in an up coming post.

Once a customer has made a contract with the farmer, the coffees that he buys gets prepped and exported by container. The typical buyer usually an importer (small to large) or a roaster (small to large). Most commercial grade coffee gets bought by trading firms on Wall Street or around the world, who then sell it to large commercial coffee companies.

                                                Step 2?-??: The Roastery

So now the coffee gets to the roastery, where yet more steps are involved to properly roast and blend the coffees for sale in coffee shops and retail stores. The Topeca Roastery is a place were roasting theories, and brewing practices are tested and improved on, as well as, a training facility for baristas.

                                           Yet Even More Steps: The Cafe

This is the last place coffee resides before being consumed. At the cafe, it is the barista's job to skillfully prepare the coffee in such a way that showcases all of the hard work that made that coffee what it is. It is the final step in the Seed-to-Cup journey. Just think, at every step along the way you can only try not to screw up the coffee. It will never be more perfect than it was when it was picked ripe from the tree. Each step and each individual, from the picker to the barista, is just as important as the other. And that's something not everyone realizes when they ask, "Well what's so special about this coffee?"

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For more in-depth info about the Topeca farms, processing and a full virtual tour of Cuatro M please visit here. Check out their awesome blog, and videos, and photos, and so much more. Seriously one of the most cutting edge coffee mills in the world.