Q Grading Coffee

You know how last week, I told you we would have between 4000-5000lbs. of cafe oro (a.k.a. green beans)? Turns out we are going to have between 5,000 and 10,000lbs. this year.

One of the three contiguous parcels we purchased that comprise Finca La Cumbre today already had mature coffee on it when we purchased it. We have yet to identify what the variety of that bean is. Here are some photos for you, in case you have some idea:

The field of mature coffee plants on our farm. Can you tell us what the variety is?

Ripe coffee beans from the mature plants on the farm.

Last year, in April we purchased 100,000 plants of Caturra Estrella. Sixty thousand of those plants died from fungus. We replaced those by starting our own from the same type of seeds. We also discovered that copper sulfate is an organic-approved fungicide.

Starting coffee from seeds.

We will be starting 100,000 coffee plants from seeds in April, when the rainy season begins. We are trying to figure out whether we should save the beans from the mature plants on the farm. We obviously have more than enough beans. We just don't know how good, objectively, the coffee our mature plants are producing IS.


After quite a bit of research, we came across the logically named Coffee Quality Institute (CQI), which has created a coffee grading system that is globally used. They also provide the training that official coffee graders attend. Turns out that we can have our coffee graded using their system by their local ICP (in-country partner), the Asociación de cafes especiales de Nicaragua (ACEN). Lots of acronyms, but eventually we sorted it all out. So our coffee sample will soon be on its way to the ACEN official graders. They will have three certified graders each score our coffee independently. 


I will, of course, let you know how it goes.  

Cafe Oro

Now that we have about 4,000-5,000 lbs. of "cafe oro," from our mature coffee plants this year, I realize I had better get hopping on finding retail outlets for our delicious Nicaraguan coffee. "Cafe oro" means golden coffee, which is the color of the coffee after the husks have been soaked off.This photo shows the unroasted beans, after husks and skin have been removed. This is what is called "cafe oro." Different countries grow different types of coffees, and each type of coffee is processed differently. Many coffees are dry processed. In Nicaragua, water is used to remove the papery skin, so cafe de oro requires that the coffee be dried in the sun. We are pretty small-scale at this point, so we are able to dry our coffee on these screens, propped up on saw horses and boards.

Large, commercial "beneficios" (coffee processing centers) use large outdoor concrete slabs (they kind of look like areas the size of multiple shuffle board courts) to dry the beans in the sun. On any sunny day, you can see the workers out in the drying areas with long-handled flat rakes moving the coffee around so it will all dry out. Thanks to Marvin del Cid for this photo.