Today we visited ‘Grandma Noi’ and her coffee farm. Grandma is 76 years old and is farming 300 coffee trees and giving tours all on her own. She also cooks, so she cooked us Kao Soi (I have no idea if that is spelled right. It sounds like ‘cow soy’ when people say it, but it is a traditional Thai dish).
But first, we are here today to learn about the process and sample some coffee.
Which means they started us off with a cup of tea.
Grandma noi does not drink coffee, because the caffeine does not sit well with her, but she does have tea, which she of course makes from the coffee bits and other things.
I did not favor it.
Today we will learn about Arabica coffee, which is all that Grandma grows. She does everything naturally, so no chemicals and she does most of it by hand. She does use Roasters and peelers, but all the picking is done by hand.
Coffee likes to grow under the cover of larger shade trees. Arabica coffee trees only grow well in high altitudes over 800 meters above sea level. This farm is 1200 meters, so coffee grows well here.
Robusta coffee can grow at any sea level, so it is more available.
Harvest season in Thailand is November thru February/early March, so we just made the tail end of it.
The coffee ‘cherry’ or fruit must be picked at 100% ripeness or the flavor will be bad. Grandma collects her cherries by hand, so she is sure she only picks the ripe ones.
Big farms use tree shakers to harvest their cherries, but the problem is the not ripe often fall off with the ripe, so the flavor is not as good. Grandma controls quality by hand picking.
There are several varieties of Arabica coffee. Grandma grows Yellow Bourbon and Caturra (if I understood her correctly).
The yellow turn yellow (predictably) when they are ripe. The Caturra turn red. If she picks and separates a single variety, the price for the coffee is higher, but because this is such a small farm, she picks both and blends the varieties together. It is called commercial grade.
The coffee shell is pealed off to reveal the bean covered in a syrupy jelly. The jelly is very sweet, and is either part of the one of the processing steps or gets washed away.
The skins of the cherry are often used to make tea, and Grandma does make a little, but most of the skins she turns into compost. She lets them sit until they turn black, essentially fermenting them, then spreads them around the base of the trees. Apparently it is a method of insect control to allow the shells to ferment first, and the biggest issue Grandma has on her farm is insects control.
To peel the skin off the coffee cheery, there is a machine that essentially vibrates, rolls and uses water to wash and separate. The shells go out one side and the beans go out the other.
When looking in the beans, the bad ones are floating. Inside bean has insect in it, so peal out the bad ones off the top and put them in the compost bin.
Bean still has some jelly on it after skinning taking the shell off, so for most beans, they are soaked in water for 2 nights, then they are washed and cleaned to get jelly off.
There are 3 ways to process beans. Natural Process, Honey Process, and wash process.
The natural process is to take coffee cherry and dry it by sunlight. There are only 2 steps to the process, but it takes 4-5 weeks to dry the cherries and is hard to control the quality.
Before roasting, the skin is pealed off to reveal the green colored bean inside. This process results in a more fruity, full aroma and high acidity because the jelly is kept on the bean and fermented. Because the coffee cherry is fermented by itself, and the long, labor intensive drying process (the cherries must be rotated 2-3 times per day so drying is even), it is the most expensive to produce.
The Honey process involves peeling the skin off, then the bean is dried with the jelly left on it. After they are dried, the beans are pealed again to remove the hardened jelly. It takes 1 to 2 weeks to dry under the sunlight. The taste is sweeter, and more bland, and is by far the best seller.
The Wash process involves peeling off the skin and soaking the beans in water for 2 nights. After the soak, the beans are washed until the jelly is gone, and then they are dried by sunlight. It only takes 1 week to dry these beans, and where it does take a lot of water in the washing process, it is easier and faster than the other processes. Yes, there are more steps, but the drying time is 1/4th that of the natural process. The flavor is light, like tea and easy to drink. Good choice for people who like weaker coffee and also good for less expensive since it is less expensive to make.
There are other ways to process the beans, such as the popular bourbon barrel process which puts the beans in an old whiskey barrel and seals them in for a while. Grandma Noi only does the above 3 methods.
Grandma also grows some Cacao trees because they somehow help with insect control. I must have glazed over when that was explained, but suddenly we were looking at a cacao tree and sampling it.
The Cacao seed comes in a pod, which when ripe turns yellow.
Grandma cuts the pod open and takes the seeds out. She puts them in a plastic bag to ferment for 1 week. After the week, the seeds are washed and cleaned until the white covering comes off. They are dried in the sunlight for a week and then are ready for roasting.
Cacao can be harvested 4x per year. It needs a lot of water to grow the tree, but all the pods can be picked at the same time instead of daily picking.
Grandma has 20 to 30 cacao trees because they help as a natural insect repellant. They also do not need a certain elevation to grow, and they help provide cover for the coffee trees.
When you first taste a cacao bean, it is very bitter. Like 100% dark chocolate. If you try it with a little sugar, the taste becomes clearer.
Next on or learning adventure we were presented 4 descriptions of coffee, and challenged to match the coffee to the description.
There are 3 steps to ‘cupping.’
First step is to smell the dry coffee aromas.
Second step, she poured hot water over the grounds slowly. We were to smell the wet aroma by moving a spoon over the hot cup to ‘waft’ the smell toward us. Then using the spoon, we lightly break the surface of foam, and smelling the surface, then wash spoon and do it again.
The third step is to taste. The foam needs to be removed before tasting because it has no taste.
We dipped the spoon in hot water, and promised to wash the spoon after each taste. Then, you take a little sample on the spoon and “spray” it into your mouth. That means you suck it up, or slurp it making obnoxious noises. But by doing so, the aroma is clearer.
The tasting part had to be done quickly so the temperature did not go down. If the temperature goes down, the flavor changes.
Comparing the coffee
Thailand is not a very special coffee on this table. The flavor does not stay long in your mouth and does not have sharp or distinct flavor. Today the sample was a honey process.
Ethiopian coffee is very similar to the Thai coffee, except the flavor stays longer in your mouth, which is why it is so special. Today’s sample was a natural process.
Honduras sample used a non Arabica process. It was fermented in a whisky barrel, so the smell and flavor produced a very clear whisky note.
Colombian sample used fruit juices or other flavors to ferment coffee, so very easy to pick out flavor.
Roasting is a very precise process. First the roaster is preheated to 200c. When that temperature is achieved, the beans are quickly added.
Today we are putting 150 grams into each roaster.
The 3 types of roast are light, medium and dark. A light roast stays in for 2 minutes, a medium roast for 4 minutes, and a dark roast for 10 minutes. Today the group elected to try a medium and a dark roast.
A medium roast produced a bland, a bit sour, and a bit of a bitter flavor with a sweet aftertaste.
A dark roast produces a sweeter flavor, which I did not detect at all, but I also failed the testing portion, so my taste buds will never win a tasting Olympics.
The beans must be kept moving or they will burn, obviously, so they are put in these special roasters that… guess what? Rotate. After the beans are added, a timer is set for 14 minutes. It usually takes that long for the ‘first crack’ to happen. Not unlike popcorn, the beans snap, or pop, making a similar yet much quieter sound than popcorn.
“First crack” is the moment 5 of the pops are heard. It is at that point the timer starts to determine the type of roast.
We waited a long time for the dark roast.
When the timer goes off, the roasted beans are quickly moved to a drying tray. The tray has a fan under a screen which blows cool air on the beans to stop the roasting process. The screen is shaken, or moved by hand to help cool and to help remove the last bits of the skins or the coffee will be bitter.
After roasting, the beans need to rest for one week. It is too fresh and the aroma not clear right after roasting. The acidity is also very high, so that is why you wait. Or most people do. We tasted ours. You should wait. Trust me. Anything to improve whatever that was.
Before we left, we planted a coffee tree for the future. In 3 years, anyone can come take a tour of Grandma’s farm and pick beans from the official “John’s Grocery”, and others, coffee tree.
Ironically, after the tour and all the coffee, I fell asleep in the van on the way back to town. We stopped at their store on the way back for a free coffee. Ironically there was a coffee festival going on. Small local thing, which had more pastries than coffee, but a lot of tents set up in the greenspace.
We selected dark, medium or light and were served iced coffee with a flavor note card amongst a lot of coffee paraphernalia and charts indicating I was not smart enough to be in this building, even after my coffee 101 lesson.
But it was at this establishment I witnessed people who were. Or believed they were. I have no idea what the difference would present as.
Coffee aficionados who selected their beans, sniffed them, waited for the grind, then sniffed them again, then watched the process of the pour over brew with an eagle eye.
In the end they tasted the presented concoction and declare it “fine.”
I will never reach that level of tongue clarity so don’t worry. I cannot imagine these people have ever had sex. Or perhaps they have very selective mind blowing sex, but they certainly do not settle for anything but perfection as they define it. I bet they didn’t leave a tip.
Leave a Reply