The atmosphere outside the “Juan Ana” farm is vibrant and cheerful as dozens of families come to sell their coffee at a fair price.  But for the workers who process roughly 600,000 pounds of picked coffee beans every year, the labor intensive work of converting the red bean into a tasty beverage is just beginning.

The Wash:

The red-bean coffee must be treated and washed the day it is picked, so the parish coffee workers must work at the “beneficio” until late at night, often past midnight.  The first process, to de-pulp the coffee and remove the bean from the red shell, is done by machine but must be monitored constantly by the workers.

The red pulp of the coffee fruit is saved and added to the farm’s compost piles; nothing is wasted as the compost returns to coffee plants (cafetales) for the next year. 

The coffee bean is then left to soak in large tubs, and is washed consistently over about two or three days to remove the sweet honey substance that coats the fresh coffee beans.  After the coffee is cleaned and washed, it is put out in the sun to dry. 

The Dry:

After 8-10 days of constant supervision and hourly raking to ensure an evenly dry bean, a beige pergamino bean remains. Coffee in the pergamino form can be stored for several months, and is put in costales, or 100-pound bags, for storage until the next harvest.

Pergamino coffee is a dry coffee bean enclosed in a dry, beige shell.  The next stage of the coffee process is to pass this bean through a machine that removes the shell.  The shell is not discarded, but rather kept to use as fertilizer – much like the pulp from the freshly picked coffee fruit. 

What remains after taking off the shell is ‘café oro’ – literally ‘gold coffee’, but because of its colour, best translated as green bean.  This bean is what is later roasted and which becomes the product we are accustomed to buying from our farmers’ markets or supermarket shelves. 

The Roast:

Hours before the sun rises and the day begins in San Lucas Tolimán, the coffee roasters have arrived at the coffee house, lit the fire that will roast the parish coffee, and are monitoring the progress of the precious final product that has evolved over hours and even months of work. s

Coffee “Juan Ana” is roasted over an open fire, and at around 4:30, the parish coffee roasters begin their day and get the flames alight that will bring the coffee to its final, roasted stage.

The flames engulf the rotating blackened barrels in which the coffee is roasted, and approximately 120 pounds of coffee (in two barrels) can be roasted every hour and a half; dark roast coffee requires more time, but any roasting requires constant attention to the strength of the flames to make sure the coffee does not burn.

The result of this labor-intensive process is a rich final product that can be smelled in the neighborhood around the coffee house, sampled in the parish’s cafeteria, and enjoyed every morning around the United States.