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We've got a couple of coffee bushes (more coming along), that put out a few berries a week. We filled one of the "snack" ziplocks this week. How can we store them between pickings so that we can get enough together to do anything with? Freezing? -- what prep? I found a recipe for roasting on a small scale in an old library book, but it doesn't talk about preserving until you've got enough to roast...
Any suggestions welcomed!
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Jane, on the school field trip we went to the Greenwell historic coffee farm. This is from the field notes I took
1. Slip the bean out of the red berry (these are sweet & kids used to eat them like candy) by hand or machine pulping( By hand, squeeze the berry gently between thumb & forefinger)
2. cover the beans w/water & soak overnight~12 hours - best in a wooden bowl or vat, temp. should be around 80-90F (fermenting the beans to break down the muscilage for a better coffee, w/20-30 minutes of vigorous stirring - forgot to note why they stirred it....)then rinse away the muscilage
3. dry for at least a week to seal up the bean turning the beans throughout the day(they used the corrugated tin roof of the old pulping house that they could cover up in case of rain...you don't want the beans to get wet during this process - for small scale, a scrap of board or roofing with a clear cover would be ideal if you cannot watch for rain....just make sure the beans don't get too hot)
Now you have parchment that can be stored, ready for milling & roasting
Edited by - carey on 09/01/2007 14:04:45
Edited by - carey on 09/01/2007 14:16:43
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Yup, Carey, that's the drill pretty much. I just picked about a gallon and half of red coffee cherries this afternoon. I'll sit and read a book while pinching the red stuff off (there should be something that can be made from the cherry skins - wine? Jelly?) Then I just soak the beans in water for a day or two then rinse off the slime. Then they get spread out on a couple of baking sheets and I put them in our gas oven where the pilot light will dry them out over several days.
I think if you get a five gallon bucket of parchment beans you can take them to the Hilo Coffee Roaster folks and they will hull them for you. Otherwise, you can pick the hulls (parchment) off the beans by hand. Really tedious but do-able if it is just a small quantity.
To roast the stuff, you can use a cast iron skillet on the stove top or a very hot oven or a hot-air popcorn popper. The poppers which have the side heat inlets instead of the one at the bottom work best. Roast it on a high heat stirring occasionally until it turns really dark brown and starts to make popping sounds. The beans should be shiny and oily looking and there may be smoke during this process, so you may want to disconnect the smoke detector until the coffee is roasted.
Then grind the beans and finally make coffee. How in the world did folks manage to figure out how to make coffee in the first place?
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