24.9.24
Given that we are living in the coffee region of Colombia and given that within that region,we are living at the centre of it, I feel it would be rude not to dedicate a post to coffee.
I wouldn’t call myself a coffee snob by any means. I don’t drink Nescafe, but that’s more because I OD’d on it when I worked in Manchester and would make cups with three or four spoons of it in an endeavour to stay awake. It didn’t work. It just left me feeling sick. I still had to crouch in the disabled toilet, leaning on the wall to have a little power nap. I relied on the pins and needles I’d get from crouching to wake me up within a reasonable amount of time, so as not to be missed. Obviously I was missed. It was really the falling asleep in the recovering alcoholic support groups I was running that put me on probation. I digress, but for any of you that were wondering, somehow I managed to sort it out – no real idea how, I just stopped falling asleep. I passed my probation and had a very informative three years. So no Nescafe for me. Ideally \i go for a plunger/french-press/cafetiere.
Were I to want to be a coffee snob however, which I don’t – it’s way too restrictive – I’d now know how to be one. Tali and I spent a wonderful afternoon doing a coffee tour. Pre-tour I had a limited knowledge of coffee. When we first arrived at the Narcos house, which was surrounded by coffee plantations, I tried my hand at home-schooling the younger two. Taking the advice of ‘world-schoolers’ to use the natural environment, off we went for a walk. We picked a few red coffee fruits, noticed that one branch had many different colours of fruits on it, ranging from green to red and so we decided to learn about the coffee process and try and dry our own. This is how we learnt that the coffee fruit is called a cherry and only once it has been picked and the usually two seeds removed from its fruity outer shell, does it become known as a bean.
The tour started with, unsurprisingly, a cup of coffee. It was strong and helped my sleepy, post afternoon feeling. The setting was green and stunning and there were three different types of hummingbirds, humming in and out of the trees and the well placed feeders. Having been given a basket and the choice of a hat, we set out with our biologist/botanist guide. Seasonally we timed it just right. The coffee trees were bursting with deep red, ripe cherries waiting to be picked. Coffee has to be hand picked. This is because – as noted earlier – within each branch of fruit, the cherries ripen at different times, so a machine is out of the question. As such, during the coffee picking season, Chinchina expands in population with itinerant workers, who in a good season, like this one, can earn month’s wages in a week. The workers get paid by the kilo. Their sacks are weighed and checked, to make sure they aren’t littered with unripe cherries and/or stones, which would serve to increase the weight. There are easier and harder sections to pick. Some coffee trees are 3m tall. Some sections are on slopes so steep it would be preferable to have one leg longer than the other, or to have mountain goat skills – I’d be ok, seeing as my spirit animal could well be a mountain goat. The workers are kitted out in wellie boots, they all carry machetes and some have plastic suits over their clothes – probably the ones who are putting on insecticide, there is no technology in sight.
Tali and I were given baskets to try our hand at coffee picking. We got a few tips on how to do it and off we went. Naturally I got myself into the thick of the plantation and not being competitive at all got picking as fast as I could. The technique is a bit like rubbing in butter to flour – I know the rubbing in technique from my school home economics lessons. I preened at the complement of my coffee picking skills. I will grudgingly send some gratitude to Miss Moody – not for shouting at me for cracking an egg into the kitchen draw, it was an accident, eggs are slippery suckers.
Coffee picking turned out to be addictive. As we walked through the plantation/farm it was hard to pass a crimson red cherry and not add it to our baskets. We probably picked about 1.5kg coffee each. Pretty good going. Once the coffee bean has been extracted from the fruit, it needs cleaning. It has a sweet cellulose layer around it. If this is left on, it affects the taste of the coffee, making it sour. I think it causes the bean to ferment. You can cross reference this with ChatGPT, I can’t be bothered, but I know it needs to be removed. This plantation we were on was huge, so it had all the processing on site. Shell removal, then cellulose layer removal – this was done with a high water pressure type process, then roasting. There is another thin layer – a bit like the brown layer around the peanut when you peel a monkey nut – which also needs removing. The cool thing about this is that the factory then uses these thin paperlike shells as fuel for the ovens in which they roast the coffee.
So we did a circular route through the plantation. Past a pungent area, where the cherry skins are composted and then used to fertilise the plants. Past a little creek with a bridge and flowers and some banana plantations too. We returned to our starting point for a coffee lecture and tasting, with beans picked and roasted within the last few days. Our guide actually roasted coffee in a type of very hot air fryer type thing as he taught us about brewing temperature, the roasting effect on caffeine – the darker the roast the more caffeine – and other bits of information that a coffee snob would probably enjoy knowing and remembering. It was a little too much for my idiopathic hypersomnolence, so I had a little snoozle, much to Tali’s embarrassment. I simply apologised, what can I do? I cannot fight the soporific effect of a lecture-like/meeting situation. This is my cross and I think I bear it rather well.
Since then I’ve witnessed less industrial coffee producing methods. A jeep full of coffee cherries in the back passed by me yesterday. An older lady at the side of the road, raking through and spreading out a mound of green coffee beans, on a type of tarp, drying them for roasting. I would have snapped a photo, but I was on the back of a jeep myself, standing on a platform and gripping a bar to keep me on. This is a way to fit more people in/on a vehicle. It’s the Colombian version of the monit sherut – a type of public taxi service found in Israel. It is super fun and provides great views. It’s also a little scary when there are four other people also standing on the back and holding on, meaning there is not a lot of space to assume a position that spreads your weight and doesn’t rely solely on your arms and sweaty hands to keep you on. But here I am, I live to tell the tale. This jeep journey took Tali and I to a different little town called Aruaca – Tali sat mostly inside the jeep working her usual magic chatting with the local people, in particular one very helpful woman who gave us tips and information about Colombia, which we used to plan the next part of our trip. This desire to help seems to be a common trait amongst the Colombian people we have met. Colombians are proud of their beautiful country and seem to be intent on sharing this beauty.
For this reason, we try wherever possible to travel by public transport, along with it being very very inexpensive. We could cross half the country for less than meal at Pizza Express.
