Coffee From Bush to Cup

This is the story of how coffee got from a plant to mugs in our house.  

Once upon a time, there were coffee berries growing on a bush at Berea Farm. 

They were picked by many lovely ladies and one man, who then poured their sacks of berries into a cement holding tank where they were shoveled towards a hole at the bottom.

From that hole (at the center back of the picture below), they poured into this machine where they were pulped and rinsed with lots of water to separate the seeds from the berries and the seeds of different quality from each other.

They flowed out of the processing room and were separated into the cement tanks below by strategically blocking off different tanks and passageways as needed.

After fermenting in the tanks for some days, the beans were spread on tables in the sun to dry.

 Once they were fully dry, I bought some and took them home.

It turns out that you can roast the beans just like that, then rub off the "parchment" - the outer husk - afterward, but it was a little more tricky to know when they were ready.  Preferably, you remove the parchment and have this:

156 g (6 ounces) were weighed out.

Then, we heated a large frying pan with an oven thermometer in it and a lid on until the temperature inside reached 500F.  At that point, we quickly removed the thermometer, threw the coffee beans in, and kept it on medium-low flame/heat.  We had to shake the pan often so the beans got roasted evenly.  Soon, you could hear them start making soft popping noises (called "first crack").  They started smoking and then a few looked like they were getting wet/oily.  Once they all looked evenly brown, but not quite as brown as we wanted them to end up being, it was time to stop.  From the time of putting the beans in the pan, this all took a total of 8-16 minutes or so.

We quickly poured them out into a bowl and stirred it constantly until the beans were cool enough to touch with our bare hands.  Then, we set them aside to cool fully.

After the beans had cooled completely, we put them into an airtight container and waited for the next morning.  If you're a serious coffee connoisseur, then you want to use the coffee 24 hours - 5 days after roasting.  If you're not (like me), then it doesn't matter so much.  In the morning, I ground our coffee beans in a mortar and pestle.  Of course, if you have a coffee grinder, that would be easier.

I don't have a coffee pot or anything like that either, so we poured the coffee grounds into hot water and let them steep for around 3 minutes.

Then, we poured it all through a handkerchief into our cups.

And enjoyed the final step of getting those berries from the bush to our cups!