3 ms·

You've had advice to hire a farm manager; and research roasting. Nobody so far has mentioned the processing. Roasting is for roasteries; that's not really the

You've had advice to hire a farm manager; and research roasting. Nobody so far has mentioned the processing. Roasting is for roasteries; that's not really the farmer's business. But in most coffee-growing areas, the farmers organize into collectives, with shared processing facilities. A lot of the distinctive characters of coffees are the result of the way the cherries are processed. Since the collective's output is all mixed together, it's not single-estate; I assume that sales are handled by the collective, not by individual farmers. Maybe there isn't a processing collective in your area; perhaps you could launch a processing facility, and encourage your neighbours to have a go.

tsingy 4y ago
Interestingly, there isn't one in my area. Most of the coffee is exported unroasted here, and the local consumers roast theirs themselves.
- denton-scratch 4y ago
  By "processing", I specifically meant to exclude roasting. As far as I'm aware, coffee beans are generally roasted in the country where they're consumed. Roasted beans don't stay fresh as long as green beans. I meant the processing that converts cherries into dry green beans. That processing always occurs near the place it was grown; cherries don't keep. The pulp has to be removed. That can be entirely mechanical, or it can be by fermenting. There are different ways of doing the fermenting. Then someone has to pick over the beans, to sort them for quality. This is just what I've read; I'm no expert, I'm just an interested consumer. And @tsingy, I imagine you've read a lot more than I have; but you seem to have misunderstood my comment.
  - tsingy 4y ago
    My bad, yes I misunderstood. There are but still in small scale and artisanal. And even the people we hired now can do it, but we have time until the first harvest though (3 to 4 years).

tsingy 4y ago

Interestingly, there isn't one in my area. Most of the coffee is exported unroasted here, and the local consumers roast theirs themselves.

denton-scratch 4y ago
By "processing", I specifically meant to exclude roasting. As far as I'm aware, coffee beans are generally roasted in the country where they're consumed. Roasted beans don't stay fresh as long as green beans. I meant the processing that converts cherries into dry green beans. That processing always occurs near the place it was grown; cherries don't keep. The pulp has to be removed. That can be entirely mechanical, or it can be by fermenting. There are different ways of doing the fermenting. Then someone has to pick over the beans, to sort them for quality. This is just what I've read; I'm no expert, I'm just an interested consumer. And @tsingy, I imagine you've read a lot more than I have; but you seem to have misunderstood my comment.
- tsingy 4y ago
  My bad, yes I misunderstood. There are but still in small scale and artisanal. And even the people we hired now can do it, but we have time until the first harvest though (3 to 4 years).