Making coffee from scratch

Fresh Arabica coffee berry

Depulped in their muscillage

Fermentation

Coffee beans in their parchment after a few days in the sun

Dehusking by hand. 

Green coffee after parchment removal

The finished product after roasting

I had a fun time processing two kilos of fresh coffee berries from a colleague. It was a tough job processing the berries by hand but the effort was very interesting and exciting.

To speed up the process, I used a tool for cracking crab shells and completed the task in an hour. The beans were then washed with water. This "gilling basah" wet processing is used in Indonesia as compared to the dry processing methods used in other parts of the world.

The beans were then fermented for a day and then sun dried over a week. The dried beans must now be dehusked to remove the parchment covering the bean. It was yet another tedious job doing it manually. I resorted to using a garlic mincer to crack the parchment.

The result are the green beans which are

 roasted to make the coffee beans we buy at the supermarket.

As soon as the beans were roasted and cooled, I couldn't wait to make myself a cup of coffee. I can only say that the taste of that coffee was extremely satisfying. The wife liked it and that meant more to me than anything else.

The yield from 2 kilos of coffee berries was slightly over a 100g of roasted beans. That certainly gave me a new found appreciation for the hard work put in by the coffee farmers. 

Liberica coffee from jie Coffee

Liberica coffee

I was at Chong Pang this morning and was surprised to find this stall set up at the market. The couple manning the stall was very enthusiastic about their coffee. 

It was unusual for a small stall like this showing fresh Coffee berries, green coffee and their coffee products. As I have always wanted to taste fresh coffee berries, I stopped to chat with the vendor who answered my queries enthusiastically.

He told me the coffee was Liberica. The berries were huge and so was the green coffee. After sampling some of his coffee, I bought 250g from him. He obliged me with some green coffee. I liked the coffee. It has been said that Arabica beans are the best but a lot more goes into making a good cup than just the bean itself. 

Bumping into this stall was certainly a coincidence as a colleague of mine brought back some fresh Arabica berries for me to process. I will be fermenting the beans, dehulling and drying them and finally roasting.

I will also be planting some of the beans and hopefully harvest them in a few years time. So getting the Liberica berries was certainly a bonus.

Liberica berries and green coffee

Jie Coffee

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