Finca Las Brisas (Part 2)

The coffee tour at Finca Las Brisas was led by the owner's son, Luis Elias.

He was a great guide and we learned a lot.

I was able to pick up quite a bit of his Spanish and Daniel translated the rest.

There are three kinds of coffee grown on the farm. One is a special arabica variety that only produces once a year. The more common variety, called Caturra, I believe, produces beans twice a year in May and December.

The bushes produce beginning when they are about two years old, and keep producing for about eight years.

Then the production falls off and they have to be replaced, or they can be cut off and they will send up a new bush.

The farmers walk through the farm to pick only the beans that are ripe.

Luis said they do that once a week. The beans are run through a hand cranked machine to remove the outer fruit, leaving just two beans.
You can eat the outer fruit (spitting out the beans). It tasted to us slightly sweet, kind of like sugar pea pods.

The beans are then dried for about two weeks outdoors under plastic. At this point most farmers send their beans to a cooperative to be further processed for sale.