Discovering coffee in Costa Rica

To make coffee, you have to get up early. At 5am precisely. It is thus very difficult that begins each day here, for Lucas and me. The most difficult thing is actually to get out of the mountain of blankets that cover us to get dressed in the cold. Fortunately, every morning, Lorena is at the stove to prepare us a hot meal and of course a home-made coffee. Often, it is rice, red beans and egg (the same thing at lunch and dinner).

I then put on my jeans, put on a shirt lent by Christopher and we leave for the fields at 6 am. The 30 minutes that separate us from the place of work allow us to wake up (the tressauts of the vehicle especially).

Once there, we start working straight away. We hang a basket at our waist and we leave in the ranks of coffee.

The work is hard. The coffee fields are located at an altitude of 1600 meters on very steep slopes and from 7:30 am, the sun starts to be bright. In itself, the work of picking is not difficult; it consists of moving from shrub to shrub to harvest the coffee beans. Also, since this is the third time they are doing the job with us, there are not even that many beans to pick. What is really hard is the moving. The ground crumbles under our feet and the slope makes us fall. With the basket in addition, it is impossible for us to catch up. The job is dangerous, this is especially true since large stones roll down the slopes as we pass and may cross the path of other workers.

We move very slowly through these fields and try to keep our feet on the ground. We also understand very quickly that with a topology of ground like that, it is impossible to mechanize the harvest; everything must be done by hand. It will thus take us several days to comb the 2 hectares of fields. Fortunately, we have a snack break around 10 am and we finish the picking around 12:30 pm. Nevertheless, the work is not finished; far from it.

The work of coffee is long and tedious because many steps are necessary to transform it. The coffee itself is enclosed in many layers that constitute the coffee berry.

To remove the outer layer also called skin, the coffee must be dried to reduce its moisture content to between 10 and 12 percent. This step is done on horizontal screens. The coffee berries are placed on them and dry in the sun. It is during this stage that the bean inside is filled with the sugar contained in the pulp and gains all its flavor.

Once dried, the coffee is taken to a neighbor who has a machine to remove the outer layer. After this step, a long and tedious work of sorting begins. We spend all evening sorting the beans to separate the remains of the skin from the beans. But here again the grain is not yet ready to be tasted, far from it...

Indeed, the coffee bean is still in a hard protective layer. This layer can be removed with the same machine as for removing the skin but Christopher does it with a manual machine for the neighbors.

Once this new task is done, we retract the coffee beans to finally reach the climax of the coffee making process: roasting. It is at this level that all the knowledge that Christopher has in his coffee is expressed. Depending on the weather, the temperature and the humidity, he roasts the coffee to his liking. There are three levels of roasting: lightly roasted (white coffee), medium roasted (honey coffee), and heavily roasted (black coffee). Each level of roast changes the taste and the antioxidant content. To put it simply, the more the coffee is roasted, the less antioxidants it has and the stronger it is. Christopher tells us that coffee manufacturers mainly make black coffee because they can hide the taste of the poor quality coffee they use. Personally, I prefer honey coffee because it has a good coffee taste, without being too strong.

With the excellent coffee that Lorena and Christopher produce, we discover a fruity and tasty coffee. We also realize that the coffee we knew in France was of poor quality and above all, that at the price we were buying it, coffee farmers were not adequately compensated.

Thus, the whole week is punctuated by coffee. Nevertheless, we will have the opportunity to be invited to a funeral. Here, funerals last 9 days during which the relatives meet every evening at the home of the deceased for a mass. The evening we come, it is Lorena who plays the role of the priest. We attend the ceremony with great respect.

One evening, we prepare a beef bourguignon and our guests are delighted! We live an incredible moment of sharing and the days, although full, pass quickly. We meet all the people of the community and each time it is a rich exchange. We work one day at Lorena's brother's house, a farmer, to help him. Alexis is a person with whom we live. This charismatic man teaches us a lot about the place, about agriculture and about his life. The exchange is strong and we realize how lucky we are.

All good things must come to an end and we must leave to continue our journey in Costa Rica. We will see them again in a week and they will come to spend a night in our sailboat in Golfito, to thank them for their hospitality.

Buy Christopher and Lorena's coffee

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