Growing Organic Coffee Beans In Costa Rica

Growing coffee in the mountains of Costa Rica is special. We are a small producer of gourmet organic coffee beans. The farm is at 3600 feet in the mountains just southwest of Lake Arenal in the eastern part of Guanacaste Province. It’s a truly wonderful environment for growing organic coffee beans in Costa Rica.We’re just below the “cloud forest” so we have a little less sunshine and therefore, plants that grow a little slower. Organically grown beans don’t do well in full sun so the clouds are welcome. We also plant a variety of low growing trees to help shade the plants. Different types of banana are popular. Hence the term “shade grown”. It is much less labor intensive to grow non organic beans so organic coffee beans account for around 12% of Costa Rican production.

Mountain grown coffee takes more work. The coffee is grown on steep hillsides in small plots to conform to the terrain and the land must be terraced. You have to terrace the land for two reasons: the most obvious is to accommodate the immense amount of runoff in the rainy season. The other reason is to help the pickers navigate the steep hillsides. Their income depends on the amount they pick. They are paid per “cajuela”, which is a little more than fifteen quarts. An efficient picker will be able fill six or seven “cajuelas a workday. Each “cajuela” is worth around 800 colones or $1.70.

What happens after the beans ripen

The beans will ripen as soon as the rainy season ends. In a normal year that is in November. Unfortunately all of the beans don’t ripen at the same time so each plant will be revisited four or five time during the season. Coffee beans contain many different sugar compounds and the processing must be started quickly to avoid excess fermentation. After removing the fruit surrounding the bean and washing off about 80% of the sugars the beans are air dried to 11 percent moisture and then “rested” for a minimum of 30 days.

After the “resting” period, one additional hard parchment layer is removed from the bean and the coffee beans are ready to ship to our warehouse. The beans are roasted as needed and shipped immediately to our customers. The taste is best reward for the efforts of so many people. Growing organic coffee beans in Costa Rica has been very rewarding.

Rhonda Keen is the owner of a boutique coffee farm in the mountains of Costa Rica. Rhonda is committed to the environment and utilizes organic growing and roasting techniques to craft the finest organic Costa Rican coffee.

Sign up for our organic coffee recipe club at http://www.keensorganiccoffeenews.com/

Author: Rhonda Keen
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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