Today, we toured the Doka coffee plantation, home of one of the oldest wet mills in Costa Rica. Our tour guide walked us through the entire process of coffee bean production, from harvesting to packaging. I was honestly surprised at the amount of variation in coffee type that can be produced from one harvest. Not only was there light and dark roasts, but there were also plants that naturally produced beans with less caffeine than normal, creating a natural half-decaf coffee. There were also some beans that were whole, rather than split, called peaberry, that produced a much stronger and richer flavor of coffee than normal.

The technology used to sort the beans is also remarkably impressive. From what I could see, the entire system was entirely powered by water, without a single electrically powered component in sight. First, the beans were placed into a large tub of water, where the higher quality ones would sink to the bottom, with the lower quality ones rising to the top. Both batches would then be transported into the next room, where the beans are placed through a number of tumblers and skinners to remove the outer skin of the beans and further sort them. The ingenious part of this is that all of the tumblers are powered by the water used to initially sort the beans. When the beans are transferred over into the next room, the beans would be dropped off into the system, and the water would go though a waterwheel that powered it all. At least, that’s how it appeared to work to me.