Today we had the privilege of touring the beautiful Doka coffee plantation which was a 45-minute drive away from our homestay in Heredia. On the way, we saw beautiful scenery and towns.

Today we learned about the coffee growing and producing process on the tour and it consists of several semi-simple steps

1: 10 cahuelas dropped into the water basin for the sink test

One cahuela is equal to 25 lbs of fresh-picked red coffee berries which are picked by workers who are paid 2 dollars per cahuela. I feel as if this is a fair wage because the weight of coffee in one cahuela is worth about 6 dollars so two dollars per is a fair wage to the workers.

2: skins are removed and sorted by size 85% high quality 10% medium quality, 5% low quality

The part about the quality of the coffee beans that I found interesting was the best coffee beans are sent abroad and the worst quality are sold locally in Costa Rica; however, the locals aren’t angry about this fact because to Costa Ricans coffee is coffee and they won’t pay $10 for premium when they want to pay $2.

3: Coffee beans held in pits for 36 hours to ferment and remove the sugar layer then spread out on concrete to dry in the sun

The process is more sustainable when they let the beans dry out in the sun rather than burn wood and dry the beans in only a day.

4:Then the beans still in their last layer of the shell are stored for three months and 97% of the green beans are exported unroasted and the remaining 3% are used in the gift shop at Doka Estate.

I had an incredible time at the Doka Estate today I truly believe that their practices are the most sustainable available especially because their sorting techniques use hydropower and their drying processes use the sun. Also the coffee in Costa Rica, in my opinion, is the best in the world which is why they can charge so much for it.