Hola! We started our day with breakfast with our families once again and then headed out to travel to the Doka Coffee plantation. This was an amazing experience and I learned a lot about the coffee making process. This plantation was started in 1920 and is the oldest around. It was originally founded by a German family but was sold to a Costa Rican family in 1985.

The coffee starts from a seed and is grown outside the ground until it is about a year old. It then doesn’t start to develop cherries until it is 3 years old. This part surprised me because I didn’t realize how long it took for the plant to start flowering. This plants can keep producing cherries up until they are 25 years old. Once they reach this age they are replaced with another one year old and burned to be used as fuel. The cherries are picked from the plants by hand and they are put into baskets. Each full basket is about 20lbs and workers pick about 8-10 of these baskets a day. The pay of these workers was really surprising to me because they are paid per basket and can only make up to $5. Some of these workers are from Nicaragua and are here for some of the season. Doka provides housing and childcare when they are working. The rest are Costa Ricans that are there all year round.

Once the berries are picked they are brought over to the coffee receiving area. This is where the cherries are dumped into a large well full of water. The cherries will either sink or float and those that sink are higher quality. Then the cherries are peeled and then separated into different fermentation tanks based upon their size and quality. Another part of this process that suprised was how they don’t let any part of the plant go to waste. Once the peels are removed they use them as compost. Also almost all of their processes are hydraulic. This is fascinating but something I wonder about if this contributes to water waste at all? After the fertilization process the beans are put in a mechanical dryer and dried. They then lay outside to dry again. When they are outside they need to be turned every 45 minutes to an hour. Some of our group members got to do the hours of turning and flicking the beans. Once the beans are done drying they are then moved to the roasting area when they will then be developed into different blends. A interesting fact about this part of the process is that their decaf blend is roasted in Mexico because the equipment to extract the caffeine from the bean is very expensive and they don’t own it. This was fascinating and I didn’t know what was required to make a decaf blend.

Once the tour was over we had a “Charla” and we got to speak with someone from Doka about processes of shipping out the coffee and how it is sold. This was a very informational lecture and we learned about the risks and steps of exporting coffee from Costa Rica. This process is expensive as there are multiple steps to ensure that the quality of the coffee remains high, but I wonder if there is a way to do this in a more cost effective way? We then headed over to lunch and after that we went the Universidad Latina de Costa Rica where we learned some survival Spanish.I enjoyed learning the Costa Rican slang!

Today’s tour and lecture really showed me how much effort and quality control is put into the coffee industry here in Costa Rica. I think the coffee is deserving of its hype as the coffee I tasted was very delicious and definitely high quality. I look forward to learning more about the industry and process again tomorrow at Cafe Britt!