Today was the second day of our trip, and the start of our breathtaking expedition learning about the splendid world of coffee!! After a delicious breakfast, (Mama Tica makes the best food EVER) we met our peers and headed over to a new province, Alajuela, for a coffee tour in the famous Hacienda Doka! The beautiful scenery of abundant greenery and plants caught my eye from the moment I stepped onto the plantation!
Our tour guide was so lovely and made us feel welcome instantly! She talked us through the many stages of a coffee plant, starting from its very beginning, and showed us what a typical work day looked like for a worker on the Doka plantation during peak season times! I was so surprised to find out that a worker typically fills 8-10 full cajuelas (aka baskets) a shift, and earns around 5 dollars per cajuela. That is a lot of coffee cherries being picked!
She continued the tour by walking us through a detailed, fascinating, step-by-step guide of how the coffee goes from a little red cherry from a plant to the ultimate roasted coffee bean (or golden bean as they call it!) First, the ripe coffee cherries get placed into fanegas, and then those get placed into the big tank where the coffee is received. From there, their quality is put to the test via a sink or float test. If the cherry sinks, it is of the best density and quality, and ready to start its transformation! The next station is coffee peeling, where the cherries are sorted and taken through pipes to be peeled using a friction-inducing method. Station 3 is fermentation, where the cherries are placed in water and stay there for 4-5 days. Station 4 is Coffee Drying, where they choose to either dry the cherries out in the sun completely or they use a mechanical dryer. They prefer to use the energy of the natural sunlight because it is ecosystem-friendly and brings out the high quality of the cherries.
The methods used within the coffee production process are all strong sustainable efforts, and I was amazed to see how much Costa Ricans actually stick to their mission of sustainability and protecting their environment. They do not use electricity in these machines, and while this means that the process requires a lot of manual labor, they support their workers enough to make the end result completely worth it. I am more so just impressed by how effective and timeless their methods are! I think their approach makes them unique and is something they should maintain for as long as they can.
We were able to taste the many types of roasted coffee, from light roast to medium and dark, and even those that mixed in between! I tried the Peaberry blend (medium roast) and it was delicious! After seeing all of the work that is put into each coffee bean, I definitely think Costa Rican coffee is worth all of the hype!!
