At Finca Villa Donia,
we are immensely proud of the care we give to growing, harvesting and
processing our coffee.
Coffee seedlings
We select and grow our
own seedlings to ensure that we have the best quality bean possible. Permanent workers are employed to look after
the coffee plants throughout the year, and we allow our berries to mature and
ripen before getting them hand picked.
Harvest by hand
During the harvest
season, our workers are instructed to selectively pick only the ripe cherries
individually, leaving the unripe green berries to be picked at a later
time. Thus, each bush may need to be
picked up to five times during one season.
This is a difficult and
labour intensive process, used only by growers who harvest for higher
end/specialty coffee. Red cherries, with
their higher aromatic oil and lower organic acid content, are more fragrant,
smooth, and mellow. Green berries, or
mixes of green and red berries are used to produce cheaper mass consumer coffee
beans, which are characterized by an unpleasant bitter flavor and a sharp odor.
Depulping
It is our policy to
depulp our coffee cherries on the day they are picked, to ensure that the
quality of our coffee will not be spoilt by an overly fruity or even rotten
flavour. Depulping is the process of
separating the coffee seeds from the outer skin and flesh. We adopt a recently developed modern
eco-friendly wet process that uses much less water and at the same time produces
far less polluting waste than traditional methods.
Drying
After the beans have
been depulped, they are dried. Our beans
are dried under the sun as far as possible, assisted by mechanical dryers when
necessary. Care is taken to ensure
uniform drying and a high quality end product.
Hulling
Hulling
Drying is followed with
hulling, a process which removes the parchment layer from the dried coffee
beans. Our dried beans typically rest in
a temperature and humidity controlled warehouse for at least 90 day before
getting hulled.
Sorting
Finally, the hulled
beans are sorted by hand to ensure uniform size (essential for even roasting)
and to remove any defective ones that have not been deteced during the various
steps of processing. Our beans are sorted
to the highest standard prescribed for specialty coffees.
Bagging and Storage
The processed and
sorted green beans are put in jute bags with a vapor barrier liner to preserve
the quality of the beans during transit.
They are freshly roasted at the point of sale.