Bean to Cup
Bean Sorting
Warehouse Walk
After the tasting session we visited their on-site warehouse that stores their stock of coffee beans. During the Harvest Season this space would be packed to the brim with bags and the sorting/processing machines would be running all day to keep up with the harvest and demand.
Each bag has Beans that were finished using one of their three core methods; Natural, Washed and Honey. They were distinguishable by their physical properties (Skin, Layering, Color) and taste which was notifiable even in this more raw / un-roasted state. At home and during the tasting we found ourselves leaning toward the washed beans for the more brighter forward taste.
Robusuta
While Elon Farm does produce more than just Robusta, it is like many farms in the valley their staple produce. It is a coffee plant primarily grown in Vietnam that has significantly higher levels of caffeine leading to a bolder and more bitter note versus Arabica beans that we tend to get at home in North America.
It can be difficult to get out of Vietnam (easily) as the demand is so high domestically especially the higher quality ones needed for speciality coffee. This combined with limited production capacity and cost prohibitive nature of international trade can also attributed to this.
Sorting Process
This mechanical process is intuively helps identify “good” beans. A vibrating metal bed moves the heavier beans to one side and the lighter beans to the other. The Heavier beans after cleaning having more caffeine content lending themselves to speciality coffee. The lighter beans are used for lower grade coffee or sold at wholesale to have their caffeine content extracted for instant coffee. It is fascinating simple process to see in person.
The sorting is a mesmerizing mechanical process but also a suprisngly physical manual process for how beans are prepared. These 30kg Bean Bags start by being lifted up and poured by hand into the first machine in the process that removes dried parchment skin and prepares for further sorting.
One of the biggest take-aways is nothing is thrown-away. Everything is used in some capacity to maximize their return on harvest. For example the Coffee Chaff from processing can be used in fertilizer or in exfoliation skincare products.
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