Rustnstuff: Home grown coffee

Showing posts with label Home grown coffee. Show all posts

Sunday, February 28, 2016

Life on the block

This weekend was not about making - rather it was about doing things that contribute to our life on the block including our art life.

On Friday we spent all day travelling and loading and unloading beautiful letterpress trays, type and cabinet that Fiona had purchased -n a 'town' about 2 hours drive away.

Saturday morning was about picking up the book press above that had been gifted to us - we thanked the woman who gave it to us with a couple of small art pieces. The press has made its way over to my studio-garage - it will encourage me to get back to a bit of bookbinding and journal making.

I spent a bit of time sanding and oiling Fiona's 'new' type cabinet. As you can see the cabinet was very dirty; but is now clean without removing the marks etc that are the history of the piece - it is very old. Fiona has spent much of the weekend sorting type and putting the trays back into the cabinet - she has a veritable treasure trove of type now.

When we we were off picking up the letterpress stuff Fiona's dad was keen to visit a big orchid nursery in the area of the town we visited. Fiona and I ended up with 12 small orchids. I managed to attach these to offcuts of the Hairy Oak I cut about a week ago on the band saw. They turned out well as you can see below - all now attached to trees on the shady terraces below the house.

And we were running out of 601mvr coffee so it was time to husk some beans. Ended up with about 1-1.5kg of green beans - ready for roasting. I'm sure the coffee will help with creative thinking and doing.

All in all a varied weekend.

Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Colour and coffee

On Tuesday morning Fiona and I did our last pick of coffee cherries for this year - only a half a bucket full this time.

Thought I would share a few photos of the first stages of the process that goes from picking to grinding (which I'm doing tonight after roasting this afternoon).

There is so much colour about - few shots including the maples that have gone ballistic and a very deep red.

And one can't go past that ever changing view in the valley - full of floods this morning.

Another gorgeous day on the mountain.

Sunday, August 3, 2014

Roasting for a friend

Fiona and I want to give about .5kilo of our coffee to our friend Jeff who gave us the roaster that makes that part of the process possible.

So I wanted the roast to be as fresh as possible - which included husking to get the fresh green beans for roasting. I am using beans that were picked in late 2014.

And this is what .5kilo of freshly roasted coffee beans looks like - this is a mix of a 13.5min and a 13.7min roast - should be some subtle coffee flavours there.

This little lot will be ground and consumed in Jakarta.

Sunday, January 26, 2014

Of coffee and spoons

In the main the weekend has been given over to doing a few chores; and a bit of art. Key chores were putting together shelving and sorting some metal (boring but necessary to get the studio-grage in shape); and husking the coffee (very important to getting to the roasting stage). Art took the form of finishing and delivering some Leaf-spoons to Maleny Additions for sale.

I have got a system now for husking and winnowing the coffee husks - all low tech: a hand operated husker; a box fan; and a few trays and bowls for catching beans. The photos below show the husking work-station with fan and husker; a great photo of the husks been blown away; and various photos of the end product.

We are now set to do a roasting next week of these 2013 beans - will share that when we have done the roasting and tasted the coffee. I did about 1.5 hours of husking and produced 2.1kg of clean green beans. That will equate to about 8 X 250gm bags of coffee when they are all roasted. When I husk the remainder of the beans we picked I think there will be another 3-3.5kg of beans.

Photos above show the six Leaf-spoons that went to market. Maleny additions sells my Ladles and Leaf-spoons which appear to be quite popular. Good example of having the right work at the right price in the right setting. I'm fortunate to have Fiona to do the swing tags - gives the work a nice handmade look.

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

The true value of coffee

Fiona and I do like a good cup of coffee. And as I have indicated on this blog many moons ago we have a small coffee plantation (30 bushes) that are now producing a few kilos of coffee beans each year. We managed to get a crop off about 12 months ago and had gone through all the processes to get them to the dried husk stage. Illness intervened in the process so they were never processed and roasted.

The flowers for the next crop is on so we decided to husk and roast the earlier crop. Thought I'd share the labour intensive process with you.

Start with the dried beans with husk (wheat coloured shell) still on. To get to this point we had already picked, pulped, soaked, washed and dried the fruit.

Then the husking starts. We bought a small hand operated husker - the red and green machine with beans for husking in the hopper - comfortably does about 250gm of green beans at a time.

The husks need to be separated from the green beans. Picking out husks is too tedious so I worked out that with the fan on full one could decant semi husked beans from an upper bowl to a lower one and the husks, being light, blew away.

This actually worked - though I ran the beans through the husker two more times and did the old winnowing trick each time until I ended up with clean green beans that were without husks.

Then the roasting needs to be done. We have an amazing electronic fan forced roaster that our friend Jeff gave us. It roasts 250gm of green beans at a time in the Pyrex tumbler that stirs the beans and removes the chaff that is blown out into the attached filter and chimney. But don't do it inside as it fills the house with smoke as some of thew chaff chars and smokes.

And after 17minutes of roasting we have beautiful roasted coffee in the NYC style - ready for grinding.

And the answer is - yes we did grind the first batch and we are drinking it each day as our daily brew; and it is beautiful. Organic and direct from the farm.

And I could not resist taking a few photos of the husks - they were like a mini installation.

The husks ended up as mulch on the veggie patch.

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Coffee harvest

Over the weekend Fiona and I have been doing a few catchup chores on the block - weeding, dead-heading the agapanthus, pruning the camellias, spraying the broad-weeds with weed and feed etc. Our coffee plantation (only 30 bushes) needed attention on a number of front including getting ripe coffee cherries off. As you can see from the photo below we have two colours of coffee cherries even though they are both dwarf forms of arabica robusta.

We had lots of red cherries last year but few this year - but an abundance of yellow cherries.

We picked two large bowls of cherries in about half an hour.

The next stage is to pulp the cherries to get the outer fruit pulp off. We have invested in a hand operated pulper from South America; and it worked a treat. Pulping the two bowls of cherries with fingers would have taken about 4 hours - we did it in 15 minutes.

The beans are now soaking for a couple of days to get the rest of the slimy fruit layer off; and then they will be ready for drying.

But that is not the end - we will then remove the dry outer chaff-shell; and the inner green bean will be ready for roasting and then grinding. A long way from bush to cup. And given the amount of cherries on the bushes we think there will a few more batches yet. But we know where they came from and how they were grown and harvested etc.