El Trapiché: Coffee, sugarcane, and chocolate

After school on Friday, I went on El Trapiché Tour. On this guided tour, we learned about the process of sugarcane, coffee, and chocolate on a small five acre Costa Rican family farm. This was another great excursion with a lot of extras thrown in. 

First, we walked to an exhibit showing how coffee beans grow. Seeds are scattered on top of the soil. They do not need to be pushed down into the soil. The seedlings grow for about two months before they are individually planted in plastic bags with nutritious soil. They grow in these plastic bags for about eight months before they are planted in rows in the fields. 

Coffee grows throughout Costa Rica both in the flat lands and in the mountainous areas. Costa Rica only allows Arabica Coffee to be grown in their country to keep quality and consistency high. Coffee beans are handpicked typically by Nicaraguan and Panamanian immigrants. They make about $2 per 13 kg (28.67 pounds) box of coffee beans picked. The workers are paid by the weight of the coffee beans picked, not by the hour. So, you need to work really hard and fast to make any money. 

This is not an easy job. Workers have a basket strapped around them so they can pick with both hands. The basket I am wearing most likely would be much too big for me to carry. Whole families will come during picking season to pick the coffee. Pickers do not have anyone to watch their children so they just come to the fields while they pick. It is illegal in Costa Rica to have children work so they just have to stay in the fields with the parents while they work. They need to watch out for snakes and insects. The rain and/or sun can also make it challenging for the families to be out in the rain all day long. 

Once the beans are picked the are dried on wire shelf/boxes. There are different ways they are sorted to be dried for different quality and flavors. They used to break up the coffee beans with this wooden pestle and bowl. Now machinery is used. One machine sorts the coffee beans by size. Another machine sorts them by weight and type into five different buckets with the first bucket being of highest quality (premium) and the fifth bucket the lowest in quality. This is the coffee the farmer would use in his home and give to friends. He would sell the highest quality beans. 

A coffee bean typically has two parts in the seed. They look similar to a peanut split in half and how it naturally splits in the middle. A higher quality of bean is a mutation called the peaberry. It does not have the split in the middle and looked more like a garbanzo bean to me. About five percent of the coffee beans are peaberry. Apparently, they have a little different flavor. 

The roasting is where you can make or break a good coffee. If the roaster doesn’t know what he is doing, the coffee can be easily burned or perfectly roasted on the outside with the inside not properly roasted. The roaster needs to take into account the specific roasting machine (no two are exactly alike), the humidity, the temperature, and the coffee beans. I was surprised to hear that it typically only takes 12-14 minutes to roast a batch of coffee. 

At the end of the tour, I was able to taste one the coffees - the honey roasted. Not being an avid coffee drinker, I am not the best to report out on the taste. The coffee seemed smooth and I did notice that it didn’t have a bitter after taste. The coffee drinkers in my family will have to be the judge of the taste. 

The sugarcane process was interesting as well. In the mountainous regions such as Monteverde, the sugarcane must be hand cut with machetes as tractors couldn’t make it up the steep hills.

I sucked on a piece of the raw sugar cane. Definitely sweet and juicy! 

To start sugarcane, just place a length of sugar cane into a small trench dug into the ground. It will take root and several sugarcane stalks will grow out of the buried sugar cane.

It takes about three years for the sugar cane to root and be fully grown ready for harvest.

Once it is established, they can use the same canes for many years though. 

To get the juices out, the canes must be pressed. In the old days, the farmers used oxen to carry the stalks from the fields in a small cart. We were able to ride in the cart for a short distance.

The cart was painted bright red with patterns that reminded me more Swedish or Norwegian paintings.

To press the sugarcane they used the oxen to make a simple machine move.

As the oxen walked slowly around the machine in circles, the stalks would be hand fed through the press. Juice comes out through one side and the pressed stalks through another. Nowadays they use water and a water wheel to press the sugarcane. They make use all parts of the sugarcane. 

They boiled the sugarcane and dropped small amounts of the syrup into cold water to make a brittle candy.

They also let us stir a small amount of the heated syrup with a wooden spatula to make a candy similar to a penuche candy. Both candies had a molasses taste. They also made brown sugar and molded it into small wooden forms.

They use the stalks of the sugarcane to wrap the blocks of brown sugar and keep it fresh.

This is how they used to do it before going to plastic. Now they are going back to using the stalks and getting away from using plastic. 

Finally, they showed us how they also could use the sugar cane to produce a moonshine. Yes, we got to sample that. It was approximately 60 proof which in all honestly made it way too strong for my liking. Whoo-ey! That sure opened up my sinuses! I had another bite of the candy to help get the burning out of my mouth. I was only given about a half tablespoon of the moonshine, but it sure burned going down.