I spent yesterday afternoon with Rich Lipner of Dos Jefes roasting some of my coffee.

My coffee plants flowered just a few weeks ago after our first seasonal rain on Jaramillo. I did not know that the rain at the right time of the year triggers the blossoms.

Coffee Blossoms

The cycle from those blossoms to the finished product is almost a year. First the growth, then harvest starts in cycles starting near Halloween on my farm, the final harvest at year end. Coffee cherries do not all ripen at the same time, therefore anything but human picking adds mature and green cherries, we just want the red mature cher.

We cherry pick by hand, one red cherry at a time usually picked by indigenous labor paid by the volume of cherries they pick. I have tried to pick coffee and I cannot even come close to what the professionals can do.

Within a day of picking we take our cherries over to the Cafe Ruiz Beneficio to be cleaned of the husk and dried. They measure the cherries out by the Lata, the can, a five gallon can, the same unit used to measure the productivity of the pickers.

After cleaning the cherry to remove the husk they sun dry the green beans.

We then cure the beans for three or more months to reach the correct moisture level. Then a thin layer of what we call parchment is removed from the green beans. I use Ruiz for doing this process also, but the traditional method uses a large mortar and pestle similar to the one pictured below.

After the parchment is removed we hand sort the beans looking for bad beans, broken beans, or cherries that made through the pulping process of husk removal.

Finally it is time to roast in small batches, about four pounds per roast. That is what Rich and I did yesterday.

Roasting Coffee

After the roast and cooling we go through the beans one more time to remove any previously missed bad beans or any that are off color. All of this is a labor of love, because there is no way anyone can pay enough to cover all the costs of hand picked gourmet coffee production. This is not the same way the big boys do it, they need to make a profit.

You can almost smell the aromatic of fresh Ferdabella Boquete coffee in this photo.

Boquete Panama grows the best coffee in the world. You don’t need to take my word for that fact, Boquete Coffee is a rare treat to those who know gourmet coffee.

On December 14 2012 I paid  visit to the Benefico of Suarez coffee in the Alto Quiel region of Boquete. The farm was started by Domigo Suadi in 1900 with seventy thousand coffee plants. Suadi became Suarez and the farm continues today . The Saurez family, has been growing coffee in Boquete for over 100 years. I met with Roberto Saurez one of the fourth generation of growers from the family.

Suarez coffee is grown and processed on the farm and they provided an opportunity for me to photograph several stages of their production.

The harvest of Boquete coffee is one cherry at a time.

One of the things that makes Alto Quiel Boquete coffee special is that it is grown in volcanic soil on the hillsides of Boquete Panama. It is harvested one bean at a time when ripe, no machines are used. Pickers are paid not by the hour but by the five gallon  can called a lata.

Picked Cherries are dumped into the first step in processing here.

After picking the cherries are dumped into a hopper and pass through a machine that strips off the outer hull of the cherry.

These hulls from the beans that will be used for organic fertilizer

After the cherry is removed from the beans you have beans and the remaining cherry particles ready for washing.

These are beans after outer skin is removed before washing

At Saurez they employ a stream of water to wash off the remaining hulls.

Washing off the remaining cherry hulls

After washing the beans are sun dried.

Sun drying cleaned green beans in a greenhouse

Alto Quiel is a very wet area of Boquete, in addition to rain there is a regular mist called Bajareque so having the beans covered for drying is important and done in a large greenhouse on a concrete floor.

After sun drying the beans are slowly dried for 48 more hours in this rotating drum.

Rotating Dryer

After drying the beans are aged and then before packaging for sale they are roasted.

Coffee roaster at Saurez Coffee

The final product before bagging looks like this and smell like breakfast heaven.

Coffee roasted and ready for the bag.

The final step is hand bagging the coffee in 400 gram bags so you and I can buy them.

Suarez coffee beans are not always easy to find even in Boquete, most of their coffee is ground and sold locally. BoquetePanamaCoffee.com has Suarez coffee available for sale delivered to the US and Canada. If you want to try drinking a bit of Boquete you can order at this link. BoquetePanamaCoffee.com