Good to the Last Drop - Guest Post

My friends in Thailand have been growing coffee and have harvested, roasted, brewed and drank their first crop. What follows is the story of that process (as told by my friends via an email) and accompanying pictures (cropped to protect both the innocent and guilty):

We really didn't know how to get the hard part off the outside of the coffee. We started shucking them by hand, and then found that a mortar and pestle works great! In the tray, you see the beans after they are taken out of the cherry and dried. They are like rice, with a hard outside shell that needs to be removed.

We thought of just giving up and drinking the Maxwell House if it was going to be this slow and difficult. But it's quite fast with the mortar and pestle once you get the hang of it. This picture still shows the beans before shucking, and you can see we are trying to open them by hand. Yeah, by next Christmas!

OK, so we finally got some shucked - about one cup full. What you see in the bowl is the green beans, with the hard part removed and as much of the silverskin removed as we could figure out how. We did a much better job removing the silverskin on the second batch. The wok is hot and ready for roasting!

Anyone for a little stir fried coffee? I think we're going to sell our coffee as "Organic, Shade Grown, Wok-Roasted Coffee."

The beans are starting to brown. They go through two phases. At first, they just sit there and you wonder why you are even standing there. Will it ever start? Your arm gets tired from keeping them moving. Then, they start to crackle and you think, AHA! But now, the crackle and the steam first time around is just the last of the water coming out of the bean. The crackling and the steam stops, and they just sit there again.... Eventually, they start to brown, and then they crackle a little before they start billowing great clouds of coffee-smelling smoke. Aaaaaaaah... cook until desired color. I like Dark French or Italian...

And, there they are! One cup of green beans makes about 2 cups of cooked beans. They're a bit like popcorn.

Here's the first brewed pot.

And the satisfied drinker.