Origin: Victor y Rafael Fernandez
Linda Vista , El Jocote

Don Victor and don Rafael Fernandez are two brothers that have been working in coffee since they were young, the coffee activity has been in their family for generations.

They have different farms in the same community next to each other, they process the coffee at the same micro-mill. The machine they use to pulp the cherries is Penagos donated by the Costa Rica Agriculture Department. Last year was the first year they processed their coffee at their own wet mill, and this year they process a little bit more coffee than last year because they were happy with the results last year. Both siblings really care for quality and sustainable practices in their farms.

Process:

Victor and Rafael come to the wet mill with their truck full of ripe cherries, at the mill floaters are carefully removed by a floating system. The ripe cherries go through the pulping machine, this machine separate the skin and pulp from the bean. They leave a good amount of mucilage (around 80% of the mucilage) in the coffee parchment to take what they call “honey coffee” to dry in the African beds.

To dry honey takes more work, because this kind of honey has a lot of mucilage and gets very sticky. The first 2 days they pour the coffee in a thin layer in African beds outside in direct exposition to the sunlight. They move the coffee around 4-5 times a day and it takes approximately 11 or 15 days to dry the coffee in the raised beds to leave the beans with a moisture content of 10%-10,5%. They have identified every African bed with a number and keep a track and the information about each lot they are drying. They storage the coffee when the temperatures are low in the morning or in the evening, when the coffee is not hot in grainpro or in clean plastic bags.