Part Two- Toby's Estate Coffee Origin Trip to West Java, Bandung, Indonesia.

If Part One describe our arrival and trek up to 1200-1300 metres ASL Coffee Plantations, Part Two brings us far and beyond.

After the "culinary experience" of chewing on yellow bourbon cherry, eating organic oranges and picking red cherries, we proceeded to two coffee processing plants, which specialized in a Fully Washed and/or Semi Washed Process. Here, technical terms that we have been reading and preaching about becomes a reality.

Visualizing live actions in the plant accelerates learning. We saw how coffee cherries , about 1 tonne a day, which was picked earlier (average 50kg are picked per picker) was leave in fermentation water tank, undergoing de-pulping and laid
to dry under hot sun.
Minor activities of women hand sorting greens while their little children looks upon from far was a sight to behold.

After lunch, we continued our drive up and 25km later, the reading on the elevation gauge reads 1500 meters ASL! The mountain that we were at is called Gunung Tiga ( which means third/three mountain in Bahasa Indonesia). The plantation here is totally different from the ones we saw at the 1200-1300 metres elevation. Temperature was cooler, ranging between 16deg to 18 deg celcius and the tall rainforest trees casted shades which in return created a very dark atmosphere around the plantation. Coffee seems to be growing in the wild and look challenging for coffee pickers to pick cherries, although the farmers assured me that it is possible to pick and the bigger challenge was to keep a lookout for wild tigers, boars, phytons and cobras!! I almost choked hearing the news. Well coming from urban Singapore, tigers and pythons are only visible after paying a $14 entrance ticket to the Zoo!

We spend a lot of time surrounded by Coffea Arabicas, exchanging ideas with the farmers and before you know it, the sun has set and darkness was creeping fast. Exhausted, we finally make our way down.

It is really hard to put what we saw in words and hopefully this short video clip will help to serve the purpose of sharing the experience to one and all. Enjoy!

Comments

  1. Been tracking your development for awhile and I must say that you have inspired many to choose this career path. It's sure a road trip from making coffee to learn roasting, competing and now coffee buying. All the best.

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  2. Hi Capo, thank you for nice comments. I hope it inspired you too. It's very simple really. I love everything coffee and this is a ready platform that I can share and interact.

    ReplyDelete

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