404 SPICES 



CHAP. 



coffee drying. It is made by levelling a piece of ground, 

 covering it with concrete or broken stone, and overlaying 

 it with cement ; of course a spot exposed to full sun is 

 selected, and the ginger laid on it to dry. Others use a 

 frame-work of sticks, with boards or palm or banana 

 leaves laid upon it, or, more commonly, a few large 

 banana or palm leaves are laid on the ground, and the 

 ginger laid on them. In countries where palm or 

 pandanus-leaf mats are commonly used, these would 

 doubtless be more convenient for drying the spice. 



The rhizomes are put out at sunrise and turned 

 over at mid-day, and taken indoors in the evening. In 

 rainy or cloudy weather it is apt to get mouldy if care 

 is not taken. It requires six or eight days to become 

 thoroughly dry. During the drying the rhizomes lose 

 nearly 70 per cent in weight. Ginger dried as for 

 market contains from 7 to 12 per cent of moisture, as 

 was shown when such ginger was dried at 100 C. ; and 

 some poorly dried specimens, some of which were damp 

 and mouldy, when dried at 100 C. showed a loss of 

 from 15 to 25 per cent. 



As it happens that the weather was not always 

 suitable for drying ginger, and prolonged rains make 

 it impossible to sun-dry it, whereby the planters lose 

 their crop, attempts were made to dry by fire heat. 

 An attempt was made to dry without removing the 

 coat, which if successful would have saved a consider- 

 able amount of labour. The result, however, of this 

 was that the rhizomes became quite dark in colour, and 

 the flavour was not as good as in sun-dried spice. 

 Further experiments with an American fruit evaporator 

 were also a failure, partly owing to the high tempera- 

 ture required, and partly from ignorance of the operator. 

 The rhizomes lost much of their aroma, were darker in 

 colour, and had a smoky, burnt flavour. Still, it is 

 possible that a method of fire-heat drying might be 

 evolved, which would save much labour and risk of 

 loss from wet weather. 



Attempts, too, were made by drying with calcium 



