92 FERMENTING AND DRYING. 



There are times, however, when it is impossible to 

 pulp Coffee ; the pulpers may get out of repair, or the 

 weather may be so untoward that the berry does not 

 ripen sufficiently, or become too dry for pulping. In 

 these cases the berries must first be fermented. The 

 best way to do this is to place them in one of the tanks, or 

 if the quantity is too small to nearly fill a tank, in an 

 old box or cask, and cover it with sacks or grass, and 

 let it remain until it acquires a good warmth ; then, when 

 the berries in squeezing are no longer slippery, they may 

 be taken out and spread in the sun to dry. For two or 

 three nights it need not be housed, nor will rain hurt it. 

 When dry, it may be stored for curing like parchment 

 Coffee, but must not be mixed with it. To ferment the 

 berries by leaving them in a heap on the ground is a bad 

 plan for two reasons : First, when fermented in this man- 

 ner it becomes very wet and collects dirt, which, in the 

 after treatment, will affect the color of the Coffee, 

 Second, because in a heap the fermentation cannot be 

 equalized throughout the Coffee, Pulping may be per- 

 formed whenever possible, as the increased trouble en- 

 tailed by the latter process is not compensated for by the 

 alleged improvement of the flavor and no better price is 

 received for it. 



The " parchment " coffee as it comes from the pulper 

 is next submitted to a fermentation process for the pur- 

 pose of removing the saccharine matter, without which 

 the beans would not dry. This operation is performed 

 in a series of tanks, whose capacity varies with the size 

 of the estate, and which may be arranged in squares. 

 The pulpers are placed on a platform above the tanks 

 and in such a position that the pulped coffee can be run 



