244 



COFFEE 



COFFEE 



about the third year, giving light crops until 

 the iifth or sixth year. The trees blossom at least 

 three times a year, the fore blossoming, the large 

 blossoming, and the after blossoming. These occur 

 in the months of February, March, April and May, 

 according to location. Generally after seven or 



Fig. 351. Method of drying coffee in the sun in drawers that 

 are slid under a house when there is no sunshine. 



eight months the berries are ripe. This throws the 

 harvesting in the last four months of the year. 

 The berries ripen unevenly, so that the plantation 

 must be gone over several times. The picking is 

 done by hand. The yield per tree varies greatly, 

 according to the care given. One pound of dry 

 coffee per tree is a general estimate, although this 

 may be greatly increased. 



In Porto Rico the pickers are paid by the meas- 

 ure, which is called " almud " and should contain 

 twenty liters. About six or seven cents are paid 

 for a measure. Twenty liters of berries are equal to 

 about five pounds of coffee ready for the market. 

 The expense of picking is $1.20 to $1.40 per 100 

 pounds of coffee. In Hawaii, the cost of picking 

 and transporting the coffee to the mill averages 

 about three and one-half to four and one-half cents 

 per pound of market coffee. 



Handling the product. 



When the berries are picked they are subjected to 

 one of two processes. The berries may be dried at 



once and later put through machines called "huU- 

 ers," to extract the seed ; or they may be " pulped," 

 that is, have the outer fleshy coat removed, before 

 drying. In Porto Rico, pulping is usually done at 

 once. The pulping machine is driven by hand, water 

 or other power. Sometimes the separated pulp is 

 used as a fertilizer. The beans are collected in 

 wooden or cement tanks in which they remain to fer- 

 ment upwards of thirty hours, in order further to 

 disintegrate the saccharine matter of the external 

 coat, after which they are washed, either mechani- 

 cally or by hand, and put on large cement floors in 

 the sun to dry to a point where they can be stored 

 safely. From these floors or from the storeroom 

 they are put in drying drawers. These drawers, for 

 the most part, are constructed underneath the high 

 floors of houses, run on rails in the open, where they 

 are kept as long as there is sunshine (Fig. 351); at 

 the least danger of rain the drawers are run back 

 under shelter. During the whole drying process the 

 grains are repeatedly turned. In some places me- 

 chanical hot-air drying apparatus is used. As soon 

 as the coffee is dry, which should be when it is 

 brittle when broken between the teeth, it is either 

 hulled or left in the parchment (the tough inner 

 integument, also called hornskin) and taken in 100- 

 pound bags to the most convenient market. Coffee 

 merchants established there buy the coffee for cash. 

 They hull, polish and separate it into different 

 grades by special and mostly modern machinery, 

 and finally pick it over by hand. 



Hawaiian coffee is all fermented and washed. It 

 is thought by many that the method of fermenting 

 has a strong infiuence on the flavor of the coffee. 

 The Hawaiian berry is first run through a pulping 

 machine, immediately after being picked. When 

 hulled, the bean in the parchment is fermented in 

 shallow trays or bins eight to twelve inches in 

 depth. When the beans have fermented and there 

 is no longer a marked rising temperature, they are 

 washed in a stream of running water to remove 

 the gum and then transferred to drying-houses, or 

 the product is taken to the beach and dried in the 

 sun. This product, known as parchment, is then 

 packed and sent to the coffee milling establish- 

 ments and is run through machinery which removes 

 the parchment. The beans are then graded and 

 polished and in many establishments hand-picked. 

 When put up in bags of 100 to 150 pounds,- the 

 coffee is ready for market. 



While a number of insects and fungi infest coffee 

 plantations to a greater or less extent, the crop 

 is remarkably free from serious annoyance. In 

 Hawaii there are no serious diseases or insect 

 pests, the torpedo bug (Sipkanta acuta) and the 

 brown-eyed disease {Cereospora coffeicola) of leaf 

 and berry being the most troublesome. Both are 

 readily amenable to preventive measures, the best 

 preventive being thorough cultivation, the proper 

 degree of shading, and the use of fertilizers. The 

 coffee blight (Pulvinaria psidii) has done serious 

 damage in some districts. It seems to occur prin- 

 cipally in neglected plantations. It will probably 



