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 
