Jan 10th, 2009: Hand Picking Coffee

Just a week after we return to Singapore from Bali, we are very excited with the bean that we bought and with the guide from the book, we begin to work on what the coffee amateur did on picking, roasting, grinding until the tasting.

First, we just realized the green bean that we got from "Kopi Mawar" still need lots of job to be done. With the guide from the Japanese book for coffee knowledge, we finally figure out the type of the bad bean which need to be taken away before it roasting. Taking out bad beans as it will affect the taste.
So before we begin to roast the green bean, we have to separate the good bean from the bad one. And as we figure out, hand picking was the only option that we have.
There are 4 of us doing the hand picking on the good beans to the bad beans.
One by one the beans were picked and as per the first time, we almost on doubt that we take the bad bean as the good bean. but with clarifying from each other with the good help from the book guidance, finally we can assure that which one was the good and which was bad.
The hand picking was looked simple, but never come to our mind it was not as easy as we thought.
With the very patient, we were picking 1 Kg unpicked bean one by one.
Here are some picture from the experiment that we have on the hand picking process.















And below is the picture of the good and the bad bean. Madu atau Racun? Which one to choose? Left is the good beans and right the bad beans.














Phew...quite a work but it was great experience to learn the difference between bad beans and good beans. We ended up with red eyes, sore hands but its worth it.

After the good bean has been choosen we are ready on the roasting process. Which will be on the next blog.