The Fourth Wave - Part 2: Estate Coffees
So what exactly is an Estate coffee? It is a single farm that is kept pure in itself, bringing the cherry to parchment and most of the time milling the coffee on that farm for shipment. There are exceptions when some of the estates bring their parchment to a central miller. Milling or the graining process is removing the thin brittle shell of parchment from the pit of the coffee cherry, grading it for size through a screening process, then putting the beans in a burlap bag. One bean is 1/2 a pit of a coffee cherry. The majority of these large estates come from Guatemala, El Salvador and Panama.
Each acre of coffee trees produces approximately 60 quintales of coffee cherry or about 6000 lbs. total (1 quintale = ±100 lbs). A coffee cherry yields about 20 percent of its weight in roastable green coffee beans. If you do a simple calculation you realize one acre of land produces only 1200 pounds of coffee beans per year, that’s only eight – 150 pound sacks!
Now most small farmers have just a few acres. Can you imagine being a little farmer with 7 to 17 acres of land? These little farms make up a good share of what produces the quality coffee we drink in our specialty coffee houses. To be an estate, you need lots of acres. These little farmers are not estates – they simply can’t produce enough on the land they own. These farms cannot afford to bring their cherry to parchment. Instead, they cooperatively bring their coffee cherry together with other small farmers so they can process, blend and bag their coffee together. This is called a co-op. A co-op is not an estate.
Does the island of Sumatra have estates? I don’t know of any. I don’t believe there are any large land owners in Sumatra. It is made up of approximately 40,000 small farmers. All regional gathering of coffee cherries is done by mountain men who pay the small farmers for their cherry and take it to blending centers in Medan. This is very primitive. So, if someone has a Sumatran coffee out there and tells you it’s an estate, they don’t belong to the Fourth Wave of coffee.
Kenya’s system is different. They hold weekly auctions where the coffee from single farms or co-ops in purchased in small lots. These lots can be anywhere from 30 bags to 100 bags or so. Prices can vary widely because of the way the auctions are held.
Each acre of coffee trees produces approximately 60 quintales of coffee cherry or about 6000 lbs. total (1 quintale = ±100 lbs). A coffee cherry yields about 20 percent of its weight in roastable green coffee beans. If you do a simple calculation you realize one acre of land produces only 1200 pounds of coffee beans per year, that’s only eight – 150 pound sacks!
Now most small farmers have just a few acres. Can you imagine being a little farmer with 7 to 17 acres of land? These little farms make up a good share of what produces the quality coffee we drink in our specialty coffee houses. To be an estate, you need lots of acres. These little farmers are not estates – they simply can’t produce enough on the land they own. These farms cannot afford to bring their cherry to parchment. Instead, they cooperatively bring their coffee cherry together with other small farmers so they can process, blend and bag their coffee together. This is called a co-op. A co-op is not an estate.
Does the island of Sumatra have estates? I don’t know of any. I don’t believe there are any large land owners in Sumatra. It is made up of approximately 40,000 small farmers. All regional gathering of coffee cherries is done by mountain men who pay the small farmers for their cherry and take it to blending centers in Medan. This is very primitive. So, if someone has a Sumatran coffee out there and tells you it’s an estate, they don’t belong to the Fourth Wave of coffee.
Kenya’s system is different. They hold weekly auctions where the coffee from single farms or co-ops in purchased in small lots. These lots can be anywhere from 30 bags to 100 bags or so. Prices can vary widely because of the way the auctions are held.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home