Costa Rica – Doka Coffee Plantation

Coffee might be the only reason I’m excited to get out of bed in the morning and it’s gotten to the point that a quick Starbucks or *gasp* hotel lobby coffee just doesn’t cut it anymore. I didn’t use to be that picky about it but after living in Seattle where coffee is the official religion, I may have picked up some bad habits. Either way, we’ve established that I’m borderline obsessed with coffee and that I also happen to love factories. That made the factory tour at the Doka coffee plantation pretty much the perfect expedition for me! Jason was very sweet and humored me the whole time and gave me all of his tasting cups of coffee. I also may have bought a box of 9 bags and shipped them home to myself. Whatever, it’s not like I won’t drink it! I also may have been a little wired and annoying on the rest of the bus ride…

Let me just go ahead and get this out of the way: it’s been a few weeks since we did this tour and I’ve forgotten a lot of what happened. So I’m going to do my best with how the process worked, but if you really want to know details, I suggest you google it!

That. Doka is also completely sustainable and waste free. They use all their old beans as fertilizer etc.

All the beans go into this vat with some water

The waste and bad beans float to the top and are disposed of and the high quality beans sink and are sucked up by a pipe in the bottom of the pit.

the beans are sent through these things that somehow separate the skin, fruit, and bean parts.

yep. look at all that. Note that it’s all driven by a shaft and some belts

After peeling, the beans are sorted by quality into these giant tubs to hang out for a while.

They separate the beans from the other crap

The beans are then dried in the sun. If it rains, they cover them with tarps.

Natural pesticide border of other plants

Light vs dark is just separated by a few minutes.

They make coffee here by pour over. I never saw an electric pot.

I wanted a little metal mug, but didn’t find one.

Traditional breakfast.. rice and beans and meat and fruit!

They had hydrangeas as big as your head.

Well it’s almost 8:00 at night and I want a coffee now…

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