Live From Rancho Ebenezer

A fence we are building for  Rancho Ebenezer

Grown at an elevation of 5,000 - 5,500 ft., our Honduran coffee is grown on the slopes of the San Matias mountains. The farm began with donated saplings to sustain Ranch Ebenezer, a home for orphans and disadvantaged children. In 2001, the home was built to give the children an escape from the city. Coffee represents a second chance at life and also a huge part of their country’s culture.

Tim, Liz, and I are here on a mission to help the farm get better quality coffee, and work alongside the outreach to the children here.We brought with us a great team of people from Chicago who wanted to learn and work with us while we are up here. It's been a lot of fun getting to know everyone.

Me: sorting through Green Coffee

I'm writing you today from the top of a mountain. Hiking up these mountains is a WORKOUT... the air is thin and I feel soooo out of shape, but it's good. The temperature is great it's not hot or cold. It's T-Shirt weather while the sun is up, and sweater weather at night. It's beautiful and so nice to be away from the sound of traffic. The farm has banana trees and orange tree but the main non coffee fruit that is grown is Blackberries. They make tea and jam here from the black berries.

At lunch Tim and I met with an employee of the Government who works to help farmers. We submitted some coffee from the farm into the Cup of Excellence competition (which is a really big coffee competition). I spent last night going through green coffee trying to find the best beans for the submission.

The scenery here is pretty nice. We are on a mountain and pretty secluded. We look out on misty mountain forest all around us. We are in the dry season but everything is still pretty green and wet. It's humid here. Because of the humidity here it takes a long time for the coffee beans to dry to a stable level (around 10% moisture content). We are working to create basically a little green house to dry the beans in. This will help the beans dry much faster and help the farm be more efficient. When I'm not working on the drying station I have been building a fence. The fence is a boundary marker, and a fire breaker.

Honduras Update

Today we have almost finished the coffee drying station. It's looking pretty great! We'll try to get photo's up of it once it's done...

A banana tree on the farm

We tried out our roast profile on the roaster here and it was a HIT. It's a lot of fun talking to the people who bring us such great coffee every year, and to learn from each other!

Tomorrow we are planning on bringing some of the green coffee from the farm into town to enter it into the Cup of Excellence. If the Ranch's coffee wins this award it will literally change the lives of the kids who live here.

Photos From Honduras

Tim Taylor and I (Billy Kangas) are in Honduras this week at the farm we source coffee from. It's pretty awesome so far. We'll keep you updated on all our projects as the week goes on.

Here are some Photos!

Here is some coffee getting the chaff knocked off of it!

 Tim and I are smelling some greens

 

Shade Grown Coffee Trees on the farm

MORE TO COME!

The Internet is pretty hard to get out here :-) 

What filter should I use?

When it comes to coffee filters there are generally three options:

1. Paper, 
2. metal, 
3. and cloth

People have tried other things (animal skin, glass, ceramic, etc) but today paper, metal, and cloth are king. All of these have upsides and downsides

Paper

Most people who brew coffee today use paper filters. Paper filters have a number of advantages. They give the best clarity and are always fresh. Since they are only used one time they are able to have a very small holes and still manage to make the coffee quickly. Other brewing methods suffer because they can get clogged more easily.

Metal

There are various metal filters on the market there. Gold tones, which are stainless steel that has been enhanced with gold plating, are the most common. However there are other filters like the Coava Kone and Disc. As well as the filter found in your everyday french press, and that found in a percolator. Espresso machines and stovetop moka pots also use a metal filter, but that is for a high pressure extraction so it works quite a bit differently. 

Metal filters are popular among those who believe the paper filter adds a paper taste to the coffee, and also absorbs some of the coffee oils taking some of the taste away from the coffee. However in oder to let the coffee flow through them they need to have larger holes. This results in silt getting through. This takes away from the clarity of the cup and gives the coffee a heaviness but not necessarily a good body. To avoid this, there are some who filter their coffee first through a metal filter and then through a paper filter.

Cloth

Cloth filters are similar to paper filter, but are reusable. I used to work for a shop that used muslin they bought from a fabric store with a brewer. The theory was that the cloth would get saturated with the coffee oils and then it wouldn't take away the oils from the coffee. The filters did get pretty gross eventually and you'd have top replace them. I still really like the coffee that we made using this method.

The problem with having cloth is that is retains flavors from previous brews. This can add unwanted elements into the cup. Using a cloth filter can also add the flavor of the cloth in many cases. If you ever try this method keep in mind that the lower the thread count on the cloth the more silt you will get in the cup. This method does not produce the same clarity that is found in paper, but is more clean then a metal filter.

My Opinion

I personally prefer paper. I don't like having the fine grinds, it gives the coffee a false body, and one takes away one of the main things I love in a cup of coffee, the clarity.

Paper has if faults, but most of them are negligible if you get high quality filters and pre-rinse them. The cups I have had that have been able to maintain clarity and body have mostly been with paper, and I feel nothing is better at bringing out the acidity of a coffee, which is something I love to taste.

The main thing is that you do what makes the coffee YOU like. Test it out on your own.