Advertisement
Green Coffee Beans
In July the coffee beans are still green. They turn red and are picked in December.First I'd better explain the language in the first video, even though you may have already watched and heard it. There is plenty of humor throughout the Café Britt Coffee Tour. The supposed owner of a coffee plantation begins the tour by leading the group through his shaded coffee fields to two of the workers who help the owner to explain the process of growing and processing coffee beans. They flow back and forth between Spanish and English and their personalities develop as the tour goes on. We learn that the two workers have been dating for 10 years, and she is more than ready to tie the knot, but he still lives with his mother! Somehow their personal issues are intertwined in a very lively way with information about planting, pruning and fertilizing coffee plants and picking coffee beans. Fertilization -- it seems that for coffee plants they use natural fertilizer in the form of chicken manure, although they translate the term for the Gringos using that English slang word that sounds like "sheet" when a Costa Rican says it. Throughout the tour, the State of Arkansas was mentioned frequently, since they were aware that most of our particular tour
Gathering for the Tour
The group gathers around Don Próspero as he begins the tour. group was composed of people from Arkansas. It was mentioned so often, in fact, that even the guy from Massachusetts (the other guy in the video with Glaze and the Costa Rican tour guide) started injecting his own humor by recycling one of the tour guide's fertilizer jokes. OK, go ahead and watch the video again. Maybe it will make more sense this time.
After the coffee fields, we entered the processing plant to see the roasting and packaging process. Café Britt is primarily a coffee roasting business, so the other parts of the process (removing all of the extra layers from the coffee beans) is done elsewhere. It was a bit warm in the roasting area, so we were happy to be led to a small theater where the plantation owner/tour guide, Don Próspero, conducted a coffee tasting and cupping demonstration. Glaze was chosen as one of the tasters, but first he had to smell the raw beans before roasting. It turns out that they don't smell like coffee at all at that point. That's where the video comes in. Then Glaze had to slurp the coffee out of a spoon to demonstrate tasting it with all parts
Into the Coffee Fields
Glaze, Lauren, and Pete head into the banana-shaded coffee fields. of the tongue. That, evidently, is quite ironic since Glaze, I am told, is only able to drink coffee that is about 90% sugar. Of course, the coffee he slurped from the spoon was black. Next, the tour guides put on a rousing performance that explained the history of coffee from its origins to its spread throughout the world as the most widely consumed beverage -- ever. The second video is a creative depiction of the spread of coffee to France in the 1700s. Finally, the coffee workers we met earlier discussed their relationship, and suddenly there was a makeshift wedding and we were all wedding guests. Reid was chosen as best man for the wedding and was told to say "Sí, Padre" to every question that the priest asked. Before he knew it, he was tricked into being the one who had a reason why the couple shouldn't wed. To compensate for any embarrassment, both Reid and Glaze were given Café Britt coffee pickers' hats.
After the wedding, we were all invited to the reception, which was actually the outstanding buffet lunch that was included in the tour. While waiting for the food to be ready, we had
Dating for 10 Years
"When the coffee beans are red, we pick them. Did I mention that we have been dating for 10 years?" a chance to visit the gift shop and sample cold coffee beverages, coffee licquer, and a variety of chocolate covered goodies. Some of us bought coffee. Some of us bought A LOT of coffee. The buffet included all kinds of high quality Costa Rican foods too intricate to describe. Meat and potato lovers were not exactly enthralled, but everyone found something that tasted good. For dessert, we were treated to coffee beverages that looked as good as they tasted, and a few members of the group (Katie and Anne Marie) figured out how to get some amazing looking tiramisu. We don't know what they had to say to the waiter to get that. It's hard to believe that we are almost finished with the third week already, but Café Britt was certainly the highlight of the week!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.043s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 7; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0211s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
William
non-member comment
the! cappuccino
Dr. O has a mission and a challenge. She must carefully balance six cups of cappuccino on the trip home and deliver them to her friends in the library. What a wonderful tour!