Coffee Costa Rica 1977 UofAla study
StoneBearTracks journey to Costa Rica
Cartago Costa Rica Summer 1977
A good cup of coffee is one of my weaknesses. It may be a sin to enjoy strong black coffee so much. Some real southern women know how to make breakfast sawmill gravy with coffee; they are rare and prized.
Marine Corps coffee is good and strong, but they get trash beans... maybe 2nds that weren't roasted correctly or burned, and it's often bitter or harsh from poor acidity and body; government contracts are for the cheap bid grounds. Some units coffee a spoon would stand up in the cup.
So when I get to Costa Rica it's like I've gone to coffee heaven. Costa Rican Aricaba beans are among the best in the world and the best coffee is grown between 3,000' to 5,000' elevation. Even the lower elevation coffee is still better than most other countries coffee. Maybe it's a combination of the tropical climate and mix of volcanic ash soil. I wanted to go back and study coffee and graduate from being a novice connoisure to a effianado of coffee.
My home base was at David and Donna Littles coffee finca - plantation - in Cartago. David, retired Air Force Colonel Command pilot in Korea, rented the finca house on a coffee plantation for USD 150 a month; I learned a lot from Dave. He was my mentor.
David and Donna Little, Ex-pats at their "Ranch Minimo" = Little Ranch coffee plantation, Cartago, Costa Rica 1977.
The grove is on both sides of the access road. At picking time a farm tractor would pull the loading trailer behind and Tico/ Tica campesino peasant plantation workers would pick coffee beans off the trees into bushel baskets by hand, and bring the bushels to this center road to load onto the trailer, then go back an pick more beans. in 1977 the campesinos got maybe $.50c a bushel basket for picked coffee beans,... maybe if the worked all day could pick 6 bushels = $3 a day for labor. The picking season only lasted a few months and was regional picking as to the altitude for ripenes of certain beans
I walked all over the plantation and saw the agriculture operation at ground level from the nursery seedlings to replace older non-producing trees, to the tractors and packing crates the campesinos used in the groves to pick beans.
The outside hulls of coffee beans are green and turn red when ripe. Juan "Whit" Valdez picking coffee.
coffee tree seedlings to replant and replace older non producing coffee trees on the plantation.
A Tica/ campesina lady picks the weeds out of the coffee seedling trees. Coffee is very labor intensive. This Tica probably made $1 a day.
A couple thousand coffee tree seedlings were planted every year for natural grove attrition.
At a different plantation I saw the water vats to soak the beans to shed their outer hulls, and the concrete slabs to spread out the beans out for sun drying. Down in Cartago near Alphonso' bar there was a cafe that roasted their beans and ground them for packaging and sale of ground coffee. It was a good education in coffee... better than anything I learned in business school at Alabama.
The red buildings were the soaking barns to put the coffee beans into water vats to soak the outerhulls and separate from the bean. the concrete slabs below were to spread the beans out to sun dry, then load into burlap 100lb bags for shipping.
Looking down on the town of Cartago, Costa Rica. This is on the road to volcano Irazu about half way up the mountain. ~2,000' elev. There was a neat little cafe to get a bite to eat. Seemed good until a waiter poured a cup of coffee with a cockroach in it.... eeewwwww. so Latin America.
Coffee really was less than a dime. A Costa Rican C-Colon was C 8.54: 1 US dollar and you'd get come centivos back. All cafes had coffee, many had an expresso, and I mean a real expresso! These guys would brew a strong cup of Costa Rican coffee and reduce it down to the size of a shot glass serving. They'd add some real local azucer - sugar, and a bit of pure cream... it was still dark black,.... and the thickness/ viscosity of syrup. A couple of those expressos in the morning would get you cooking into the day quick!
So I had my plan. Go back to Tuscaloosa at the end of the summer, finish college in another year. Work for a year and scrape up as much money as I could. Go back down to Costa Rica and make my coffee supply network direct from the growers coffee plantations. Pay a premium price and import direct to my horizontal business plan of:
1. import the finest Costa Rican coffee beans.
2. Own the roasters and develop my own line of fine coffees, and fine spiced coffees.
3. Open a coffee shop in Tuscaloosa, and get this... probably a dozen more starting with/ in university towns.
?Does this sound like a plan?
It was a plan way ahead of its time. A chain of coffee shops in 1977; imagine that. One of the 400 level "professors" in business school told me coffee by itself wouldn't make it/ wouldn't be profitable... coffee houses by themself were for beatnics and hippies. I thought that was kind of dated thinking.
I managed to learn a lot about business and commerce in spite of going to business school at UofA. I'f I'd included something about Alabama footbawl I would have gotten more done if I'd acted on my instincts and ignored the business professors at Alabama; they were a big waste of time. They were light on teaching academics; what they really taught good was elite-ism. It really was the training ground for who you know, NOT what you know. Had I worn a blue gaunt shirt and khaki pans of the frat boy decor... I would have been given the elite respect. When asked... I told people that I went to Bull Connor University; THE most racist institution in the US. Just last year,... in 2013,... black students were still turned down for admission into white soroities and fraternities.
Also Cocao. I saw some campasinos that harvested cocao beans and dried them on waist high drying racks the size of a sheet of plywood. A metal wire screen ketp the beans surrounded by air for drying. The pods were about the size of a banana only thinner like a snap pea. The pods would turn brown and at some point they'd break open and spread the cacao beans on the screen to dry. Now let me tell you, when you break open that brown cacao pod and hold it up to you nose... this was the richest smell of chocolate I've ever smelled. I still remember that smell of the cacao pod so rich. You could gain weight it was so rich.
The cacao beans were the size of almonds and looked similar. Fresh picked pods were a little sticky. Dried beans looked like brown almonds. I bit into a cacao bean and the taste was so bitter... it was so pure.... you coudn't stand the taste... think the bitterness of dark chocolate x 100... one bean would go a long way in processing.
With the raw sugar production so abundant in Costa Rica my business plan was to experiment and develop the 3 main materials... Cocao, sugar and cream/ milk into fine chocolates. When I got back to college... I did graduate a year later, and was immediatly swept up into the rat race. It was a good plan; maybe next life.
