Tyrona – Experiencing Nicaragua Day 3
Soprexxa Coffee Beneficio – The coffee beans are then spread out on huge mats for drying. Each mat holds the beans from different farms. Workers sweep the beans continuously to expose them to the sun. The protective husk covering the beans is left on to protect the bean until an order is being fulfilled.
Women’s Cooperative – We visit a women’s cooperative where they show us their machinery for grinding milling corn, cacao and coffee. These women are fabulous, proud and inspiring. Beyond the mill, they have aspirations of opening a cafe, selling purses made of recycled potato chip bags and even an internet cafe someday.
After visiting the cooperative we drive toward Managua to visit the Soprexxa coffee beneficio. Here coffee from farms across Nicaragua big and small are delivered and unloaded for production. Men throw the huge sacks of beans (150 lbs) on to a huge pile.
Inside the mill the protective husks are removed from the beans.
They are finally sorted manually to remove all defective beans before being shipped to your local coffee shop. Amazing how fast these women are working!
As a part of the coffee tour we also get to learn how coffee is assessed for quality. Coffee is scored on a scale with anything over 80 being a good score. The guide shows us how to slurp the coffee making a loud vacuum sound in order to distribute the coffee across our taste buds.
The coffee expert inside tells us that the best scoring coffee he ever tasted scored 94. We taste 2 types of coffee Oro Verde and Quintayama from Finca Peten the farm we visited on the first days of our trip. The two coffees were great scoring 83 and 85. Of course I have to plug Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee my personal fav.
