Coffee

Coffee drying, Peru

During the time that Eric and I had the coffee roaster business, we had regular inspections from the county health department and we used to get a good laugh at some of their demands. One of the best ones was one particular inspectors interest in creating a completely sterile environment for the storage of the green, unroasted beans.

We developed a system in our cramped back room (which contained the roaster, our office and all of the daily supplies) for bean storage that gave us counter space. I made a number of big plywood boxes on rollers, each capable of holding 600 pounds of beans, and they had hinged lids to keep unwanted stuff from falling in and gave us some flat work space to boot.

Our inspector demanded that we coat the interior of these bins with a "food grade" epoxy to prevent the beans from contacting the raw wood. We explained to him the processes in the countries of origin used to dry beans in open air, walking over them to turn the beans occasionally, exposed to everything outside. And we reminded him that we roast the beans up to 455 degree F before using or selling them. I did not like the idea of using a petroleum based "food grade" epoxy so I bought some and just kept it around without using it for 5 years. This worked.

This is just another in the random series of thoughts for which this blog was created. I borrowed this photograph from the web site of our former coffee broker in Oakland, Royal Coffee.

http://www.royalcoffee.com/