About seven years ago my sister-in-law Cheryl gave me a coffee plant. It was about two inches tall and had two leaves, just a little sprout of a plant. It was in a little tiny pot and I set it our near my orchids so it would get watered when my other plants got a drink. It did okay and soon had several more leaves and I moved it to a bigger pot and took its picture. Recording the start.
Surprisingly it did well on my porch with my other plants and required little care, just the kind of plant I like. I kept it watered and gave it a shady spot to grow.
As the plant kept growing and leaves kept sprouting I got to wondering if it would actually produce coffee beans. So I did a little research and found that it takes 5 to 7 years before a coffee plant produces coffee beans.
So this was going to be a long term project. I kept my coffee plant in a pot and that pot had to keep growing with the plant. That was good because when it was 3 years old Jan and I moved and it moved with us. It liked Safety Harbor even more.
It had a place of honor next to our front door and in the biggest pot I could find at Home Depot. In that spot it really started to bloom, literally. At first just a few small white flowers. Then over time my coffee plant started blooming more and more. At 5 years old during May 2019 I found both flowers and green coffee cherries.
The "big pot" was good for about 2 years and two more blooms. The first two blooms developed into green berries but only a few stayed on the bush to ripen and turn red. 
This year I had plenty of flowers. The coffee plant looked like it had snow on it. Most of the flowers developed into berries.
At this point the plant was getting very topheavy and fell over several times from rain or wind. I decided that it was time to put it in the ground. I found a spot in the front yard under my oak tree so it would have some shade. It seems to like that spot and most of the berries ate staying on the bush and starting to turn red and ripen. 
This year I had a great crop of coffee. It seemed every branch was heavy with green berries. I was looking forward to having a cup of home grown coffee. By January the berries were turning ripening and turning red. 
I decided it was time to harvest and started to pick the cherries. So I got a container and started to harvest the beans. 
Once it was filled I began the process of processing the cherries. First I had to remove the skin and pulp. This took awhile as I began by peeling each one, I relised this was going to take a while so I tried using a rolling pin to squish them in mass. This worked much better and I was able to get this step done in a reasonable amount of time.
The next step is to soak the sticky, slimy beans in water for 24 hours to remove the inner layer of pulp. Then I had to dry the beans. I started them in a warm oven to get the process started. Then I left them out under a ceiling fan to finish the drying. 
The beans eventually all dried to a light beige color.
Now comes the roasting. Jessica and Jared had given me a coffee roaster for Christmas and I had tried it out on some beans that came with the roaster so I knew what the expect when I roasted these beans.
I put the beans in the roaster and they roasted up almost like the others I had done. Some of the beans took longer to turn dark brown but that may have been due to extra moisture in the beans.
I have more beans ripening on the coffee plant and will try again with the next batch. I hope that eventually I'll get a good cup of home grown coffee. Till then I'll drink coffee grown by others.
Well, too bad. Did it at least smell good when it was roasting?
ReplyDeleteI'm guessing you will have several years to tweak that cup!