Our trees are showing more red again, having reddened in the three weeks since the last big picking. This week the crew will be out here again.
This article describes some of the other coffee processing styles and terminology that apply to actions done after picking. According to the terminology used in the article, our coffee is triple washed since we float the cherry prior to pulping and also soak (short ferment) after pulping.
That’s a bit detailed for your average person who just enjoys a good cuppa. I’ll leave you with another link that’s more practical, cleaning your home brewing equipment. It talks about some of the urban myths about cleaning your brewing stuff.
When I was in college and always used a moka pot, I had a friend from Italy who insisted I not clean it. He said I’d destroy the mushrooms that develop in it and give the coffee its flavor. I think mushrooms must have been a translation artifact.
Side note paragraph: I have noticed just in the past year, Kona coffee with mushrooms. One example is this 100% Kona coffee from Malama Mushrooms. I’ve never tried it. There’s a good article about Hawaii and mushrooms in Hana Hou, the in-flight magazine from Hawaiian Airlines. I stumbled on that after watching the fascinating Fantastic Fungi documentary on Netflix. With all this rain, I was thinking maybe we have to also (intentionally) grow mushrooms.
Anyway, this same friend, fluent in both Italian and French, told me he saw a log in his backyard in New Jersey. When I was unimpressed and asked more questions, we eventually determined he thought a log was a loir (French word), from the English expression “sleep like a log” and the French expression “dormir comme un loir.” However, a log is not a loir. I guess a loir is a dormouse. I don’t even know what a dormouse is. But apparently there might have been one in a New Jersey backyard. Here in Hawaii we have mongooses. And our cat recently excitedly chased and cornered one. It’s her first mongoose encounter, to our knowledge.
[9/14 addendum: Several of you have asked the outcome. I didn’t let the cat continue the hunt. I tried to show the mongoose the door out of the courtyard, but instead it ran into a nearby 3-sided area (worse!) and it panicked and even jumped and ran sideways on the wall. I just left it to its own devices to escape/leave at its leisure, and no one has seen it again.]
Hang loose, mongoose.
Gee Miss Gee, from coffee bean wash technique to a cat cornered mongoose. You are a great story teller. I followed you all the way to the end…intrigued! When’s the first book of stories?
Thanks! As one ages, one collects more stories. When I was in first grade I wanted to be an author. I even submitted a story about being possessed or poltergeists to the county fair once. Ha ha ha!! I think that was my reading interest at that time. Now I have to employ Toastmasters Table Topics techniques, in written form, to start with something related to coffee and try to somehow give it a personal spin.