My husband and I visited the Assagay Coffee Farm in February 2016, and at that stage they were doing building work on the verandah to host a wedding. You can read about that visit over here. We so enjoyed that first tour that we decided that it was time to visit again. Wow did we choose a scorcher of a day to go on a farm tour.
Rick James always leads the tours and it starts in among the coffee trees. Coffee farming is very labour intensive as the coffee berries ripen at different times. The pickers will start on one side and work their way up the side of a hill picking berries. They will then need to start at the bottom again as more berries would have ripened.
We looked at the coffee trees and then moved onto the pulping machine which removes the flesh from the berries. The pulped beans will then soak in water for a few days and they are rinsed until the water is clear.
The beans are then laid out on the drying beds to dry naturally in the sun. They are covered at night to prevent them getting wet again. After they are dry they are put into the very large hopper of the machine that removed the parchment (paper thin covering) from the dried coffee beans. The beans are also then sorted into their various sizes. Different sizes of coffee beans cannot be roasted together as they would not roast evenly.
After looking at the size sorting machine we were shown where the coffee is roasted. The coffee roaster is in a separate building and the sacks of dried green beans are also stored here.
Rick has a miniature gas roaster and he roasted a few beans to show us the change in the beans from green bean to roasted coffee bean. After that it was coffee tasting and we tried their Medium Roast, Dark Roast and Assagay Select coffees.
Interested to go on one of the Assagay coffee Farm tours? Follow them on their Facebook page to see when the next tour will be. Read more about Assagay Coffee Farm on their Website and you can also buy their coffee beans and other coffee products from their Online Shop.
#lovecoffee