Journal Entry # 22 - Cafe Britt

02 August 2002

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The Tour

This was actually the second half of our day trip that started with the butterfly museum.  It was by far one of the better tours we've ever experienced, and we highly recommend it to anyone that has a morning to spare near San Jose. One of the things that made the tour so good was the the tour guides were professional actors/actresses from the Costa Rican National Theater.  The entire two hour tour was a comedy skit, and they flawlessly alternated between English and Spanish so that everyone in the group could enjoy the show. The tour started with a description of coffee's origin.  The story goes that in ancient Ethiopia, a shephard noticed that his goats were eating the berries of some plant and as a result, were prancing around rather wildly.  He tried a few and found that he, too, was bouncing off the walls.  Centuries later, we are all now addicted to the stuff, all because of some silly goats.

El Padre

Coffee, as it turns out, grows on the bush as a cherry, and is bright red.  The cherries are harvested, and the bean inside is extracted.  When it first comes out, it is surrounded by a viscous, sweet substance that doesn't taste anything like coffee.  You can pop the whole bean in your mouth and suck on it like candy, although you aren't supposed to swallow it. Fortunately, they don't rely on the sucking process to clear the sticky stuff off of the beans... they soak them for some period of time and the beans are then ready for roasting.  The duration and number of roasts determines how dark the resulting coffee is...   light (for norteamericanos),  dark (for everyone that knows how to drink real coffee), or  espresso (caffeine I.V. line)

Two of our three hilarious tour guides.

The process of decaffeinating the coffee involves blasting steam through the beans prior to roasting, which extracts the caffeine.  Interestingly, it it cheaper for the coffee plantation to ship their beans to Germany, have the coffee decaffeinated there, and then sent back for roasting.  The company in Germany then sells the caffeine to companies like Coca-Cola and to drug manufacturers to use in their products.

Professional Tasting

Like wine makers, coffee makers must continuously test and taste their products to ensure quality.  Being the rather unsuspecting idiots that we are, we sat in the very front row... easy targets for being picked on to participate in demonstrations.

So, up I go, and, after making fun of me for a few minutes, they got down to business and we started tasting.  The first thing we did was smell the roasted beans.  They kept describing how the tasters really did put their noses right down in the coffee, so, with total abandon, I slammed my face down into the plate of beans, sending them scattering all over the floor.  This didn't seem to surprise the tour guide very much, either because: a) he figured me for an idiot, b) had gotten that same reaction from other idiots, c) was used to most gingos acting in this ridiculous and non-sensical nature, or, d) all of the above.

Next, he poured near-boiling water on me... no, not really, but it would have been at least marginally humorous to see me jumping about like a maniac.  Actually, he poured the near-boiling water on the coffee grounds, which, like all Costa Rican coffee makers, was contained in a cloth bag (somewhat like cheese cloth) and a holder/stand.  You put the grounds in the bag, put the bag in the holder, and then pour the hot water through the bag.  Nifty, huh?  Anyway, you have to cool it, so you scoop some up in the spoon and let it drip back into the cup.  The key is that a really good coffee doesn't lose its great taste as it cools.  If it tastes like ass after it gets luke warm, you're definitely drinking lame coffee.

The full-on face plant	Cooling the coffee	Slurping/tasting/slurping

Tasting consisted of very loudly slurping the coffee into your mouth.  Like wine tasting, the idea is to aerate the liquid and release all of the flavors.  Forcefully sucking boiling hot coffee into your lungs turns out to be rather painful, and I quickly acquired the knack of slurping it into my mouth and stopping before it reached my windpipe.

We finished the whole experience with a delicious lunch, free coffee, and a kodak moment of Bernie, Sondra, Laurie and me.