The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1899-04-16


annually, and well cared Tor coffee
plantation should be good for ct least
The coffee begins to blossom in septem-
Der and in April or May the berries are
ripe and the picking begins. The berries
are picked into baskets which the pickers
carry on their backs. Each Is paid so
much for the amount picked, and hun
dreds Of men, women and children are
employed.
GETTING OUT COFFEE GRAINS.
The above seems quite q lot Of work
for such q little thing as coffee bean?
Yes, but the preparing the bean for the
market has hardly begun. The berries,
as they come from the trees, are Of the
size and color of dark red cherries. The
grains or beans which we use to make
coffee are the seeds inside the cherries
Each large cherry has two seeds. the fiat
sides resting one against the other with
a soft pulp about them. Others have
only one little round seed, just like the
Mocha coffee of commerce.
The pulp must first be taken off. To
do this the berries are thrown into
hopper and run through cylinders which
squash the pulp without injuring the
grains. They are reduced to mush of
pulp and coffee seeds. This mixture Is
carried over a long copper cylinder which
is about two feet in diameter. The cy-
Under Is filed with holes each big enough
SO that coffee bean can pass through
1t. AS the mush falls on to the cylinder
the beans go through the holes into 1t
and are carried into canal of flowing
water below the cylinder. Upon this they
float off into receiving tanks or watts.
DRYING THE COFFEE.
Take UP a handful of the grains and
look at them. Each is covered with
soft gummy substance. 1t is as sticky
as though 1t had been painted With muci-
lage. 1t must be washed again before 1t
Is ready for drying. This is done in a
and round over the beans, securing off
the gum as it were,> and leaving them
as white parchment or snow.
But our coffee beans are green l
hear some one say. Yes, they are, and
these beans will be green by and by.
They have two shells upon them which
must be removed before they can be
shipped to the market Before the shells
can be taken off the coffee must be as
dry as a bone, and the drying is quite a
job Of its own.
There are on every plantation great
terraces made of floors of cement rising
one above the other. Some of the floors
are more than an acre in size. They are
made for drying the coffee. There is no
roof over them, and the hot sun of Bra
zil beats down upon them all day long.
Il is upon such floors that the coffee
beans are spread, thousands of bushels
of beans upon one floor. Among them
are men who stir the beans about with
wooden rakes SO that all parts are touch
ed by the sun. The men are in their
bare feet, and they perspire as they
work.
1t is important that the coffee be even
ly dried, and 1T takes long time to cure
it. The grains often lie for two months
on the platforms, being gathered into
piles al night and covered up to keep off
the dew. The men watch also for show
ers, and at such times cover the coffee.
sKINNING COFFEE.
After the beans are dried they are by
no. means ready for sale. Each little
bean has to be skinned. 1t has upon it
thick white hide known as the parch
ment skin, and under, this another shell
almost as thin as a cobweb, which Is call
ed the silver skin These have to be
taken off before you come to the olive
green bean sold in our stores. The skin
ming is done by expensive machines, some
of which cost as much as SIS, 900. In the
first place, the coffee is run through a
ventilator, which fans off the rubbish
and dust. 1t is next thrown into a great
corrugated wheel of cast iron which has
grooves SO graduated that they break
the skin on the coffee without hurting or
scratching it, After the skin is broken
the beans are carried to a second venti-
lator, In which the shells are taken off
like the chaff in threshing machine.
A fan blows the chaff off and the grains
flow down through the trough to the sep
arator.
E MOCHA AND: JAVA COFFEE
The grains are now of a light olive
green color. They must be separated and
graded before they are shipped. The lit
tie round seeds which came from the
small berries on the ends of the stalks
will go into one grade and will be sold in
our American markets as Mocha straight
from Arabia; another size will be classed
as Java, and the well-known Mocha and
Java which you mix will possibly have
come from the same stalk This is no
fiction. The Brazilian coffee is among
the best of the world, and vast quanti-
ties of it are consumed every year as
genuine Mocha and Java. Other kinds of
grains will be classed according to their
grades, and from every lot five different
grades are made.
AMONG THE COFFEE SORTERS.
/ One of the, most Interesting sights on
the plantation to me was the factory in
which the women were sorting the diff
ferert grades in order to pick out the bad
seeds. Come with me and look at it, We
are in vast room filled with Italian
girls of all ages, from ten to twenty and
upward. They sit at long tables, at the
backs of which are boxes of green coffee
seeds.
Just opposite each girl is a little open
ing in the box, out of which she pulls
handfuls of the olive-hued grains and
spreads them out on the table before her.
She looks them carefully over, picks out
such as are bad and throws them into a
box at the right, sweeping at the same
time the good grains through a hole in
the table so that they fall into a bag,