Coffee

Here we are in Costa Rica, and my legions of enquiring fans (thanks, sis!) want to know…do they coffee? It is, after all, about the only thing that’s known about Costa Rica, outside Costa Rica.

Well, devoted fans, I have the answer: yes, they do. Early in our tour, all the coffee we encountered was of the filtered sort, and I felt it unworthy of remark. It was good, stronger than is normally served by such establishments that provide coffee in large urns. It wasn’t until we were on our way to Monteverde and stopped at Café Horizonte that I had my first opportunity to have an actual espresso made from Costa Rica coffee. Yes, they can make coffee! Hooray!

On our second day in Monteverde, we booked ourselves on a tour that promised coffee, sugar and chocolate. There were in fact two such tours on offer at the Tourist Information Centre, so I asked which was the best one. Having been told that one was more biased towards sugar, and the other more towards chocolate, as well as the coffee, we opted for the chocolate-heavy option and boarded a bus to Don Juan coffee, a short distance outside town.

We met our guide, Danny, and were joined by another group to make a total tour of 16 people. The first order of the day was to call a Costa Rican Uber, or a cart drawn by bulls. Danny asked who wanted to take a ride, and we put our hands up. There was only room for seven of us in the cart, so we took a short walk up the road and back again. The rest of the group just got to stand there, watch and wait. Then Danny took us on the tour proper, and started showing the coffee-making process, from berries or “cherries” as they’re known, to removing the mucilage, drying the beans, how long they need to be dried and stored for before being roasted – light, medium, or dark. At each stage we were given some of the fruit or beans to feel, taste, suck on etc – it was very much an interactive multi-sensory experience. At the end he got a volunteer to grind the resultant coffee beans for us, and made coffee in a non-traditional Costa Rican way. As he explained the old way: put grounds in an old sock, pour hot (never boiling!) water through, wasting much of the flavour. But you can’t tell your grandmother that she’s been making coffee wrong all her life! The best way, he said, is to pour hot water onto the grounds in a jug, mix and leave to stand for a couple of minutes, then filter through an old sock (the older the better, apparently).

And that’s the coffee-making process. Beaucoup de cheval, pas de glue etc.

Next, we went to the chocolate-making process. They don’t grow chocolate on the estate (it’s too high above sea level) but they do make it. The process is slightly different, involving fermentation of the cacao beans rather than drying, and then separating the cocoa butter from the cocoa nibs. We smelt and tasted the various stages again, before being invited to try Montezuma’s xocoatl recipe: chocolate, cinnamon, chilli, salt, monkey pee (vanilla extract), and hot water. It was a bit gritty, but otherwise fine. I may make an ice cream version of it when I get back.

The final demo was sugar cane. This is grown on the estate – in fact, it grows anywhere hot, regardless of altitude – and Danny had previously cut down a couple of stalks, which two of our group had been using as walking sticks. These were then processed through what looks like a mangle or pasta machine, with the gap between the rollers being reduced with each pass. Nicola was co-opted to feed the canes through the machine.

At the end of the process you have a liquid, known as agua de sapo, or “toad water”, in Costa Rica. The origin of this name according to Danny is that the drink is popular with policemen, who are known as sapo or toads in CR slang. It’s 10% sucrose in water, with impurities. To make sugar, you boil this liquid until you have reduced most of the water and are left with a thick molasses, then let it cool and shave it into a powder. It’s still brown, unrefined sugar at this stage. You can then refine it further to make white sugar.

This looks quite easy...

...Uh-oh...

...It's all gone Pete Tong!

That was the end of our tour. We went back to the gift shop to buy coffee-related products, have another cup of coffee, before boarding a somewhat-delayed bus (we had to wait for another tour group to finish) back to Monteverde Country Lodge. While we waited, there was a rainbow.