The Coffee Producer Toolkit #3: Fermentation
Show notes
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In this third episode, we give you a practical manual to take control of your fermentations and improve your farm's profitability.
We start with the basics — what is actually happening inside your tank, where the microbes come from, and why your coffee is going to ferment whether you want it to or not.
Then we go through five ways commercial microbes can make you money: consistency batch to batch, long fermentations you can run safely, lifting the score of your worst cherries rather than your best, clearing bottlenecks in your wet mill, and extending your coffee's shelf life.
We cover what a well-run fermentation actually looks like — the cleaning, the monitoring, the record-keeping — with a step-by-step blue-barrel protocol for smaller farms and guidance on when to move to tanks. We also look at the investment sums needed for commercial yeasts and how to justify them.
And we finish with the difficult questions — the environmental worries, whether using a starter culture is the same as adulterating your coffee, and how to talk about all of this with buyers who may view commercial microbes with suspicion.
Related podcast episodes:
Lucia:
- #72: Planning Your First Coffee Fermentation Trials? Start Here.
- #76: How Commercial Microbes Threaten The Coffee Industry
- #80: How Microbiology Can Explain Beginner's Luck
James:
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People mentioned in the episode:
- Lester Lerner, Old Willow Coffee, Colombia
- Victor Chala, Palma Rosa, Colombia
- Fridolin Stocker— Mount Sunzu, Zambia
- Shyira washing station, Rwanda
- Evangelos Filippatos, La Cabra
- La Cabra, Copenhagen
- Helen Riley — Novonesis
- Gunne Øregaard — Novonesis
- Franz Zeimetz — Lost Origin Coffee Labs, Panama
- Alejandra Rodríguez Delgado — Hacienda San Pedrito, Puerto Rico
- Gustavo Arroyo — Rancho Contento, Puerto Rico
Resources:
- pH meter & buffer
- Thermometer
- Novonesis Pichia yeast
- Novonesis Lactobacillus bacteria
- Pressure washer
- Fermentation Log Sheet
- Yeast’s impact on the environment in research on vineyards
- Sprudge Best Of Panama coverage
- Lucia’s Fermentation Training Camp
- Coffee Wet Mill Sanitize
- Opciones para la desinfección del beneficio
- Cabal Cafe Podcast en Espanol
Lucia's Favorite Tools:
Cover Art: Nick Hafner
The Coffee Producer Toolkit is made possible by these leading coffee organisations:
The Coffee Quest | BWT | Descamex | InterAmerican | Pinhalense | Novonesis | GrainPro