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Caption: Coffee of Central America Café DECA
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Caption: Welcome to Café DECA, a coffee project focused on responsible growing and quality production.
Join me on a trip through the mountains of northern Honduras to see the origin and harvest of organic coffee.
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Caption: Rainforest-grown coffee is found in densely forested and humid regions high in the mountains.
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Caption: Small towns of a couple hundred residents are nestled in valleys. Unemployment is high and fortunate families may only have enough land to grow plants that will yield 1000-pounds of green beans.
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Caption: Ripe coffee cherries turn red when they are ready to be picked.
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Caption: Berries are washed and separated from their skins.
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Caption: Skin is composted and used to fertilize forthcoming organic coffee crops.
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Caption: Washed batches of green coffee beans are separated by type, growing condition, and certification validity. They are spread out and dried.
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Caption: Drying is accelerated using giant rotating furnaces. Miscellaneous artifacts, like small stones, can be partially separated during this process.
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Caption: Coffee is graded based on a random selection of export-ready beans. The number of imperfections, like bad beans or stones, are counts against a quality grade coffee batch.
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Caption: When coffee is dry, it is bagged into 80lb sacks with similar beans and labeled by grade.
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Caption: Depending on the final buyer, green beans may be roasted on-site and bagged by the pound.
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