Cafe Ataco - Processor of green coffee Beans in El Salvador

Cafe Ataco is a pretty typical wet processor of green beans. Privately owned, Ataco processes coffee cherries into dried green coffee beans for many local Fincas, where the coffee is actually grown and picked.

Here are what coffee cherries look like (there are two 'beans' per cherry in this variety of arabica)

We visited at the end of the season, so there was only a small amount of processing going on. Mostly drying. The trucks dropping off their loads of cherries were long gone.

So use your imagination. I'm not going to describe the process (mainly because I can't remember all of the steps and which photo goes with which step and it is done so very well here.) but rather I'm just going to share some photos from our visit. In the next entry down, I include photos of all the equipment - antique, worn, and rather typical, as one of my colleagues explained.

Once the truck carrying in the cherries has been weighed, the cherries are dropped into a bin and flushed with water - water that carries them through the process of pulping (removing the cherry pulp). The bins are made of concrete. Each bin has a number, so the beans from each finca can be kept separate throughout the process. Ataco processes both organic and conventionally farmed beans.

Here the pulped beans are set out to dry for a few weeks. Rain would damage the drying beans, so this is done during the dry season.

The dark spots are from beans that were not fully pulped. These will be sorted and discarded.

Every drying lot has a sign beside it to show where it is from, lot number, quality:

After a little more drying and sorting, the beans end up on a long conveyor belt. Women sort out the 'bad' beans - quakers, broken beans, etc. According to Ataca, different countries (and buyers) have different standards for defects. One Italian company apparently accepts up to 6% defective beans. An American company only accepts 1%. When they sort the beans, they keep this in mind.

The beans are then bagged and put into storage. Buyers will sample from the sacks. And decide whether or not to purchase the lot.

After our tour of the facility, we are served coffee roasted at Ataco. It is brewed in the traditional way:

It is the first truly delicious cup of coffee I have during my visit. Apparently the best beans are exported. Most of the stuff consumed in El Salvador is what the Europeans and Americans don't want.

We then go to see ponies that are kept on the property. One of them bites me. Stay away from the one on the left! Blood pony!

Comments

[Eugenia Alfaro]

Yes, the pony bites, but Mambo is really friendly! I agree the coffee is delicious