Part 5
Coffee when gathered from the tree fully ripe is like a rich scarlet cherry, out of which on being squeezed two coffee-berries break forth, each covered with a light skin resembling parchment, and moist, with a sweet mucilaginous fluid which rapidly decomposes. The machine called a pulper is for the purpose of removing the cherry skin or husk; this it does by passing it between a barrel armed with perforated copper, forming a grater, and a sharp-edged board called the chop, which by means of wedges or screws is placed at the proper distance from the barrel to ensure the greater part of the coffee being pressed against it, but not so close that any of the berries should be pricked through their parchment covering. As coffee is seldom uniform in size, much passes forward from which the husk, or pulp, as it is called, has not been completely removed; this, being separated by a sieve worked by the machinery, is returned by hand to the hopper. The coffee, deprived of its husk, goes forward by a channel prepared for it into a cistern, the pulps being thrown off behind; these latter are now generally saved to be carried to the manure pit. The coffee is left to soak in the cistern for the night, or for that length of time which is sufficient to wash off the mucilage, an operation which is facilitated by a slight fermentation--not, however, always conducted with safety to the future quality of the coffee. Pulping-houses are supplied with several cisterns, into which the several pulpings may be run off that the work may not stand still.
Plate 7 gives a view of the interior lower floor of the pulping-house on Messrs. Worms’ estates, Puselawa.
In the pulping-house above the pulpers is a large floor called the cherry loft, into which the coffee in cherry from the field is measured, and from whence, through holes, it is made to fall into the pulpers, from the pulpers it is carried to the cisterns, and when washed is taken out by the labourers to be dried, which brings us to speak of the store and drying apparatus. Before doing so we may mention that the pulper, which is considered a very imperfect machine, is generally driven by four men at two handles, aided by a fly-wheel; the power is immediately applied to turn the barrel, to which is connected a large cog-wheel, which moves a pinion attached, to work a sieve or riddle.
Pulpers turned by water power, if properly erected to resist the strain of the connecting machinery, work with more equality of motion, and therefore do their work better than those worked by hand.
Many improvements in the pulping-machine have been suggested without success; the last, which is now very generally adopted, is called a crusher, and consists in a kind of shield instead of a chop, which presses the coffee against the barrel. This machine is said to do as much work in a given time as the pulper, and with less liability to cut or prick the berry.
It has been said that the pulper is an imperfect machine; it is so in respect to the incompleteness with which it performs the work for which it is constructed. The work
complete, would be to pass forward the whole of the cherry coffee from the hopper, as clean parchment coffee, into the cistern, and completely separate the pulp. Instead of this, not only is there much coffee passed forward unpulped, which has to be returned to the hopper, but much pulp comes forward with the coffee into the cistern. To overcome these imperfections, many hands are required attending the process of pulping; several with sieves receive all the coffee as it comes through the trough into the cistern, and remove all the pulp in it. The object of this is to please the sight by making the sample even, and to take away a material which both, renders the coffee difficult to dry, and, being decomposed vegetable matter of a saccharine nature, is liable by fermentation to injure the quality of the coffee itself. The coffee which is passed unpulped, having been returned to the hopper as it accumulates at the end of the pulper riddle, until the picking has all been pulped, is sometimes passed through another pulper, set closer, and what then remains is dried separately in the husk. The imperfections of the pulper have recently attracted much notice, and improvements are making in it.
We now arrive at the crowning operation of all--_Planting_. Economy should be studied in every part of the work, and to plant to the best advantage, nothing is more conducive than having the traces of the roads and paths through the clearings already opened if possible, so as to be available for bringing the plants from the nurseries. Plants and stumps are both used in forming plantations; the first are seedlings, reared in nurseries until they are about 8 to 10 inches high, or just crowned--that is, after the appearance of their first lateral branches; the second are the stock and roots of an older tree. Under varying circumstances there is much to be said in favour of each. If the weather is dry and the season advanced, stumps may be planted with less risk, and in less time; but if plants are to be had, and the season favourable, it is generally considered they are the best. In putting them into the ground, if practicable, they should be removed from the nursery with balls of earth about their roots; this is even the most economical, as being almost an assurance against failure, and the tree thus planted receives no check, but begins to grow directly. If, on the other hand, the plants are to be brought too far to carry them with balls of earth, extreme care should be taken to place them with the tap root perpendicularly in the soil. Invariably the effect of a tap root not being placed perpendicularly in the hole is, that when the tree is grown to two or three feet in height, the upper shoot and branches take a paler colour to that of the healthy plant, which is of very dark green, the leaves also become small and elongated, and occasionally somewhat mottled with a yellow tinge. Such plants will frequently spring into flower and fruit prematurely, which generally turns out “boll,” or empty in husk, and as prematurely dies away. This remark is not uncalled for, as it requires extreme vigilance to prevent the labourers carelessly doubling up the tap as they place the plant in the earth. The hole should be well filled up and the earth trodden in round the plant, which should never be buried below the crown of the root.
Nurseries of plants are variously made; much contention has existed on the merits of shade and no shade. Shade is not required, and the plants are best without it; yet it happens most nurseries are in some respects subject to shade, as they have to be formed frequently before any portion of the land is opened, and should be protected by a belt of forest from the fire of the clearing; the jungle being cleared off and carried to the sides of the ground selected. The soil is dug with hoes and picks about two spits deep, and the roots of the jungle carefully taken up, as these would afterwards break the rootlets of the plants when taken up for transplanting. The ground being laid out in beds, is sometimes sown broadcast with coffee-seed, which only requires to be most lightly covered with a little sifted mould, or the seeds are pressed in, in rows, with the finger. Sometimes small seedlings, with two leaves and the seed leaves, are brought from another nursery, or from beneath the coffee-bushes of a plantation or native garden, and lined out into beds about six inches apart; these make by far the best and hardiest plants for planting out into the fields.
We must not omit to notice the necessity for carefully replacing, with as little delay as possible, all failures in the planting. The longer this is delayed the more difficult does it become to do it well; and when neglected, besides making the fields appear irregular and unsightly, the gaps left become weed beds, and so much of the bearing space of the acre being lost, the crop is affected in proportion.
When stumps are planted, a number of buds or suckers make their appearance on the root; one of these only should be left, and the others carefully rubbed off with the finger, as often as the weeding party goes over the field.
The sprout from the bud which is left grows up and becomes the stem of a tree, and throws out its laterals somewhat higher than the tree grown from a nursery plant. The stump generally produces its first crop a little out of season; for planting up failures stumps give the least trouble.
Next to lining and careful planting, nothing enhances the good appearance of a plantation so much as the workmanlike formation of the roads and buildings. It is, therefore, desirable, by the use of a theodolite, to trace the roads accurately before cutting them out. Formerly it was frequently the practice to take the road by the eye from point to point, evading the natural difficulties of rocks or large roots, by taking the breakneck path above or below them. Roads on partial clearings should always have reference to the land which is afterwards to be felled and connected with the same set of works.
Plate 8 shows a coffee district near Puselawa, Ceylon.
SECTION XII.
HARVESTING THE CROP AND PREPARATION FOR MARKET.
The heavy blossom appears on the tree in August and September. The principal crop is picked from April to July. A small crop, chiefly from young coffee, is picked from September to December. The produce is sent down to Colombo, the shipping port, from April to September. If the estate be close to a carriage road this is done by carts, which can take from 60 to 80 bushels. The cost of transport is sometimes enormous. It is not unusual to see carts loaded with coffee lying at the bottom of a precipice, while the bullocks which had brought them have died from exhaustion. If not near a road, carrying coolies are employed, or pack bullocks, which take a load of 3 bushels, to transport it either to a store, from which a carriage will convey it to Colombo, or to the navigable point of one of the rivers. Of the various modes and facility, or the want of it, possessed by estates situated in different districts, some idea may be formed in the expense varying from 1s. to 12s. per cwt. for bringing the produce to Colombo.
There are now in Colombo upwards of thirty establishments for the preparation of coffee for shipment, ten or twelve of these employ steam power to drive the requisite machinery. To most of them large barbecues for drying are attached, and cooperages for the preparation of casks, and in the season, which lasts nearly three quarters of the year, from 10,000 to 15,000 women and 1000 to 2000 men are employed in the process.
Though the coffee has been sufficiently dried on the plantation to enable it to reach Colombo in safety, it is not sufficiently hard to part with the silver pellicle which envelops each berry under the parchment skin, and to resist the pressure of the peeler, without some additional drying in the more powerful sun at Colombo.
It is, therefore, again exposed on the barbecue, until it reaches a crisp dryness. (Plate 9 shows the barbecue or drying-floor on Messrs. Worms’ estate, Puselawa, in Ceylon, and the native labourers spreading the coffee to dry.) It is next submitted to the pressure of the peeler, which breaks the berry out of the parchment covering, and sets the silver skin at liberty. It may be noticed that the silver skin, though perhaps not adding two ounces to the weight of 112 lbs., gives the coffee an appearance considered to be unsightly in the London market, and, therefore, depreciates its value; its adherence to the coffee, though the cause is not known in the market, is supposed to be generally the result of bad drying on the plantation, being allowed to remain too long wet, or being permitted to heat after it is taken from the cisterns.
Several processes have to be gone through before the article known in commerce as coffee is produced. In the first place, the pulpy exterior of the berry, as we have seen, has to be removed by the process of pulping, which separates the seed and its thin covering, called the parchment, from the husk. When this pulping process is completed, we have the parchment by itself in a cistern, and the next process consists in getting rid of the mucilage with which it is covered. For this purpose the water is drained from the cistern, and fermentation is allowed to take place, which it readily does after a period of twenty-four hours, or even less on a low estate, where the climate is warm, though forty-eight hours are generally required on the highest estates.
Water is then admitted into the cistern, and the coffee being agitated by wooden rakes, the mucilage combines with the water and is drained off. After this the washed parchment coffee has to be dried to a hard stage, and as it frequently happens that during crop time there is a continuance of wet weather for weeks and months together, the chief difficulties which a planter has to contend with now present themselves.
The peeler, or machine for removing the parchment, consists of a circular trough, in which a wheel is made to travel; this is generally made of wood, and shod with copper sheeting, and is turned by central pressure, like the capstan of a ship, either by hand or by the gearing of machinery attached to a steam-engine. An improvement on this has been made by constructing the travelling wheels of iron, and the trough of plates of the same metal; these plates being serrated in one direction, so as to present a rough surface to the coffee, facilitate the fracture of the parchment. Two wheels are generally made to work in one trough, each of which is provided with a kind of scraper, to stir up the coffee in its path and cause it to present a new face to the pressure.
A coffee-peeler is usually made of durable wood or iron. The circumference of the machine is 36 feet; the breadth between the circles in the machine is 1 foot. The height of the wheel 6 feet; the thickness near the axle-tree 1 foot, and on the top 6 inches; twelve men or four bullocks can turn it. If turned by men 200 bushels of coffee, and if worked by bullocks 140 bushels, can be obtained in nine hours; if by steam about 800 or 1000 bushels. The cost of constructing a machine to be worked by men or bullocks is 25_l._, by steam 600_l._
After undergoing this process, the coffee is passed into a winnower, which removes nearly the whole of the parchment and silver skin. It is now given to the women, in quantities of a bushel each, to be picked over by hand, who take out all blacks, broken berries, _triage_, or anything calculated to injure its even quality. Further to improve its appearance, the coffee is passed through a sizing machine, by which generally three sizes are separated: the round, or pea berry, and a larger and smaller berry, each of which from the separation is more even in appearance, and as such preferred in the London market.
Sizers are variously made of perforated sheet zinc or wire gauze, with openings of three sizes, increasing from the top in the form of a long pipe, which, being slightly inclined and made to revolve, pass the coffee, poured in above into the bins constructed to receive the different sizes.
The coffee, now ready to be packed, is at once put into casks, containing 6 or 7 cwt. each, and sent away on board ship without delay. These processes are constantly improving and are now thoroughly understood--a remark which would seem uncalled for, but for the recollection of the bungling and conflicting systems which were in vogue a few years since.
SECTION XIII.
PREPARATION FOR MARKET--(_Continued_).
Parchment Coffee, when in an unseasoned state, is prone to enter into decomposition from the time at which it is withdrawn from the protection of the living organism until it is thoroughly seasoned by drying, after which it may be kept for any length of time in a dry place.
The worth of coffee as an article of commerce is lessened in proportion to the extent to which these progressive changes are allowed to go on. If heating has taken place, the bean can never afterwards acquire the pellucid colour which is indicative of well-dried coffee, but partakes more or less of a dingy appearance. If mouldiness ensues, the aromatic properties, like those of tea, give place to an insipid flavour; and finally, if the bean undergoes putrefaction, it assumes a dull black colour, and becomes totally destitute of every valuable property.
When the crops ripen, they must be gathered and cured under all circumstances of weather; and as it generally happens that this has to be done during the prevalence of the periodical rains, the difficulties to be contended with are so much the greater. The extensive nature of the operations has also to be taken into account in forming an estimate of the difficulties to be provided for. During the busy season of crop upwards of 1000 bushels of cherries are daily gathered from some plantations, yielding an increase of 500 bushels of parchment coffee to be daily added to that which has already accumulated in the store.
Past experience having shown that coffee was most easily preserved in a sweet state when spread thinly on the floor, large and commodious buildings were called into use, notwithstanding the unusually heavy expense which attended their erection in situations remote from town, where sufficiently skilful labour was only to be had at the time, and with great difficulty. On this account inadequate accommodation was provided on many plantations, and the coffee accumulating to a considerable depth, no amount of hand-turning could keep it from contracting a musty smell, its proneness to decomposition increasing greatly in proportion to the extent of the accumulation.
Some years ago it occurred to Mr. Clerihew that it was possible, by means of fanners, working on the exhausting principle, so to withdraw air from an enclosed space as to establish a current of air through masses of coffee spread on perforated floors forming the top and bottom of that space. This plan he carried into execution at Rathoongodde plantation, and it has since been adopted by many planters.
The following is a detailed description of Mr. Clerihew’s invention, a model of which was shown at the International Exhibition of 1851:
The water-wheel is an overshot one, nine feet in diameter, and is of much smaller dimensions than any wheel that has hitherto been employed for pulping. It is, however, sufficient in power to work the fans and pulpers simultaneously, the excess of its power over that of other wheels being gained by the diminution of friction consequent on there being no intervening shafting and gearing. The entire wheel is constructed of wood, with the exception of the shaft, which is unusually light, as it has merely to serve as a support to the wheel. By means of a double band rim-bolted to the arms on each side, motion is given to the pulpers from the one and to the fans from the other.
The floors of the curing-house are laid with laths 1¼ inch square and 2 inches apart; these are covered with open coir matting; being rather cheap and durable, this material answers the purpose remarkably well. The side walls of the curing-house are constructed in the manner of the country, viz. of wattled work filled in with clay and smoothed over so as to be air-tight.
To derive the full benefit of natural heat, the roof is covered with felt or with sheet-iron, so that in fine weather the temperature of the air in the upper floor is raised considerably by contact with the hot roof, and its capacity for absorbing moisture much increased, preparatory to its being drawn down through the mass of coffee in the upper floor. Even in the cool climate of the district of Upper Hewahette, at an elevation of 4500 feet, in a fine day the temperature of the air under a felt roof is 120° when the fans are not working, so that a great drying power is thus made available at no expense.
The lower floor, on the other hand, is adapted for the application of artificial heat for the purpose of evaporating the surface water from each separate batch of coffee as it is taken from the washing cisterns preparatory to its being deposited in the upper floor. In wet weather this is essential, for the atmospheric air being then saturated with moisture, no drying can take place until its capacity for absorbing moisture is increased by an increase of temperature. One other reason for adopting this arrangement is, that when the coffee is first taken wet from the washing cisterns the interstices of the beans are more or less occupied with water, and thus present a medium less pervious to air than is the case when the surface water has been dried off. Consequently it is desirable that, until this has been done, the depth of the coffee should not exceed six inches, and, to be equal to every emergency, the heating power ought to be sufficient in the wettest weather to evaporate the surface water from the produce of a day’s picking (within twenty-four hours), so as to allow of its being removed into the upper floor. The daily number of bushels picked from any, or the same plantation, is of course a variable quantity: depending on the extent of the cultivation, the quality of the trees, the number of hands employed, and the elevation of the land; the latter, when considerable, having the effect of prolonging the picking season. The stove is more than sufficient for a daily picking of 400 bushels of cherries.
The heating stove is square, has a waggon head with a semicircular opening in the centre for the passage of air, and is constructed of stout sheet-iron. It is placed within an arch, with a clearance of nine inches all round also for the passage of air, the guiding principle in its construction being to adapt it to the burning of wood, and to expose as much heating surface as possible to the air which flows past it into the air-chamber beneath the ground-floor. The stove opening is the only one which admits air to the coffee on the ground-floor. Consequently, when it is more or less closed by a damper, the power of the fans is exerted either in part or altogether on the mass of coffee in the upper floor.
In these applications of natural and artificial heat to the curing of coffee, the heat is conveyed by the air through the whole depth of coffee in such a manner that each bean feels its influence, whilst the watery products elicited by the heat are at the same time, and by the same means, carried off. It cannot be doubted that these applications are far more effectual than any of the modes hitherto in use; in some cases stoves were employed in the apartment containing the coffee, but it is obvious that their influence could not extend beyond the surface of the mass, and that, if the apartment was closed, there was no provision for carrying off the air that had become loaded with moisture due to its temperature; whilst, if the apartment was open, so as to afford a free draught of air, the greater portion of the heat given out by the stove was carried out before the heated air could act on the coffee. In other cases, heating pipes of various kinds were used below the floors on which the coffee was placed. This arrangement, however, has the effect of injuring the coffee, by steaming it; no provision being made for carrying off the excess of hot watery vapour which accumulates within the mass, but, on the other hand, the natural processes of decomposition are assisted and promoted.