The Costa Rican coffee experience

Things you should know if you are going on vacations to Costa Rica: The Costa Rican Coffee Experience

Learn about Costa Rican Coffee Experience.

Get your hands dirty and go to a Cafetal.

And finally enjoy a warm cup of Costa Rican Coffee!

If you are going on vacation to Costa Rica, drinking a cup of coffee will never be the same for you, once you have tasted the flavors of a Costa Rican cup of coffee and discovered the stories about the close relation between Ticos and this tiny red bean.

Take a deep breath through the nose and let's start together a journey in the Costa Rican coffee experience!

Every corner of Costa Rica is full of stories about "El Grano de Oro" meaning "The Golden Bean", as we Ticos call it because of the important role it played in the social, economic and political development in the country since 19th century.

5 Colones Bill, honoring coffee and bananas

Coffee had such importance in the nation's early history that a bill was created honoring it. This old "5 Colones Bill" is a typical souvenir tourists love, depicting a scene with peasants and coffee pickers in Port Limón, carrying coffee and bananas, the most important products in the 50's.

National Theater Ceiling

But not only there you will find this scene. If you are planning to visit San José, I recommend you to pass by the National Theater, where you will find the same scene painted in part of the theater's ceiling, as a tribute to the product that allowed the construction of the most impressive building in Costa Rica's capital.

This neoclassic architecture building is one of the most famous touristic attractions in the city, offering tours during weekends every hour for you to enjoy it.

History says that in the 1890's, in order to finance the construction of the theater, the president decided to place a tax on coffee, but later on the powerful Coffee Oligarchy, on behalf of the coffee producers, asked the government to put this tax on rice and beans instead, avoiding in this way more taxes for their most beloved product.

The theater opened to the public in 1897 in a flourishing San José, the same year Grant's Tomb was finished in New York or the first public bus opened in London.

Almost every Tico will have a lot of stories to tell you on how this sweet bean and bitter drink shaped part of his/her life.

My grand father had in Puriscal, a little town in San José, a coffee plantation where I spent many of my summers as children, picking the tiny beans once they became red.

"This is coffee arabica" my grand father used to say very proud, but at that time I didn't know what that meant.

a: arabica, r: robusta, m: mix, both species (wikipedia)

Now I know coffee has two main species: Coffee arabica and Coffee robusta, being arabica richer in flavor than robusta. Probably that's why he was so proud of it, and very concerned about us taking care of the plants and gathering only the best beans, the red ones and not the green ones. "The coffee is still pintón (non ripe). Don't pick it up." he used to tell us with a low pitch.

But besides the species, the altitude where the coffee is grown also determines greatly the final flavor of this great beverage, together with toasting and many other variables.

Locations with the best Coffee Farms in Costa Rica

Costa Rica is a very small country with a complex geography and a variety of micro-climates: the perfect recipe to grow many delicious coffees, specially at higher lands (Gourmet Coffee) such those from the Central Valley: Tarrazú, Orosi, Tres Ríos, San José, Alajuela and Naranjo.

But if you are only planning to go to Liberia and from there to Guanacaste's beaches, don't worry; in places such as La Fortuna and Monteverde you will also find very nice coffee farms and coffee tours.

Ready for a Costa Rican cup of coffee? Not yet. We still need to discover the most amazing part of the coffee experience: picking coffee beans in a Cafetal as the coffee plantation are called.
This is the experience that will change how you will see a cup of coffee in the future, so get your hands dirty! 

Implements to pick coffee

For a real experience picking coffee be prepared with:

• A Chonete (the typical hat in Costa Rica) 
• A Canasto (wicker basket)
• A red handkerchief for the neck
• Appropriate clothes and shoes (long sleeve shirt and long pants)
• And the most important: Lunch! Wrapped in plantain leaves, giving the food an unique flavor...Costa Rican style!

In the Cafetal you could use:

• Sacos (Coffee bags)
• A Cajuela (unit of measure for coffee beans, 17 liters in volume)
• A Cuartillo (1/4 Cajuela)
• An Ox Cart or Carreta (A costa rican patriotic symbol) and two oxen to pull it! (sadly nowadays it's hard to find many Carretas Costa Rica)

Once in the Cafetal you have to walk systematically all the "streets", picking one by one the red beans and leaving the green ones so other coffee pickers can come back weeks later to pick them once they become red.

A normal day in the Cafetal starts at 6:00 a.m. or before with the first light of the sun. As the freshness of the morning pass by and the day becomes warmer, you will hear how the coffee pickers start singing and joking, making the working hours a pleasant experience.

But the happiest moment of the day is lunch time and you definitely will know when it is, as other coffee pickers in your and neighbor Cafetales will start shouting, announcing that lunch time is close...

Believe it or not, there is nothing more delicious than a lunch in the Cafetal, wrapped in plantain leaves and eat it sitting in the shade of a tree...there are no words to describe it!

Abuelo en el Cafetal - By Vera Retana.

Coffee pickers are paid depending on how many Cajuelas they collect...so the most important for them is how quick they are. In this way, every day is a new challenge, every Cajuela you complete is an achievement.

But everyday is also a race...and the luck also plays its part. The first person who finishes a "street" will take the next one available... so you can imagine the motivation to see the next one full of red, big and abundant beans, which can make you reduce more than a half the time need to complete a Cajuela.

Depending on the Cafetal, the coffee you pick will be measured once a day, twice a day or more. The picture of the oil painting on the left was made by my sister, and the man there is my grand father who is measuring our coffee beans, pouring them in the Cajuela.

My grand father used to have a nicely decorated Ox Cart or Carreta to transport the coffee from the Cafetal to the place where a company receives it.

The picture on the right is my grand father's Carreta in which my cousins and I used to have a good time. (I am the girl in the middle at the back)

In Costa Rica you will find many souvenirs with a decoration very similar to what you see in the picture...and of course many tiny handmade Carretas carrying coffee beans, for you to remember this important part of Costa Rican folklore.

We are almost ready to enjoy a cup of Costa Rican coffee, but it needs some processing before you can drink it.

There are many different methods to process the coffee, but the basic idea is to get rid of the external layers, clean it, sort it and store it for a final step of roasting, which can be one of four degrees: light, medium, medium-dark and dark.

With 1 Cajuela you can have a yield of 2.3 kg of roasted coffee.

After several hours in the Cafetal, a beginner coffee picker can collect 1 Cajuela, and receive in exchange around $2. The fastest coffee pickers can collect up to 20 Cajuelas per day.

If your coffee consumption is in the average of 2.8 cups/day, this means a coffee picker can receive $10 for picking the coffee you will drink in an entire year. On the other hand, if you buy this coffee at $2/cup, you could be paying for the same amount of coffee around $2000.

"Coffee is not a good business" used to say my dad when he started a small Cafetal once retired. The investments are too high and the payment too low that sometimes is better just to put the money in the bank and not invest it in coffee.

This is the sad part of the story, when you realize how small profit goes to the farmers. But also will make you enjoy and appreciate every sip of coffee, when you think of all farmers and coffee pickers who make possible for you to have it every morning.

Now we are ready to enjoy a cup of Costa Rican coffee.

The selection of the coffee type is probably the most important factor to consider, but it really depends on what you like. Just make sure to select the best quality and if you have the means to roast it, that is highly recommended as it will make the natural oils to be better extracted.

To make a Costa Rican coffee you will need to boil water, put the desired amount of coffee in a cloth filter held in a stand (typically 7 g of coffee per cup of water), and pour slowly the boiling water on it.
Do not use coffee maker...this is the most important part if you really want it Costa Rican style!

Coffee Stands are very popular in Costa Rica, and there are many of them with beautiful designs sold as souvenirs...highly recommended for coffee lovers!

Next time you go to Costa Rica, you will be ready to enjoy the Costa Rican Coffee Expereince!