Understand the Psychology of Drinking Coffee 

Drinking coffee is all about the senses, and although our perception is based on environmental factors like chemistry and physics, how we feel about what we're drinking can overwhelm other inputs. We've seen folks at coffee tastings be thrown by looking at the color of the beans or the grounds, the opacity of the brewed coffee, the mere mention of the word "light," and whether they're drinking out of a glass or a ceramic cup (hint: white ceramic gives higher contrast, making the coffee look stronger!). If you're in coffee-sampling mode and just starting to expand your palate, try a slightly stronger brew ratio, as well as closing your eyes when you first sip a new coffee.

Coffee in Brazil Today

On November 3rd, Hurricane Eta slammed into the north eastern coast of Nicaragua and although it quickly weakened to a tropical depression the storm lingered over Central America for two more days, causing widespread damage, flooding, landslides and, sadly, hundreds of deaths, as did Hurricane Iota just 14 days later. Iota landed 15 miles south of where Eta hit, adding insult to injury and pushing Eta recovery efforts into rewind.

Is There A Fourth Wave For Coffee?

As you can see, coffee and the coffee industry have come a long way over the past 100 years. The progressive stages have brought us to a period where coffee is not just your morning wake-up call or after-dinner-with-dessert beverage. Today, coffee is a culinary experience. Homage is paid to its origin, brewing methods and all the nuances of its flavor.  So, we ask the question, where will it go from here? Is there another wave, a fourth wave?

After this brief period of drying you take your coffee into town on market day and sell it to a buyer or “collector.” If your coffee isn’t too wet and it’s clean of mucilage, you’ll get a better price than otherwise.The collector has the means to transport coffee to a mill with a “wet hulling” machine. They wait for the coffee to lose another 20% moisture, give or take, but even so the parchment remains tightly adhered to the bean.

A wet huller is a large milling machine designed to apply the extra friction required to remove parchment that is still, relatively speaking, damp, and doesn’t want to go anywhere. A wet huller works on the same principle as a dry parchment huller except it applies great friction and is designed to operate in a much wetter environment, drawing off water in addition to parchment.  Imagine you are removing leaves from your driveway with a leaf blower. Now imagine how much easier it is to remove dry leaves than it is to remove wet leaves and you have some idea of the difference between dry hulling and wet hulling. Finally, after wet hulling, the green coffee is laid out to dry, but without the parchment it dries much faster. As a result, your coffee can go from picking to shipping in around a month; whereas, in most coffee growing regions this takes several months.