Cafe Britt

Today we went to another coffee company called Café Britt. It was also very fun but very different from the trip to Daisy´s farm yesterday. The purpose of this post will be to compare and contrast the two companies.
I will briefly review La Café Tal (Daisy´s Company). She ran her own farm that took care of every step necessary to create the finished product. She grows her plants, pays 7 workers year round and many more during the picking season to harvest the coffee, she dries the coffee, she has her own small mill, and she packages her coffee all at her farm which was up on the mountain. I get the idea she sells a good amount throughout the year although I am not sure how big her farm was.
Today we went to Café Britt and it was completely different. They are an organic company but they seemed very commercial in the way they conducted business. Where as Daisy just showed us her farm and told us about her personal experiences Café Britt put on a production for us and other tourists. We saw all elements of their processes (or at least what they claim their processes to be). They grow some coffee at the company all under shade trees but they buy lots of coffee from local coffee farms too (this leads me to believe they are not part of the Fair Trade Coffee because they seem like they probably buy coffee cheap, so the farmers do not get much profits unless they have huge farms, and then jack up the price to sell to the consumers). They use the sum to dry the plants some but it looked like they also air dried and used heat to dry their coffee. Then they roast the coffee, grind it, package it, and sell it all from their location.
Café Britt was a tourist attraction too and it was easy to tell. They have a walking tour for tourists and locals if they can afford it. The tour starts by walking through a small amount of coffee plants, then they showed how to pick them, then how they are processed to the final product. I believe the man said a basket weighing 25 pounds would yield three cups or three packages of coffee. Most of the plant is not used I believe they use less than 20% of the ¨fruit¨ and the rest is waste but I´m sure it can be used for other things like fertilizer or something. The roaster made the building where it was located very hot and it did not seem like a desirable place for the packagers to work but it made for an interesting tour and I have a pretty cool video of the roaster and I believe an air dryer.
At the end of the tour they lead us right to the gift shop but this was not until after the theatrical performance put on by three people. They showed us a history video of where coffee was discovered (Africa) how it made its way to be revealed in France and finally how it came to Costa Rica. Throughout the whole video they would stop it and come out dressed in costumes and act out little skits about what they video was talking about. It was pretty funny. Then they had two people from the audience go to the front and show us how to make a cup, and properly taste it and all sorts of jazz. It was a pretty fun experience but much different than Daisy´s farm. We also had lunch at Café Britt which was good Costa Rican food but the meat was fish…y me no tengo pescada
Just a little I have learned about Café…most of the ¨fruit¨ of the plant is not used as I mentioned before. The crops are never ripe at the same time so they have to be hand picked. They take a few years to fully develop (café brit kept them under special tables to take care of them for a year before they planted them with the rest). A plant is harvested once a year but produces many berries (which have the seed inside). And the plant can produce for about 40 years. Arabica or mountain coffee is the best type of coffee. Since the soil is very fertile the crops do not harm it and they do not have to be rotated like in the United States with our crops.
I enjoyed both trips very much but I think the better experience was Daisy´s farm just because I feel like Café Britt was an artificial tourist attraction but it was still fun and a good learning experience. I have learned a lot about coffee in the past few days from first hand experience and that is a good way to learn. It is nice not to read or be told about coffee but actually to see it first hand.