A brief history of coffee. Coffee originated in Africa, in the mountains of the Arab colony of of Kaffa, in the region of Abyssinia, more than 1000 years ago. The story goes that while a shepherd called Kaldi was grazing his sheep, he saw that when they chewed the tender leaves and ripe fruit of some bushes on the mountain, they got excited and jumped for joy. When some monks from a nearby monastery heard about this and observed the behavior of the sheep, they placed some of the young leaves and ripe, red fruit in boiling water; but when they drank the brew, it was bitter and unpleasant. One of the monks threw the remains of the grains into the fire. Some moments later, when the grains began to toast, he smelled an agreeable aroma. Then, he toasted the grains of other ripe fruit without the pulpy rind and boiled them, and that is the origin of the first cup of coffee.
The Arabs carried coffee grains to Yemen, in the south of the Arabian Peninsula, where they were first cultivated on the mountains. At this time, the Arabs introduced coffee into Turkey, where the first locales were established for tasting the beverage along with other pleasures.

In the same seventeenth century, the Dutch transported coffee seeds to Java in Indonesia, where they began to cultivate the plant in a more tropical climate, at the same time that it was carried on a trip through the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic to Holland, where it was cultivated in artificial conditions in the Botanical Garden of Amsterdam. In 1713, the Dutch government gave a plant to the Louis XIV, King of France, as a gesture of peace between the two countries. It was cultivated in the Botanical Garden of Paris under artificial conditions and although the drink had been known in France for years, it now began to interest the French, where the first western style “cafés” as we know them today were initiated. Coffee finally arrived in America in 1723, when ship Captain Gabriel Mathieu de Clieux, sailed from Nantes in France carrying onelone coffee plant, with which he shared his ration of water throughout the trip. This plant was the source of a great number of coffee plantations on the American continent.

Coffee in Venezuela. In 1730, coffee reached Venezuela for the first time, from Guayana, where it had been cultivated by the French and the Dutch; but 53 years had to pass before 1783 when an important plantation was founded in the valley of Caracas on lands now occupied by the areas of La Floresta, La Castellana and the Country Club of this city. In 1786, the first coffee harvest was obtained in what is today Caracas. The first producers of the grain in this country were Fathers José Antonio García de Mohedano and Pedro Ramón Palacios y Sojo in Hacienda La Floresta de Chacao, which was the property of don Bartolomé Blandín.

From then on, the activity continued to decline with some ups and downs until the 1990s when it had a slight recovery due to better marketing policies and climatic conditions. With the advent of the new century, foreign competition, plant diseases and low international prices have put the future of coffee production in Venezuela on alert.

Coffee was very important in changing living conditions in the Andean villages, especially in Merida, improving all the social and infrastructural aspects of the state, opening roads and waterways, as well as commerce and exchange with the port of Maracaibo, through which the product was exported to Europe and North America. The farmers then returned with products and technologies imported from these nations, bringing progress to the remote mountainous regions of the Andes.

Coffee at Hacienda El Carmen. The hacienda was founded at the end of the nineteenth century, coinciding with the coffee plantation boom in southwest Merida. The big house was built during this era and finished at the end of that century; it grew as coffee production grew.

In December, 1929, an electrical energy plant was installed in the big house; it was the 1st plant in the town of Jají and the 14th in the state of Merida. This generator was moved by the same source of hydraulic energy. One of the great attractions is that today this machinery is still working, albeit with a diesel motor, and it is still used to de-pulp and thresh the beans.

Currently, the hacienda cultivates some varieties of the Arabic species of coffee, whose harvest season is between October and January, although there are some varieties that produce almost all the year. You can observe the different steps in coffee production according to the season of the year.

Seeds for coffee plants are prepared in germinators, whose function is to provide the best conditions for transforming the seed embryo into a new plant called fosforito (“little match”) or chapola. This period lasts for 45 to 60 days. These small plants (chapolas) are kept in the nurseries where they grow during the first 4 to 7 months of their development; here they are watered, fertilized and protected against weeds and bugs. This allows the coffee plant to develop well in terms of vigor and quality for the future of the coffee plantation.

Planting is an important step: The land is prepared in terms of its location, shade trees, texture, nutrients and cleaning. The plants are now seven months old and are well enough developed to be planted in the fields where they will begin to produce coffee beans commercially in 3 to 4 years. During this period and throughout the lives of the plants, activities for the care and maintenance of the coffee fields, such as weeding, fumigating against insects and diseases, pruning and fertilization are carried out in order to obtain a good harvest.

In the Venezuelan Andes and of course at Hacienda El Carmen, the largest harvests occur between October and January. The same coffee field must be harvested several times, depending on the number of flowerings it has had. To obtain a good-quality final product, it is important to harvest only ripe berries. In Venezuela, as well as in almost all Latin America, the ripe coffee berries are picked by hand, by people hired from around the plantation; many times whole families harvest and each person is paid according to the amount of coffee beans collected in a certain period.

The wet stage of coffee processing spans the process from de-pulping the berries until the coffee reaches the parchment stage: de-pulping, fermentation, washing and drying. Starting with this stage, the better grains are selected several times, until reaching the threshing phase. Once the individual harvest has been weighed, the grains are placed in water to begin selection by flotation; grains that float are of a bad quality and are processed separately.

This process eliminates the rind and the pulp of the coffee berry without damaging the seed. To do this, de-pulping machines are used. They work by friction using traditionally, a horizontal, metal cylinder under a jet of water are used; more modern machines use a vertical cylinder. In the horizontal de-pulper, the peeled grains are sent to a tank where a first selection takes place using a sieve. The pulp goes to the opposite side and can be used as organic fertilizer.

This stage occurs within the tank. Fermentation facilitates cleaning off the mucilage or slime that surrounds the coffee beam; it is a viscous material, insoluble in water. Fermentation gives the coffee a special aroma and taste

This stage in the process helps to detach all the viscous material (mucilage) and obtain wet, clean parchment coffee. In some plantations, this is done in the same tank by applying pressurized water to the lot of coffee grains, and in others, it is done in a cement channel, where the water eliminates the impurities.

The coffee is removed from the tank and spread out on patios made of cement or more commonly, clay bricks. Many plantations use drying machines called Guardiola, which are enormous metal cylinders with hot air circulating inside. Patio drying, which takes 5 to 7 days according to the climate, is the more traditional method and many knowledgeable people prefer this method for its low monetary and energy costs. Drying in the Guardiola takes 24 hours. The coffee beans acquire a uniform color and are referred to as “gold” coffee. At this stage, the coffee is also known as parchment and contains an average of 12% humidity. The product can be stored for several months in this state, because the bean has a covering that protects it from many damaging external agents.

In the case of Hacienda El Carmen, the process does not end with drying and storing the parchment coffee beans. Once the destination for this harvest has been determined according to the best price and selling conditions, the parchment coffee is sent through a threshing machine that detaches the parchment covering or shell protecting the bean using high revolution friction.

The coffee beans are placed in a heat source where they take on the universally known color and aroma. This aroma is caused by the formation of an essential oil called cafeona, after the oleic, stearic and tannic acids have (been) volatilized. During this process, the beans cannot be allowed to burn because those essential oils as well as the aroma and body of the beverage would be lost. The beans increase in size, but lose 20% of their weight. In the country, most people toast coffee over a wood or gas fire, but always using traditional methods in rudimentary baking plates or metal pans. Then the coffee is ground in hand-operated r electric home mills. Commercial coffee roasting is done in modern plants, using computerized controls for toasting, classification and grinding.