Coffee on the Drying Floors in Porto Rico
Nicaragua. The wet method of coffee preparation is mostly favored in Nicaragua. Many of the large plantations are worked by colonies of Americans and Germans who are competent to apply the abundant natural water power of the country to the operation of modern coffee cleaning machinery.
Costa Rica. Costa Rica was one of the first countries of the western world to use coffee cleaning machinery. Marcus Mason, an American mechanical engineer then managing an iron foundry in Costa Rica, invented three machines that would respectively peel off the husk, remove the parchment and pulp, and winnow the light refuse from the beans.
The inventor gave his original demonstration to the planters of San José in 1860, and duplicates were installed on all the large plantations. In the course of the next thirty years, Mason brought out other machines until he had developed a complete line that was largely used on coffee plantations in all parts of the world.
In the Eastern Hemisphere
Modern cleaning machinery and methods of preparation are employed to some extent in the large coffee-producing countries of the eastern hemisphere, and do not differ materially from those of the western.
Arabia. In Arabia the fruit ripens in August or September, and picking continues from then until the last fruits ripen late in the March following. The cherries, as they are picked, are left to dry in the sun on the house-top terrace or on a floor of beaten earth. When they have become partly dry, they are hulled between two small stones, one of which is stationary, while the other is worked by the hand power of two men who rotate it quickly. Further drying of the hulled berry follows. It is then put into bags of closely woven aloe fiber, lined with matting made of palm leaves. It is next sent to the local market at the foot of the mountain. There, on regular market days, the Turkish or Arabian merchants, or their representatives, buy and dispatch their purchases by camel train to Hodeida or Aden. The principal primary market in recent years has been the city of Beit-el-Fakih.