Pomarrosa Coffee plantation

While we were up in the mountains we wanted to visit a working coffee plantation, and at the Casa Grande they had some pamphlets for Pomarrosa Coffee plantation so we drove the winding mountain roads for about an hour until we reached the plantation.

Gourmet Coffee Pomarrosa

we drove up the drive way where Kurt was waiting to greet us, as we had phoned ahead.  Kurt is an expat from Germany, but he has been living in Puerto Rico for 40 years and is passionate about coffee, food and Puerto Rico.  He led us to an octagonal structure where there were a couple of  tables, and coffee making apparatus.

I always say the most important ingredient in great food is love and passion, Kurt certainly poured both these in to his coffee.  We had both drip and espresso, and I divined correctly that adding cream (which I normally always do) would be blasphemy here.

A perfect place to enjoy a coffee and banana bread

After tasting the coffee and a quick history of coffee in general and coffee in Puerto Rico in particular we went out to see the coffee growing.

Inspecting the coffee plants which were in several stages of flowering, as well as producing beans, though the harvesting season is later in the year. We heard about shade grown mountain coffee which in his opinion is obviously the best and most sustainable.  It was a pleasant walk around the coffee which grows on very steep slopes, I can not imagine harvesting and hauling up the beans, which is all done by hand as the beans ripen at different times.

Unripe coffee beans

When they are ripe they are red, All that we saw were still all green.  Then Kurt took us to the very modest processing area and walked us through the peeling, drying and roasting of the beans.  There were bags of dried beans in a shed, but he only roasts each day the amount that is needed.

Dried un roasted beans

The roasting shed smelt wonderful, I always think coffee smells almost better than it tastes.

The coffee roasting machine

He finished off the tour by showing us the two guest cottages that they rent out, they looked beautiful and as much as we enjoyed the Casa Grande, these also looked tempting especially when he said that he cooked dinner each night in the same place we had tasted the coffee.  Very tempting.

Four poster bed in one of the cottages