Pulping machine

This time I bring you an article related to the coffee pulping machine that belongs to my family and I want to make it known. In a small text I explain the operation of this useful tool for coffee growers, I hope the community likes it. To close the post I share with you a little anecdote that happened to me with this machine when I was a child.

The pulper is a machine that is used to remove the husk from the coffee cherry. The first ones were manual, but over the years the invention has evolved and nowadays they are motor-driven. The majority of these machines come with four frontal holes called jets through which the beans come out after the pulping process.

The mechanism used by this machine is friction on the grain using a roller, which consists of removing the pulp from the grain using the pressure exerted by the pulper's jacket, which must be started immediately after the coffee is harvested. A delay of more than 6 hours affects the quality of the beverage and can cause a defect called 'ferment'.

It should be adjusted to the size of the bean to guarantee that it removes the entire external layer and thus ensures the quality of the pulped coffee.

The fruit is introduced through the loading hopper after being cleaned. Subsequently, the product passes through a second stage, through paddles adjusted to the sieve, which are responsible for filtering the pulp. The seeds, skin, bones, peels, and stems are expelled through the front part of the machine, this is called the coffee-washing process.

It is necessary to wash well because, with the fermentation process, the coffee can acquire an undesirable and bitter taste. For the majority of coffees, the elimination of the mucilaginous substances takes between 24 and 36 hours, depending on the temperature, the thickness of the mucilaginous layer, and the concentration of the enzymes.

This coffee processing is carried out by the coffee growers themselves on their farms.

It was 1994, and at that time I was 13 years old, I was the seventh child in my parents' family. Raised among coffee plantations in the open air like birds, we had a very happy childhood, we played with wooden carts that we built ourselves, and we also made clay arepas and mud houses, we were a whole tribe of happy and contented children, my brothers, cousins and me.

In the same way, we fulfilled our obligations, after school we had to help with the cultural work of the coffee plantations, especially during harvest time, my father was busy with many things and my older brothers were studying abroad, so I was not at home and it was my turn together with my younger sister to help the old man carry the sacks or suitcases of coffee from the house to where the pulper was located, which was the machine where the shell was removed from the coffee bean.

One day, while my father, my sister, and I were working pulping, it was my turn to fill the hopper of the machine to carry out the process, with my little strength I raised the sack and it got tangled in the pulley of the machine, I was scared and shouted, but because of the noise of the engine nobody heard, I let it swallow the sack and it turned off, my father when he saw the sack in the turbine of the machine, ran to check me, I was unharmed, but I was petrified of the fright. He was pale and I imagine I was too, we stopped working that day because of the accident, but the next day we went back to work and since that incident, I have been much more cautious and accidents never happened again.