about Café Solar®

Cafe Solar (pronounced Caf-AY SO-laar) is revolutionizing the way coffee is processed. Here is the story of that revolution:

When coffee is harvested, the fruit of the coffee plant is picked at just the right time - when the coffee cherry is ripe.  That fruit is called a cherry because that is what it resembles.  It is really the seeds of the cherry that we call coffee beans. To get to those beans the rest of the fruit has to be mechanically removed, otherwise the "cherry" will spoil in a matter of a few days.  After de-pulping and washing the beans, they are ready to be dried.

Drying coffee, as it turns out, is no easy task.  It takes enormous amounts of energy to remove moisture from within a bean.  One way to dry the coffee is to spread it out on a patio and let the sun do its job while the beans are raked and turned.  If it rains or is cloudy, it could take up to 15 days for the coffee to dry, even in the hot climates where coffee is usually grown.  This method provides a good opportunity for mold infestation and requires a large amount of land for spreading the coffee beans. It is also very labor intensive.

About 70 years ago, the coffee industry began using drying equipment.  The coffee is put in a large rotating drum, or cascaded repeatedly down a huge tower.  In both cases, hot air is blown into the coffee with fans, so the drying could be accomplished in about 24 hours.  Unfortunately, the “cheapest” source of thermal energy is firewood.  The wood, supplied from the surrounding rain forest,  fuels the furnaces which make the hot air that dries the coffee. Most of the coffee sold today is still dried using this method, so even if you are drinking Organic, Fair Trade, Shade Grown coffee, it may have taken almost one square inch of rain forest PER CUP just to dry it!

The Mesoamerican Development Institute began to look for ways to fix this problem. What we found was that by using modern engineering and recently developed solar energy technology, we could not only dry the coffee without the use of firewood, we could actually IMPROVE the quality of the coffee by drying it at a lower temperature.  The lower temperature drying preserves more of the essential oils that give coffee its flavor.

While some coffee producers have converted their drying processors to use diesel fuel, we all know how the cost of energy is escalating - and we also know that burning fossil fuels to provide heat or electrical power is not a good long-term solution for us, or our planet.

The Mesoamerican Development Institute deals directly with the coffee producers and the cooperatives they form to dry their coffee, moving them upward in the economic chain.  We are involved in every step of the production process - "from the tree to the cup.” We know where the coffee was grown, where it was processed and how it was stored, giving you not only the best cup of coffee you can buy, but also leaving the planet a little bit better place.

Thank you for taking the time to read about coffee drying and the environment.  If you would like a more detailed explanation of our coffee drying process - click here, or visit the website of the Mesoamerican Development Institute. 

We hope you enjoy you Café Solar®, and thanks for caring about our planet.