WEBVTT - The Tech of Coffee 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:07.800 Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. 0:00:12.080 --> 0:00:14.760 Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, 0:00:14.960 --> 0:00:18.120 Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio, 0:00:18.239 --> 0:00:21.560 and I love all things tech. And just the other 0:00:21.640 --> 0:00:24.640 day I did a long episode about the history of 0:00:24.720 --> 0:00:27.840 lawns and lawn mowers, and I got to dive into 0:00:27.920 --> 0:00:30.800 some medieval history along the way to set up, you know, 0:00:30.840 --> 0:00:33.519 why we even have lawns in the first place. And 0:00:33.560 --> 0:00:37.080 today I thought I would do something similar and that 0:00:37.200 --> 0:00:41.440 I thought we would explore the technology around coffee. And 0:00:41.479 --> 0:00:44.920 you might be thinking, hey, Jonathan, it sounds like you're 0:00:44.960 --> 0:00:47.880 just making episodes out of stuff that you can see 0:00:47.960 --> 0:00:51.159 from your chair right there in your home office. And 0:00:51.240 --> 0:00:55.000 to you, I reply, s, don't you worry a little 0:00:55.040 --> 0:00:58.400 hit about that. It's none of your concern, So let's 0:00:58.400 --> 0:01:01.960 talk about coffee now. I also know that episodes like 0:01:02.040 --> 0:01:05.679 this one and My Lawnmower one are going into a 0:01:05.720 --> 0:01:10.080 lot of history and culture type stuff, not strictly the technology. 0:01:10.120 --> 0:01:13.920 But I always feel like an understanding of technology, a 0:01:14.000 --> 0:01:17.479 real understanding of it, requires that, you know, we also 0:01:17.520 --> 0:01:21.560 explore the greater context, Like we could just talk about 0:01:21.720 --> 0:01:24.960 how the technology works at all and how someone came 0:01:25.040 --> 0:01:27.760 up with an idea and maybe someone else improved on 0:01:27.800 --> 0:01:30.800 that idea. But I think that has limited value unless 0:01:30.800 --> 0:01:34.640 you explore why were people thinking about this in the 0:01:34.680 --> 0:01:38.039 first place, and what the world was like before and 0:01:38.080 --> 0:01:43.520 then after that technology. Also, I've recorded more than episodes 0:01:43.560 --> 0:01:46.720 of tech stuff, so changing things up keeps it fresh 0:01:46.760 --> 0:01:49.160 from me, and then I don't burn out. But hey, 0:01:49.400 --> 0:01:51.960 you folks are my listeners. If you like how these 0:01:51.960 --> 0:01:55.200 episodes play out with a deeper dive into the context 0:01:55.360 --> 0:01:58.840 around tech, let me know. Now. If you hate them, 0:01:58.880 --> 0:02:01.360 you can also let me know, but do it nicely, 0:02:01.520 --> 0:02:04.680 because yeah, it's just me doing all the researching and 0:02:04.680 --> 0:02:09.000 writing and recording of these shows. Now. Coffee is one 0:02:09.000 --> 0:02:12.720 of those subjects that I find particularly fascinating because there 0:02:12.720 --> 0:02:17.280 are countless people obsessed with it, and yet details about 0:02:17.320 --> 0:02:22.000 its origin and evolution in society are somewhat muddled. It's 0:02:22.000 --> 0:02:26.520 amazing that we've got this huge industry around coffee, but 0:02:26.760 --> 0:02:29.480 we don't have a lot of historical records to refer 0:02:29.600 --> 0:02:33.400 to when it comes time to documenting everything about it. 0:02:34.000 --> 0:02:37.000 Maybe people were just too jittery to write anything down, 0:02:37.639 --> 0:02:40.200 So in the absence of facts, people will fill up 0:02:40.240 --> 0:02:43.840 the gap with speculation. That's just a general rule of thumb. 0:02:44.520 --> 0:02:46.320 You didn't think this was gonna be an episode about 0:02:46.320 --> 0:02:48.840 critical thinking, but bam, right out of the gate, I'm 0:02:48.919 --> 0:02:52.320 hitting you with it. Now, if you google history of 0:02:52.400 --> 0:02:57.400 coffee or origins of coffee, you're gonna find results, like 0:02:57.520 --> 0:03:01.160 a lot of them. I mean like million of them. 0:03:01.200 --> 0:03:04.200 I know because I did it. And if you spend 0:03:04.320 --> 0:03:07.120 enough time skimming through a few of these different results, 0:03:07.480 --> 0:03:11.919 you're probably going to find several very different explanations about 0:03:11.919 --> 0:03:14.960 the history of coffee. Some might start as early as 0:03:15.040 --> 0:03:19.040 the sixth century of the Common Era, others might flip 0:03:19.080 --> 0:03:22.320 ahead of millennia or so. So this tells us that 0:03:22.480 --> 0:03:26.320 we should probably not put too much stock into any 0:03:26.360 --> 0:03:30.240 one narrative about coffee. It maybe that none of these 0:03:30.280 --> 0:03:34.120 accounts are correct, or maybe they all are, in some 0:03:34.160 --> 0:03:37.360 way or another at least partly correct. So we shall 0:03:37.400 --> 0:03:43.040 proceed with caution. First, let's talk about coffee the plant 0:03:43.400 --> 0:03:46.280 to understand what it is. Now, maybe you've never seen 0:03:46.360 --> 0:03:48.760 one in person. By the way, if you ever find 0:03:48.800 --> 0:03:51.960 yourself on the Big Island of Hawaii, you can go 0:03:52.040 --> 0:03:56.080 to the Kona region and tour one or more coffee plantations. 0:03:56.440 --> 0:03:59.200 I've done the tour of Greenwell Farms and it was 0:03:59.240 --> 0:04:01.880 super nifty, And no, I don't have any connection to 0:04:01.960 --> 0:04:05.440 that farm or that brand of coffee. I just liked 0:04:05.640 --> 0:04:07.560 the people that I talked to there, and I found 0:04:07.560 --> 0:04:11.800 the tour really fascinating, and the various animals roaming around 0:04:11.840 --> 0:04:15.920 the farm were super cool as well. Coffee plants don't 0:04:16.080 --> 0:04:20.320 get particularly huge. They typically fall somewhere in the range 0:04:20.360 --> 0:04:26.039 from shrub to medium sized tree. Cultivators typically trim the 0:04:26.080 --> 0:04:30.479 branches back to keep them manageable, especially if you're cultivating 0:04:30.520 --> 0:04:32.800 them in rows. You want those rows to be nice 0:04:32.839 --> 0:04:35.440 and neat, and it allows you to fit more plants 0:04:35.520 --> 0:04:40.080 per area of land. They have glossy green leaves and 0:04:40.200 --> 0:04:44.440 these plants sprout small white flowers in the springtime, followed 0:04:44.440 --> 0:04:48.200 by berries or the coffee cherry. And these are about 0:04:48.320 --> 0:04:52.040 half an inch in length or about one point three centimeters, 0:04:52.480 --> 0:04:55.159 And these are the coffee cherries. Inside each cherry are 0:04:55.240 --> 0:04:59.440 two green seeds. These are the actual coffee beans, which 0:04:59.520 --> 0:05:03.440 aren't really beans at all. Their seeds. Inside each cherry 0:05:03.480 --> 0:05:07.120 are two green seeds, and these are the coffee beans, 0:05:07.440 --> 0:05:10.160 and they're not really beans at all. They are seeds 0:05:10.240 --> 0:05:12.919 and they only become brown after you roast them, and 0:05:13.000 --> 0:05:16.479 that comes much, much, much later. The fruit of the 0:05:16.560 --> 0:05:20.880 coffee cherry is sweet. You can actually chomp on these 0:05:20.880 --> 0:05:24.360 if you want, but there's not a lot of pulp 0:05:24.839 --> 0:05:30.039 to these fruits. A coffee cherry is mostly skin and 0:05:30.200 --> 0:05:32.240 the two seeds, and then you've got a little bit 0:05:32.279 --> 0:05:36.560 of fruity pulp called mucilage on the exterior of the seeds. 0:05:36.600 --> 0:05:40.679 The seeds are super hard, so you don't really chew 0:05:40.760 --> 0:05:43.599 on the seeds. It would really hurt your teeth. And 0:05:43.640 --> 0:05:46.159 it takes a lot of work to eat the tiny 0:05:46.200 --> 0:05:49.280 amount of fruit that's on a coffee cherries, more work 0:05:49.279 --> 0:05:51.600 than what it's worth, which is why you don't go 0:05:51.680 --> 0:05:54.320 to the grocery store and load up on coffee cherries 0:05:54.600 --> 0:05:57.039 as a sort of pick me up fruit snack. But 0:05:57.160 --> 0:06:01.760 what's the history of humans cultivating coffee for its caffeinated kick. 0:06:02.640 --> 0:06:04.520 That was a lot of alliteration that I did not 0:06:04.640 --> 0:06:09.599 initially intend. Well, there's one tale that is pretty widespread 0:06:09.839 --> 0:06:12.560 to the point that I think we can really consider 0:06:12.600 --> 0:06:16.080 it folklore. Now this doesn't necessarily mean it's not true. 0:06:16.720 --> 0:06:18.599 It just means that, you know, it's a story that's 0:06:18.600 --> 0:06:21.720 been widely passed on through oral tradition, giving lots of 0:06:21.760 --> 0:06:25.479 opportunities for that story to change in little ways. I 0:06:25.520 --> 0:06:28.240 think it's probably a little fanciful, but again I don't 0:06:28.240 --> 0:06:31.000 know for sure. But the story goes that there was 0:06:31.040 --> 0:06:34.599 a shepherd in Ethiopia who was tending to a trip 0:06:34.720 --> 0:06:38.680 of goats. And yes, I did just google what to 0:06:38.760 --> 0:06:42.200 call a group of goats a trip? I guess. I 0:06:42.240 --> 0:06:45.240 guess the word heard would have been fine, but I 0:06:45.279 --> 0:06:47.840 wanted to get, you know, more specific. And besides, a 0:06:47.920 --> 0:06:51.360 trip of goats seems fitting, as this shepherd's goats were 0:06:51.760 --> 0:06:55.600 nibbling on some little shrub plants and then they were 0:06:55.640 --> 0:06:59.080 tripping all over the place. Man, those goats were tripping, 0:07:00.080 --> 0:07:04.039 or rather they were jumping, skipping and leaping, one might 0:07:04.120 --> 0:07:08.760 almost say dancing. And the shepherd, someone who clearly had 0:07:08.800 --> 0:07:11.800 a lot of time on their hands, decided, what the heck, 0:07:12.280 --> 0:07:14.320 I'm going to see what this is about. And so 0:07:14.360 --> 0:07:16.560 the shepherd then took some of the berries growing on 0:07:16.640 --> 0:07:19.760 these plants and showed on them, and then felt a 0:07:19.880 --> 0:07:22.920 surge of energy. So if you ever wondered whose job 0:07:22.960 --> 0:07:26.200 it was to test the various types of fruits and 0:07:26.800 --> 0:07:29.080 mushrooms and everything else to make sure that it was 0:07:29.120 --> 0:07:32.160 safe to eat. I'm guessing was folks like our shepherd 0:07:32.160 --> 0:07:35.640 in this story. Here. Also funny side note, the coffee 0:07:35.640 --> 0:07:38.040 shop I go to all the time has a name 0:07:38.240 --> 0:07:41.520 that references this folk tale. The coffee shop is called 0:07:41.840 --> 0:07:46.280 Dancing Goats. Now when this story happened, if it happened 0:07:46.280 --> 0:07:49.600 at all, is also a matter of debate, but generally 0:07:49.920 --> 0:07:53.640 we're looking at around mid ninth century of the Common Era, 0:07:53.760 --> 0:07:56.240 or around eight d fifty a d if you prefer. 0:07:56.720 --> 0:08:01.160 But as I say, there's not really any evidence that 0:08:01.240 --> 0:08:04.320 it definitively happened. And heck, I'm not sure anyone would 0:08:04.360 --> 0:08:07.360 even think to record that kind of event. I mean, 0:08:08.040 --> 0:08:11.680 dear Diary, I saw my goats eat some berries and 0:08:11.720 --> 0:08:14.880 then they went totally bonkers. So I ate some berries, 0:08:15.120 --> 0:08:19.120 and I too went bonkers. Tomorrow I opened a Starbucks. 0:08:19.800 --> 0:08:23.000 Like that just didn't happen. So there are some facts 0:08:23.040 --> 0:08:25.520 that at least make the story or some variant of 0:08:25.560 --> 0:08:28.400 it possibly true, And the big one is that the 0:08:28.480 --> 0:08:33.960 coffee plant grows naturally in Ethiopia in a region called Kafa, 0:08:34.040 --> 0:08:36.800 So did coffee get its name from kafa, or did 0:08:36.840 --> 0:08:40.160 kafa get its name from coffee? Heck, if I know, 0:08:40.920 --> 0:08:43.560 there are other words that sound a lot like coffee 0:08:43.679 --> 0:08:47.240 that are directly associated with coffee. So this is one 0:08:47.280 --> 0:08:49.840 of those that I think I will leave to the 0:08:50.559 --> 0:08:55.120 linguistic experts. Now. It's possible that some people had discovered 0:08:55.160 --> 0:08:58.840 the properties of this odd little fruit long before the 0:08:58.920 --> 0:09:02.880 ninth century. But the first written account about coffee that 0:09:02.960 --> 0:09:06.360 I could find evidence of came from a philosopher named 0:09:06.559 --> 0:09:10.080 Rozis from Persia who lived right around the time that 0:09:10.120 --> 0:09:14.560 the Shepherd's story might have happened. Rozis wrote of a 0:09:14.679 --> 0:09:17.760 medicine used by the peoples of Ethiopia. It was a 0:09:17.840 --> 0:09:21.440 drink made from the fruit of the coffee plant, but 0:09:21.600 --> 0:09:25.560 from the description it didn't sound like coffee as in 0:09:25.640 --> 0:09:29.280 the drink that we enjoy these days. Yemen is a 0:09:29.320 --> 0:09:33.520 possible origin point for coffee, the drink as we know it. 0:09:34.160 --> 0:09:38.800 Sufi monks and Yemen brought coffee cherries from Ethiopia, and 0:09:38.800 --> 0:09:41.920 then they cultivated the plants, and Yemen it grew just fine. 0:09:41.920 --> 0:09:45.000 And Yemen as well. The monks made a sort of 0:09:45.040 --> 0:09:48.640 tea from the coffee plants. Leaves to help them stay 0:09:48.640 --> 0:09:51.760 awake longer and get more prey and done. Now, this 0:09:51.800 --> 0:09:54.960 would have been around the fourteen hundreds, and it's possible 0:09:55.000 --> 0:09:58.679 that these monks gradually developed the process of roasting and 0:09:58.760 --> 0:10:03.400 grinding coffee beans to make their stay awake juice. In 0:10:03.440 --> 0:10:07.200 the fifteen hundreds, the Turks came a colon. The Ottoman 0:10:07.280 --> 0:10:10.880 Empire was an expansion mode, and while it never extended 0:10:10.960 --> 0:10:13.800 all the way down to Ethiopia, it did get quite 0:10:13.840 --> 0:10:17.440 the foothold in the Arabian Peninsula, which is where the 0:10:17.480 --> 0:10:22.600 Turks first encountered coffee, and they really liked it like 0:10:22.720 --> 0:10:26.880 a lot, and they called it covey, which in Turkish 0:10:26.960 --> 0:10:31.120 meant the wine of Arabia. The drink made from roasted 0:10:31.120 --> 0:10:34.240 coffee beans soon found its way throughout the Ottoman Empire, 0:10:34.640 --> 0:10:38.000 which was enormous and spanned parts of Europe and North 0:10:38.040 --> 0:10:42.320 Africa at this point, and growing coffee outside of places 0:10:42.360 --> 0:10:46.600 like Yemen and Ethiopia proved to be challenging. In part, 0:10:46.720 --> 0:10:50.440 that was because the plants thrived in very warm, like 0:10:50.559 --> 0:10:54.640 tropical style climates and temperate Europe was just a bad match. 0:10:54.679 --> 0:10:58.400 It was too cold. But the merchants selling coffee also 0:10:58.760 --> 0:11:01.680 saw a threat to their trade if people were able 0:11:01.720 --> 0:11:04.319 to grow the coffee plants in any old place, and 0:11:04.400 --> 0:11:08.600 so they would frequently boil or otherwise alter the beans 0:11:08.679 --> 0:11:11.880 before selling them, so that those beans would be infertile. 0:11:11.920 --> 0:11:14.640 If you were to plant them, nothing would grow from them, 0:11:14.920 --> 0:11:17.200 and then they would ship those off to be sold 0:11:17.240 --> 0:11:20.240 in places like Europe. It wouldn't be until the seventeen 0:11:20.280 --> 0:11:23.400 hundreds before someone, that being the Dutch, was able to 0:11:23.400 --> 0:11:25.600 get hold of viable coffee beans and find a place 0:11:25.640 --> 0:11:29.000 to grow them outside of the general areas of Yemen 0:11:29.040 --> 0:11:32.240 in Ethiopia. But we'll get back to that. By the 0:11:32.280 --> 0:11:36.240 mid sixteenth century, coffee shops were opening up in Constantinople. 0:11:36.600 --> 0:11:38.959 Now you can't go back to Constantinople, so if you 0:11:39.040 --> 0:11:41.760 have a dating Constantinople, she'll be waiting in his stan bull. 0:11:42.440 --> 0:11:44.800 I have no idea if it was common for a 0:11:44.840 --> 0:11:48.120 coffee house to open up right across the street from 0:11:48.160 --> 0:11:50.840 another coffee house, or if that's just something we do 0:11:50.920 --> 0:11:54.560 here now. Over in Western Europe, it said that some 0:11:54.800 --> 0:11:59.800 high ranking Catholic priests resisted the spread of coffee, declaring 0:11:59.800 --> 0:12:02.800 it to be a devil's brew. I mean it kept 0:12:02.800 --> 0:12:06.640 you awake, It gave you energy. It clearly was unnatural. 0:12:07.120 --> 0:12:09.839 But the Pope apparently like the stuff and said, Noah, 0:12:10.000 --> 0:12:14.960 this is fine. It's fine. And so coffee spread throughout 0:12:15.000 --> 0:12:18.800 the Christian world as well over in England, where they 0:12:18.800 --> 0:12:21.560 had already had a little tiff with the Catholic Church, 0:12:22.360 --> 0:12:26.280 it was now the Anglican Church in control. Over in England, 0:12:26.720 --> 0:12:29.840 they got their first coffee shop by sixteen fifty. That 0:12:29.960 --> 0:12:32.880 was just a century after the earliest ones we know about, 0:12:32.920 --> 0:12:37.280 opening up in Constantinople, which really surprised me because frequently, 0:12:37.280 --> 0:12:40.720 when it comes to trends in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, 0:12:41.240 --> 0:12:45.000 England typically is a latecomer because it was, you know, separate. 0:12:45.000 --> 0:12:47.120 It was not part of the mainland of Europe. Still 0:12:47.200 --> 0:12:49.960 isn't as far as I know. I haven't looked at 0:12:49.960 --> 0:12:52.720 a map recently. But in this case, the Brits got 0:12:52.760 --> 0:12:55.600 their coffee before the French started opening up their own 0:12:55.640 --> 0:12:58.320 coffee shops. Coffee even made its way over to the 0:12:58.320 --> 0:13:01.640 colonies in North America, with a coffee shop opening up 0:13:01.640 --> 0:13:04.600 in what would become the city of Boston in sixteen 0:13:04.720 --> 0:13:08.200 seventy six. Okay, so the Dutch I mentioned that they 0:13:08.280 --> 0:13:12.520 got some viable coffee beans essentially smuggled them out of Arabia, 0:13:12.600 --> 0:13:14.920 but they had to find a good place to grow coffee, 0:13:15.120 --> 0:13:18.520 and that turned out to be Indonesia, specifically the colony 0:13:18.640 --> 0:13:21.400 of Java, which is why we sometimes referred to coffee 0:13:21.440 --> 0:13:25.199 as Java. The Dutch secured their coffee beans through trade 0:13:25.240 --> 0:13:28.160 with a port city in Yemen, and that port city's 0:13:28.280 --> 0:13:32.560 name was Mocha. That's how we got Mocha Java. Starting 0:13:32.559 --> 0:13:36.920 in the early eighteenth century, from their colonialism, would spread 0:13:37.000 --> 0:13:39.840 coffee to other parts of the world, such as Sumatra 0:13:40.160 --> 0:13:45.079 that's an Indonesian island west of Java, Central America, South America, 0:13:45.280 --> 0:13:49.120 the Caribbean, and Hawaii. And before you can throw some 0:13:49.160 --> 0:13:52.400 coffee scenes or beans into a grinder and prep your 0:13:52.440 --> 0:13:55.120 morning cup of joe, there are a lot of stuffs 0:13:55.120 --> 0:13:59.920 that have to take place between growing it and brewing it. First, 0:14:00.200 --> 0:14:03.160 someone's got to harvest those cherries from the coffee plants. 0:14:03.200 --> 0:14:06.200 And in fact, there is a whole element to this 0:14:06.240 --> 0:14:08.560 story that I'm not going to dive into, but it 0:14:08.640 --> 0:14:14.880 does involve some pretty terrible conditions for workers in various 0:14:14.960 --> 0:14:17.240 parts of the world. There's a lot of exploitation going 0:14:17.280 --> 0:14:21.760 on whenever you're talking about mass farming in places like 0:14:22.080 --> 0:14:27.080 Central America or South America, or Indonesia or Africa, you've 0:14:27.120 --> 0:14:29.800 got a lot of opportunities for companies to do things 0:14:29.880 --> 0:14:32.880 that are not necessarily the best for the employees. But 0:14:33.120 --> 0:14:37.520 that's a matter for another episode. On smaller farms, harvesting 0:14:37.600 --> 0:14:40.400 might be done by hand, possibly with some hand tools, 0:14:40.640 --> 0:14:44.600 but on the big farms, heavy machinery is frequently used. 0:14:44.840 --> 0:14:48.520 While some coffee farms use pickers to harvest cherries by hand, 0:14:48.600 --> 0:14:52.360 like just with their hands alone, others rely on some 0:14:52.400 --> 0:14:54.440 of those simple hand tools. I was talking about one 0:14:54.440 --> 0:14:58.280 tool I've seen for harvesting coffee really surprised me. I 0:14:58.320 --> 0:15:01.000 hadn't really seen anything like it before. Or kind of 0:15:01.040 --> 0:15:03.720 looks like a pair of tongs, and that there are 0:15:03.760 --> 0:15:07.160 two rods that extend out from a plastic handle, and 0:15:07.200 --> 0:15:10.280 the handle actually has motors in it that vibrate and 0:15:10.400 --> 0:15:15.080 rotate those fiberglass rods. So while you're operating this harvesting device, 0:15:15.360 --> 0:15:18.880 those rods are spinning and vibrating very quickly. To harvest 0:15:18.960 --> 0:15:21.960 the coffee cherries, first, you put a tarp down to 0:15:22.040 --> 0:15:24.240 catch all the cherries that are going to fall, which 0:15:24.280 --> 0:15:25.880 is pretty much the same thing you would be doing 0:15:25.880 --> 0:15:28.280 if you were harvesting everything just using your hands alone. 0:15:28.920 --> 0:15:31.320 Then you would position the rods on either side of 0:15:31.360 --> 0:15:34.200 a branch that happens step berries on it. You'd squeeze 0:15:34.200 --> 0:15:37.440 the handle so that the two rods come together and 0:15:37.440 --> 0:15:41.480 and touch the branch on either side, thus transmitting vibrations 0:15:41.520 --> 0:15:44.680 to the branch, and then you move the tongs down 0:15:45.120 --> 0:15:47.840 along the length of the branch to shake the berries free. 0:15:48.440 --> 0:15:50.360 It's still a lot of work because you have to 0:15:50.400 --> 0:15:53.520 move from branch to branch, but it's more efficient than 0:15:53.560 --> 0:15:56.160 doing it all with just your fingers. Now, this is 0:15:56.200 --> 0:15:59.160 a fairly simple device with electric motors in the handle 0:15:59.240 --> 0:16:01.320 that draw power from a battery pack, so I'm not 0:16:01.320 --> 0:16:03.800 going to go into deep detail. There's not a whole 0:16:03.800 --> 0:16:07.200 lot of of advanced tech there. It's just the idea 0:16:07.240 --> 0:16:10.200 of creative vibrating motor that transmits vibrations to a rod. 0:16:10.720 --> 0:16:13.960 Those rods transmit the vibrations to a branch you knock 0:16:14.000 --> 0:16:17.080 the cherries loose. Another tool I've seen for this kind 0:16:17.080 --> 0:16:20.040 of harvesting looks almost like a weed whacker or a 0:16:20.080 --> 0:16:23.640 weed eater, except instead of having a rotating blade or 0:16:23.680 --> 0:16:27.480 a rotating wire. At the end of the device, you 0:16:27.520 --> 0:16:31.560 actually have what looks like almost like a fiberglass rake 0:16:32.440 --> 0:16:35.400 um or a fork. In fact, it does look like 0:16:35.440 --> 0:16:38.680 an enormous gas powered fork, and the motor when you 0:16:38.720 --> 0:16:43.720 turn it on, makes the tines of that fork vibrate. 0:16:44.120 --> 0:16:47.280 So again, you would just use this device to grip 0:16:47.320 --> 0:16:51.200 several branches of a coffee planet. Once you give some 0:16:51.280 --> 0:16:54.840 gas to the motor, it causes the times to shake, 0:16:54.920 --> 0:16:58.000 and it shakes the cherries free from the coffee plant, 0:16:58.440 --> 0:17:01.120 and presumably you catch those on a tarp. But for 0:17:01.240 --> 0:17:05.680 really big farms, there are some massive machines that farmers 0:17:05.840 --> 0:17:08.880 used to harvest coffee. When we come back, i'll explain more, 0:17:09.240 --> 0:17:20.320 but first let's take a quick coffee break, all right. 0:17:20.720 --> 0:17:23.359 So for smaller coffee farms, or maybe ones that are 0:17:23.359 --> 0:17:26.360 on like really uneven terrain, you might not be able 0:17:26.400 --> 0:17:28.360 to use big machines. They might just not be able 0:17:28.359 --> 0:17:31.760 to maneuver through those. But for coffee plantations that are 0:17:31.800 --> 0:17:36.320 really huge, particularly ones that have coffee plants and neat 0:17:36.480 --> 0:17:39.920 rows and fairly level ground, you get a lot of options. 0:17:40.440 --> 0:17:43.240 One harvester I've seen is a big device that's actually 0:17:43.280 --> 0:17:46.320 stationary when it's an operation, and it looks kind of 0:17:46.359 --> 0:17:51.080 like a big metal wagon with an archimedean screw inside 0:17:51.119 --> 0:17:53.960 of it and a shoot like protrusion at one end, 0:17:54.320 --> 0:17:56.880 which is where the coffee cherries will come shooting out 0:17:56.960 --> 0:18:00.600 and into another container. So you would tow this big 0:18:00.640 --> 0:18:03.240 thing to the end of like a pair of rows 0:18:03.280 --> 0:18:07.240 of coffee plants that stretch pretty far back, and between 0:18:07.240 --> 0:18:10.520 the rows you lay down a tarp. This tarp will 0:18:10.560 --> 0:18:13.879 become a sort of conveyor belt for the harvester, and 0:18:14.000 --> 0:18:16.480 workers would go down the rows of coffee plants and 0:18:16.560 --> 0:18:19.720 use pruning shears to trim back branches that have berries 0:18:19.760 --> 0:18:22.199 on them. All of these branches with berries on them 0:18:22.200 --> 0:18:24.760 fall down to the tarp below, and once that's done, 0:18:25.160 --> 0:18:28.800 you feed the tarp into essentially a roller in the harvester, 0:18:28.960 --> 0:18:32.720 which will start to pull the tarp into the machine. 0:18:33.320 --> 0:18:36.679 Uh And they typically also has some sort of hinged 0:18:36.720 --> 0:18:39.080 metal frame that you can use a sort of a ramp, 0:18:39.359 --> 0:18:42.239 so that way the tarp is going up at a 0:18:42.240 --> 0:18:45.439 at a gentler angle. It's not going up so steep 0:18:45.480 --> 0:18:48.920 that everything falls off the tarp. So the machine starts 0:18:48.960 --> 0:18:51.520 pulling the tarp toward it and everything on the tarp 0:18:51.600 --> 0:18:54.240 gets pulled along with it and dumped into a chamber. 0:18:54.680 --> 0:18:58.639 And in that chamber there is that Archimedean screw at 0:18:58.680 --> 0:19:00.239 the bottom. And if you don't know what that is, 0:19:00.840 --> 0:19:04.560 is a cylindrical drum with a helical blade. It's the 0:19:04.600 --> 0:19:07.120 type of thing that Archimedes used to draw water from 0:19:07.200 --> 0:19:10.560 areas of low elevation to high elevation, and in this case, 0:19:10.840 --> 0:19:14.680 it's used to transport the coffee cherries up toward another 0:19:15.119 --> 0:19:19.600 set of devices attached to this machine. So the branches 0:19:19.680 --> 0:19:22.400 and berries and leaves and all go into this chamber 0:19:22.440 --> 0:19:26.080 with the turning our comedian screw. The rotational motion separates 0:19:26.119 --> 0:19:29.320 the cherries from the branches, and the cherries effectively roll 0:19:29.520 --> 0:19:31.800 up the screw because of that rotation. This is a 0:19:31.880 --> 0:19:34.720 little hard to explain an audio, so I recommend you 0:19:34.800 --> 0:19:38.040 check out the videos of watching an archimedian screw in action. 0:19:38.080 --> 0:19:41.120 You'll see how it all works. And the cherries and 0:19:41.200 --> 0:19:44.480 maybe some bits of leaves and twigs hit a shaking 0:19:44.520 --> 0:19:47.840 grid at the top of that archimedian screw. This shaking 0:19:47.840 --> 0:19:50.520 grid acts like a filter. It allows the cherries to 0:19:50.560 --> 0:19:53.880 pass through the filter. Everything else doesn't or at least 0:19:53.880 --> 0:19:56.640 most of everything else doesn't. And then the cherries ride 0:19:56.640 --> 0:19:59.440 a second conveyor belt that has you know, these little 0:19:59.520 --> 0:20:01.840 ridges to keep the cherries from rolling back down, And 0:20:01.880 --> 0:20:05.080 this belt carries the cherries up a shoot and then 0:20:05.119 --> 0:20:08.080 they come out the other end and fall into whatever 0:20:08.200 --> 0:20:13.320 containment vessel you have to collect all those coffee cherries. Uh, 0:20:14.000 --> 0:20:16.040 you could end up with something that looks like essentially 0:20:16.040 --> 0:20:19.480 a dumpster full of coffee cherries, and the branches and 0:20:19.560 --> 0:20:21.760 leaves they get left behind are are chopped out quite 0:20:21.760 --> 0:20:25.520 a bit. They eventually exit the machine through an exhaust, 0:20:25.680 --> 0:20:28.480 kind of like the way a lawnmower has one of 0:20:28.480 --> 0:20:33.720 those little side exhaust ports where cut grass flies out. Now, 0:20:33.720 --> 0:20:35.679 this sort of device can harvest a lot of cherries, 0:20:35.720 --> 0:20:39.040 but it does require a ton of manual pruning work 0:20:39.040 --> 0:20:41.440 at the top end of it. There are some other 0:20:41.520 --> 0:20:44.359 harvesters that take the cherries right off the plants without 0:20:44.480 --> 0:20:48.359 needing to cut the branches onto a tarp first, and 0:20:48.400 --> 0:20:51.080 they look pretty funky. Now, there are a lot of 0:20:51.160 --> 0:20:54.719 variations on this next type of harvester, but they do 0:20:54.800 --> 0:20:57.720 share a few things in common. And the easiest way 0:20:57.720 --> 0:21:01.679 I can think of to describe this is imagine a 0:21:01.840 --> 0:21:05.440 mechanical automated car wash. You know, you drive your car 0:21:05.480 --> 0:21:10.280 into the bay of this car wash, and then once 0:21:10.359 --> 0:21:15.959 the car washes operating, these big machines will rotate giant 0:21:16.040 --> 0:21:19.240 brushes that come up against your car and scrub all 0:21:19.320 --> 0:21:23.200 that road grime off your vehicle and then you drive out. Well, 0:21:23.240 --> 0:21:25.560 imagine that you've got a car wash, but the car 0:21:25.600 --> 0:21:28.600 wash itself is on wheels, So instead of the cars 0:21:28.760 --> 0:21:32.000 driving into a stationary bay, you could have a line 0:21:32.040 --> 0:21:34.800 of cars that are you know, bumper to bumper in 0:21:34.840 --> 0:21:38.320 a line, and you have this wheeled car wash go 0:21:38.480 --> 0:21:42.680 down the line of parked cars, and the car wash 0:21:42.800 --> 0:21:45.399 is the thing that moves. Well, that's kind of what 0:21:45.520 --> 0:21:48.400 these harvester things are. Acceptance to have a car wash. Obviously, 0:21:48.440 --> 0:21:52.560 they are harvesting coffee cherries off of plants. So you've 0:21:52.600 --> 0:21:55.679 got this big machine that has a space where a 0:21:55.800 --> 0:21:59.399 tree can pass through the middle of this machine. The 0:21:59.440 --> 0:22:01.959 machine is on wheels, so it can move because you know, 0:22:03.000 --> 0:22:05.440 these are coffee plants. They're not ents from Middle Earth, 0:22:05.480 --> 0:22:07.760 so they don't walk around on their own no matter 0:22:07.760 --> 0:22:10.400 how much caffeine is in them. Some of these machines 0:22:10.600 --> 0:22:13.400 are things that you have to tow behind a tractor, 0:22:14.000 --> 0:22:16.639 But some of them have a tractor like system built 0:22:16.680 --> 0:22:19.720 into the actual machine. So some of them have their 0:22:19.720 --> 0:22:23.880 own engine and motor that allows you to drive the harvester, 0:22:24.880 --> 0:22:28.560 whereas others are a separate piece of machinery that hooks 0:22:28.560 --> 0:22:31.520 onto the back of a tractor. I've seen both versions, 0:22:31.520 --> 0:22:36.280 but either way, a driver manipulates this machine, so it 0:22:36.359 --> 0:22:40.280 moves down a line of coffee plants in order to 0:22:40.320 --> 0:22:43.920 harvest the cherries. So how is that harvesting actually working well? 0:22:43.960 --> 0:22:47.680 On the inside where the trees are passing through, You've 0:22:47.720 --> 0:22:51.760 got poles with fiberglass rods on either side of where 0:22:51.760 --> 0:22:54.880 the coffee plants passed through. So it kind of looks 0:22:54.880 --> 0:22:59.040 like one of those round brushes where you've got the 0:22:59.320 --> 0:23:02.040 bristles on all sides of the round brush. It looks 0:23:02.080 --> 0:23:05.040 like a pair of those, except not quite as thick, 0:23:05.119 --> 0:23:08.200 and you've got a bunch of fiberglass rods instead of bristles, 0:23:08.800 --> 0:23:11.480 and instead of big rotating brushes from a car wash, 0:23:11.560 --> 0:23:14.720 you've got these things and they do rotate, and the 0:23:14.800 --> 0:23:19.480 fiberglass rods vibrate as they're rotating, and it's this motion 0:23:19.640 --> 0:23:23.119 that shakes loose the coffee cherries as the plants pass 0:23:23.320 --> 0:23:26.199 through the middle of the machine. At the bottom of 0:23:26.240 --> 0:23:29.920