Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/737343
42 STiR coffee and tea / Issue 5, 2016 (October/November) Ricardo Koyner of Kotowa Coffee in Panama, with his Pikasen FMS-2000 compact optical sorter. In 2015 Kotowa Coffee was the first green coffee processor in Latin America to install this technology. Terence Fuschich, plant manager, stands next to one of nine Satake Evolution sorters installed at the Honducafé dry mill in San Pedro Sula. The remover then uses tiny metal finger-like screws to rub the beans – similar to rubbing a bean between your hands – generating the friction needed to remove the coating. While other mucilage removal methods rely on water to speed fermen- tation and enzyme breakdown, the Pinhalense machine uses the lubricant within the mucilage itself. "The mucilage remover eliminates much of the need for water," said Carlos Brando, a partner at P&A Marketing, Pin- halense's export manager. "The beans become slimy and the mucilage breaks down by the biological process and by friction." Brando said Pinhalense has been developing the new equip- ment more than a year. "We dramatically changed what's on the inside," he said. "We're squeezing the flow to use less water." The first prototypes were tested in Central America, Brando said, before successful trials in Brazil during April and May. "It's ready for the Brazilian market to be used next harvesting sea- son," he said, and it will be available for exports from April 2017 onward. Dry processing Dry processing, on the other hand, allows the moisture in each cherry to naturally evaporate much like a grape becomes a raisin. This is typically done in countries – such as Brazil, Ethio- pia and Yemen. Cherries dry with the pulp and mucilage and, for this reason, dry-processed beans are called "naturals." The naturals are turned by hand or raked to make sure they all dry evenly. It can take as long as three weeks for a cherry to dry to the target 12% moisture content. Only then is the dried fruit hulled and bagged for shipment. Mechanical drying signifi- cantly reduces drying time. New sorting solutions The goal of processing equipment manufacturers is to develop machinery that speed the process and provide labor efficiencies. "A challenge that becomes more complicated as the years go by is the cost of labor," said Johanna Bot, director of sales, vision systems-Latin America and Caribbean for Satake USA. "In many places, human hands still touch and interact with the coffee beans throughout the production and processing flow. This can introduce a host of new problems due to human error, sanitation and other issues. Some countries are starting to do more mechanical harvesting in the field in order to rely less on human labor." Sorting manufacturer Satake offers optical sorters as preci- sion alternatives to the hand-sorting of green and roasted cof- fee. Optical sorting, sometimes called digital sorting, relies on sophisticated cameras to identify defects and foreign material by color. The sorter examines each object based on user-defined parameters and accepts or rejects each piece accordingly. Satake Evolution series and the Pikasen FMS-2000 sorters. The FMS is a compact, full-color RGB optical sorter designed for small and medium-size qantities. It uses low-energy lighting that evenly illuminates on each coffee bean and has an average lifespan of 20,000 hours. The Evolution series is designed for large capacity produc- tion using full color RGB lighting the ability to reveal defects in the purest light. The last sort Specialty roasters often employ a final tier of sorting to avoid the off-putting scent of foreign material. Probat, a roaster manufacturer based in Germany, recently teamed with Belgian-based Tomra Sorting Food to provide a free-fall laser sorter called the LST. Based on the existing Tomra Nimbus food sorter, the LST simultaneously identifies quality cherry while rejecting less desirable fruit and foreign objects. Unwanted and difficult to detect objects such as little sticks or green coffees of very heterogeneous color are easily identified and discolored and deformed green or roasted coffee are re- jected with extremely high efficiency. Incoming products are analyzed and the best sorting pa- rameters are automatically selected for creating a higher level of contrast which results in a lower false reject and the highest possible efficiency. The high-resolution laser technology, Probat states, will rec- ognize objects not detected by conventional sorters and is capa- ble to recognizing items based on biological characteristics.