Processing Yield from Parchment Coffee Demucilaged Mechanically and by Natural Fermentation

Abstract

1. It was confirmed that parchment coffee demucilaged mechanically gave a higher yield of dry matter than parchment coffee which had been subjected to natural fermentation in a moist atmosphere with the water drained away from it. This difference was very nearly significant at the 1-percent level. 2. It was found that the loss of weight was to a large extent associated with the fermentation process. As there was a significantly greater loss of weight at the 5-percent level between samples of parchment treated identically, except that the samples with the greatest yield of dry matter were subjected to mechanical demucilaging before being subjected to conditions where natural fermentation would take place. 3. The introduction of mechanical demucilaging would be dependent upon whether an increased yield exceeding 3 percent in the dried parchment coffee would justify the capital and operating costs of a mechanical demucilager. 4. No correlation was established between loss of dry matter during fermentation or the rate of breakdown of mucilage by natural fermentation and the temperature or duration of natural fermentation. It could be supposed that the agents responsible for the natural fermentation casually infect the parchment and that some such infections are much influenced by time or temperature, while others are more spontaneous and less influenced by these factors.