Coffee factory Monte Alto or how coffee is produced: from the plant...

[12/02/17] Jarabacoa is a little town in the Dominican mountains. It is notable for two main reasons - the mountains that surround it and coffee, that is being grown on their emerald slopes.

^{Waterfall Salto Jimenoa}

Even though I didn't immerse myself in the natural attractions of the region, such as rafting and hiking to the highest mountain of the country - Pico Duarte, I made sure to immerse myself in coffee.
Well, not literally, of course.

In the end I learned a few new for me methods of brewing the aforementioned drink and paid a visit to a coffee factory nearby to have a look at how it's grown and prepared.

They showed me the entire process from seed to drink, so to say.
For mere 2$ they provided me with a guide that was showing me around, describing and demonstrating different parts of the work that's being done there.
Though, she was only speaking spanish, the knowledge of which I lack, so I might have missed some points or gotten it a bit wrong.

First, they harvest the fruitage:

^{From this unremarkable tree}

Then the harvest is culled:

After that the beans are extracted and separated from the pulp. Back in the day it was done by this kind of mechanisms:

Nowadays they use big machines capable of processing much bigger volumes much more efficiently.

Then the green beans are dried in vast hangars like this:

And by machine drying as well:

Here they sort it by weight and size:

And here we have the roasting process after which the beans acquire their aroma that nearly everyone knows so well:

After that the coffee is basically ready. Part of it goes to grinder, before packing the final product.

But oh, wait! There's the quality control, too. These guys are getting to drink coffee all day not only for free, they are paid for that! Any coffee-junkie's dream came true.