Hacienda La Minita - Part Three: At the Mill

September 25, 2025

An industrial complex lies in a valley, silos, red roofs, and buildings visible. In the center, a large, red Mack truck is parked on a flat strech of pavement

Welcome to part three of my La Minita travelogue - If you missed the first or second part of my journey, you can either begin with me in San Jose or join me on the farm at the guest house, or just dive right in here at the mill.

Want an amazing coffee from La Minita? Shop La Minita Melico Geisha.

Below the slopes of coffee, at the base of the mountain, lies La Minita's mill, Beneficio del Rio Tarrazú. What I’m referring to as “the mill” is actually a wet mill, a dry mill, a roasting and cupping lab, along with offices and various other support buildings - a huge operation as you can see!

A large, industrial area, lit in the darkness, full of yellow and blue steel. A lone truck unloads coffee on the left side.

We visited the mill in the evening and during the day, so forgive the mix of lighting conditions! Multiple stations exist for trucks delivering coffee to unload.

A man peers over the side of a pickup, as another stands in the bed, shovel in hand. The truck is parked in front of an industrial-looking area full of girders and pipes.

La Minita’s mill also serves smaller farms and estates in the surrounding valleys, so trucks of all sizes come and go throughout the day.

A blue box, called an angeria, used for measuring coffee loads, sits on sliding rails over a grate outooders.

Angerias are used for measurement when loads are delivered to the mill, to make sure the expected quantity is delivered, then dropped into holds - once a truck is fully unloaded, the processing can begin. This processing changes the coffee from fruit-covered cherry into the dried seeds we call beans.

The coffee’s been delivered, so let’s get to the milling! Coffee arrives at the mill as quickly as possible after picking. If processing is delayed, the fruit around the seeds will eventually spoil or ferment, ruining the coffee.

A perforated metal tray is filled with vivid yellow and red coffee cherries, still fully intact.

Once the received coffee is measured again and sampled, it drops to a receiving tank filled with water. A full, incredibly detailed description of what happens to the coffee next is available in La Minita’s mill blog. I’ll tell you about my experience of the mill, but the scale, sounds, and sights were awesome and overwhelming - for an expert description of their world-class mill, please head straight to the source.

In the receiving tanks, any low-density “floaters” get channelled away to be processed as lower quality coffee. In the wet mill, the thrum of rushing water and churning machines working away on the coffee dominates any conversation. The coffee needs to be de-stoned to remove any foreign objects that might have been in the bags or the trucks after picking, then de-pulped to remove the skin.

A cylindrical de-pulping wheel, made up of a series of rods along the barrel. Between the rods, gleaming wet coffee cherries, sticks, and leaves are caught between the parallel rods.

De-pulping requires a few machines, to ensure all the coffee stripped of its skin and fruit, as the size of the cherries varies. The skins get washed away and saved to return to the farm, where they’ll serve as natural fertilizer.

The camera looks directly down, through a grated metal floor. Below, an overhead view of a person in a hard hat as they take a cell phone picture of a machine spewing de-pulped coffee into a channel of water.

If coffee makes it through the series of machines designed for de-pulping without being de-pulped, it gets sorted away from the highest quality beans into what are called "seconds" and "thirds" - this coffee’s still great, we got to taste it on the cupping table - but is naturally lower quality than the best coffee of "firsts."

Wet, de-pulped coffee drops from the lip of a de-pulping machine, into a metal channel filled with water below.

After de-pulping is complete, the coffee gets washed through another channel to the fermentation tanks. These large holding tanks lie between the receiving area and the dry mill.

Two large, roughly fifty by 15 foot tanks full of coffee lie down a slope of grass. A third tank is empty. The tanks have walkways across and around them.

Here, the coffee begins to ferment under controlled conditions, naturally breaking down the sugars that hold the remaining inner fruit, known as endocarp or mucilage, onto the seeds. The amount of time it rests varies, and is determined by the mill manager’s examination and judgement of each tank.

Looking down an narrow but open air walkway, on the right side a concrete wall, on the left a channel of water flows, full of coffee. In the distance, a man bends over the channel, beneath a sign that reads "washing channel."

Once the coffee is ready, it's washed again in cold water, which stops the breakdown of sugars and washes the loosened mucilage away. This washing happens in an inclined channel with gates at different locations along the incline. This design sorts the coffee by gravity, as the lightest beans of lower quality travel quickly and the denser, more flavor-packed beans move slowly down the channel.

In the foreground, a huge pile of coffee rests, while a woman in the middle grounds sprays water across funnel shaped machinery. Trees on a slope are visible in the distance.

Pura Vida

In an amazing display of the Costa Rican ethic of caring for their biosphere, all of the wastewater for these processes is cleaned and returned to a proper ph in a hydro-electric powered water treatment plant. This is extremely rare globally - acidic, untreated water is commonly dumped downstream of farms after milling - and was a huge reminder of La Minita’s willingness to invest in the care of their neighbors and the surrounding lands, not just in their farm. On the farm we saw areas left uncultivated and wild, care for and protection of bees, native planting, but this treatment plant is a shining example of La Minita's dedication to preserving the environment.

Time to Dry

As coffee leaves the wet mill, it’s time to dry the coffee to the proper moisture level for hulling and transport - and here, we saw La Minita use a variety of techniques.

In the distance, plants slope upwards to out buildings. Level on the ground, a hug patio rests, about half of it covered in drying, light colored coffee beans. A man in a neon orange vest walks in the coffee, pushing it in front of himself with a large rake.

Traditional patio drying was on display, where beans are spread on a concrete patio and regularly raked to dry evenly in the sun.

Outdoors, a man in a hard hat washes his face with coffee as a woman in a hard hat looks on. The coffee is on a bed, about waist height, with a triangular frame above it and a rolled up tarp suspended overhead.

We saw raised beds throughout the mill, designed for drying special, small lots of coffee, in a traditional African technique.

A symmetrical image of three, massive, industrial cylinders. These coffee dryers are so large that thirty foot ladders are bolted between them, stretching toward the ceiling from the floor. The image is in black and white.

Finally, most of the coffee processed at the mill travels through huge, low temp, rotating dryers, powered by state-of-the-art, parchment burning furnaces.

On the left, stacks of coffee and a metal staircase and on the right, huge industrial dryer cylinders tower over a small group of people in between them in the distance in a large warehouse.

Parchment is the innermost layer of skin that wraps around the seeds, and the coffee is pulled from these massive rotating dryer drums when the parchment feels ready for removal.

Light from a distant opening drifts across the top of a silo, gently bathing the coffee inside in a golden gradient. The silo is bisected diagonally from bottom left to top right by a gangway plank.

After drying, the coffee enters a period of reposa, or rest - it rests for a minimum of 20 days. For large lots, this takes place in massive silos. After this period of rest, it’s time for the dry mill to swing into action - the coffee is hulled to remove the parchment and silver skin, then sorted.

In a dimly lit industrial building, machines flank a beam of light shining from a doorway in the distance. The silhouette of a man entering the building fills the opening.

La Minita uses as many methods as possible and says they're always looking for more ways to sort for quality - we saw density beds that vibrate (winnowers) to sort the beans, size screeners adapted to work for coffee, and air density sorters.

A man gazes intently at a perforated metal tray, clasped between his hands on a table. He seems lost in thought, a moisture meter on the table, dried coffee beans in the tray, machinery and bags behind him.

Moisture readings are taken from samples throughout the process.

A floor height view of a large room, filled with rows of tables. Women sit at the tables, sorting coffee below bare fluorescent tubes that hang above them. From this angle, chutes that run from the table to baskets below are visible, and each woman has a water bottle on the floor beside her chair.

The final step is perhaps the most traditional, but also demonstrates La Minita’s respect and commitment to producing world class coffee.

Rows of women sort coffee at tables. Two women's faces stand out - on glances right at an unseen distraction, the other beams a smile to her left, where a man in a hard hat walks by, smiling brightly back at her.

A team of women sit at hand cleaning tables, inspecting coffee for discoloration, damage, and defects that weren’t detected by all of the machines that preceded them.

A black and white image of a sorting table, two sets of hands visible as the pick up coffee beans from the piles of beans on the table.

The process is so meticulous that the top sorters typically top out at 50 pounds per day.

The mill, nestled beside the convergence of the Tarrazú and the Candelaria rivers, really does stand as a final testament to the estate’s commitment to quality and close care for their people, land, neighbors, and of course, their coffee.

A man wheels a bag of beans on a handcart from left to right. He is flanked by stacks of bags that tower over him, behinid him a large scale and massive silos that stretch toward the ceiling out of frame.

All of the processes, sorting, and work, winnows away lower quality beans until only the very best remain.

A marked pathway cuts between stacks and silos of coffee, light shining through it, as a man walks toward the camera, tiny compared to the silos 40 feet away.

La Minita estimates that of every 100 pounds of green that arrives at the mill, only 23 pounds of coffee leaves bearing the name La Minita - the rest is graded, then sold under lesser marks.

At the Cupping Table

As a coffee roaster in the United States of America, it’s not necessary to travel the globe in search of coffee, it's not necessary to witness the care and work that go into every bag of coffee we receive- importers are always happy to ship samples to us. There are many reasons, however, that it’s incredibly valuable to visit estates, farms, and mills in coffee-producing countries.

A man sits back in a wood and ornately decorated leather rocking chair. He is on a covered porch, a mountain in the distance behind him. He is caught mid-sentence, chin on fist, elbow on chair arm.

The first might be obvious - if you’re at a farm during harvest, tasting sample roasts the day they become available, you often have the inside track on negotiating to buy it, simply because you got to taste the coffee before anyone else.

A man in rubber boots and a flannel shirt bends low over a basket which he grips with both hands. The basket hold coffee, and out of frame, someone stands holding a bag. The large bag pours coffee into the man's basket.

The next reason might be less obvious - when we make a commitment to relationship coffees, it’s not based on pamphlets we’re receiving. Instead, we’ve visited the farm, we’ve seen their commitment to quality, to their environment, to their farmers, to all of our shared values, and we’re committed to buying not just their best coffees, but enough of a variety of their coffees, repeatedly, harvest after harvest, so that they know they can depend on us over the years, just like we depend on them.

A dozen people, mostly men, stand around a large circular table, covered in small bowls of ground coffee and blue trays of unroasted coffee. Two spittoons stand on the concrete ground, which stretches out from where it is covered by a building into what appears to be a parking lot. A truck is parked in the lot, 30 feet from the group.

Standing at an open air cupping table beside the roasting lab, surrounded by a panel of experts from La Minita- roasters, mill workers, quality control managers, the farm manager, the guest house manager, all our hosts - it was clear that everything La Minita prides itself on is embodied in their people. Their work, dedication, planning, improvisation, care, and joy were all on display around the table.

A man, perhaps in his late sixties, smiles gently into the camera. He wears a La Minita polo shirt and a Dancing Goats baseball cap.

They created three cuppings for us, letting us taste a range of varieties, farms, processes, drying methods, all three quality grades, and more. Everything they do so well was openly shared - with time for questions, debate, joy, and pura vida .

Bob Benck, a middle aged man, crouches beside a raked patio full of coffee. His hands are pressed together, cradling a large scoop of coffee, which he seems to raise to the camera as an offering.

And as in all of our visits to La Minita, it was apparent at that table why our green-buyer, Bob Benck, has returned, decade after decade, to the people and coffee of La Minita, from his desk at Dancing Goats.

Bowls of steaming coffee sit on a table, as a kettle fills a bowl of coffee grounds with steaming hot water.

We’re proud to offer Costa Rica La Minita to you this year and we’re proud to count it as a relationship coffee that we can now share with an even larger group of coffee lovers.

A cupping table filled with steaming bowls of brewed coffee and un-roasted samples. The sample on display is labeled "Geisha Fully Washed.""

I’m also thrilled that we’ve chosen to bring you a rare, prized, and incredibly delicious Geisha variety by way of La Minita: Finca El Melico. Thanks for reading about my trip, sharing some of the beautiful sights of Costa Rica with me, and I hope you love the coffee from La Minita as much as I do. Until next time, pura vida mae! -Aaron

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Hacienda La Minita - Part Three: At the Mill