#72: Planning Your First Coffee Fermentation Trials? Start Here.

Today's episode offers a behind the scenes view of how I approach a coffee producer's first time using yeast for their coffee fermentations.

We run through all of the potential variables to pay attention to when designing your first trials with commercial microbes. From cost of production to work-flow and data collection.

This conversation was recorded during a recent Office Hours session through our private Discord community. If you would like to be a part of this community, join Patreon and come participate in the discussion.

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Cover Art by: Nick Hafner
Into song: Elijah Bisbee

Transcript

0:09

Hello everybody. We're back for something a little different on today's episode. You may have noticed that we eliminated the intro where I say a behind the scenes look at what goes into making your favorite beverage. We wanted to streamline the podcast and just get directly into whatever the day's topic was. But today's episode really embodies that essence of behind the scenes spirit. Not only are we talking with coffee producers about how they make coffee, but you are also going behind the scenes into our office hour sessions and getting a glimpse into how I approach my clients and a traditional consulting session. Today I'm gonna play for you a part of an office hour where I walk two producers through how to approach their first yeast trials. We talk about what it costs and how to structure protocols. You'll notice that while they have essentially the same question, the question being, where do I begin with yeast? Or how do I even get started based on their context, I give them almost opposite advice. However, before we get into that audio, I wanted to give you guys an update on what Nick and I have been up to. I've mentioned in a previous episode that the fermentation camps were on hold this year, so I could focus on other projects including podcast projects. Making Coffee is a listener supported podcast, so there are no ads or sponsors. However, the project I'm collaborating on with James Harper of Filter Stories is more ambitious, more expensive to produce because it includes travels and it needs to compensate for our time. So James and I had to get sponsors. The experience of reaching out to potential sponsors was completely new to me. James and I have spent the last year raising enough money so that we could do our series. That's 12 months of emails, video calls, proposals, scheduling, and rescheduling. Before we can even start the thing that we wanna make, I'm excited to report that we finally have our sponsors in place and we can finally start to actually make the episodes that will take us at the better part of another year to research, schedule, interviews, outline, write, compose, music, record, edit, and polish. This experience with James showed me how much work it takes to go that route of sponsorships. It reinforced for me how grateful I am to the Patreon community that supports this podcast because it means I can focus on making new episodes instead of looking for sponsors. I know you guys know this, but it can't hurt to be reminded of how much money it takes to make a free thing. There are hosting fees I need to pay for editing software, upgrade. Our computers pay for additional storage space in the cloud. We need to buy equipment like microphones and headphones and sound dampening foam, and of course, our time to research, write, record, edit, and upload the episodes. If I'm making a free podcast, I can't also be doing paid consulting work or paid workshops. So when you guys take the time to join Patreon for even a dollar 50 per month, it makes all the difference to keeping this project alive. Because it's not just the monetary support that is essential, it's also the emotional support I get from knowing you guys want to keep a project like this going. Every new member is like a high five that says, keep going. And I must confess in the isolation of living on a coffee farm combined with the overwhelming noise of the world, I find myself frequently in emotional valleys where I question if any of this talking into the void actually matters. This feeling can sometimes last for weeks until it's time to hop online For the next office hour session, I created Office Hours as a virtual community for Coffee Nerds, and as a thank you for the Patreon members Office hours, as an opportunity for podcast listeners to ask me questions or to bring up topics for discussion. We do it every other Friday and it's very casual. Sometimes we chat about the most recent podcast episodes where people still have questions about, those topics. For example, I recently released the Naturals episodes and we've had at least two, if not maybe three sessions on Discord, just talking about other things that came up for other people during listening to those episodes. And other times we just chat and hear stories about how Harvest is going in different parts of the world. And if you're listening to this, the week that this episode comes out, our next office hours is Friday, May 30th, and we will be discussing the new coffee value assessment forms from the SEA. The cupping forms that we have been using for 20 years are changing, and that means there's a lot to discuss. Okay. However, the original intent of office hours was to provide coffee producers with some answers and to create a space for group learning. Instead of paying for private consulting, producers could join office hours and we could workshop their issues together for the whole community. So let's get back to today's session and about how to begin your first yeast trial. Many producers find the cost of commercial strains to be a significant investment. One of the most common questions I get is, is it possible to reduce the dosage or otherwise stretch the yeast and make it last longer to reduce the cost? The answer is yes, but it depends on several factors. So in today's episode, you'll hear me walk through two real life scenarios about how to approach this task. We usually hear about processing from the consuming side, like how do buyers or consumers think about fermentation in yeast, or how we should label these coffees for the sake of education or transparency. But what I think is interesting about today's episode is you're gonna hear about processing from the point of view of a producer, what they're struggling with, what questions and concerns they have, things like that. If you're a consumer, I hope this gives you insight into how the people who make your coffee think, and if you're a producer, I hope this gives you a roadmap on how to approach your own trials. In today's episode, we go really deep into the weeds with specifics. This is not a traditional history philosophy. Episode today is all about the nitty gritty about how to reduce your costs and what to consider before stretching your yeast. It was recorded live and I didn't prepare anything in advance.'cause I usually don't have the questions in advance, so you'll notice that I'm even more rambling than normal. It's gonna be a little bit more chaotic. And there's gonna be some tangents in there, but hopefully you can follow the thread. Okay, let's get into the office hours audio. Lin, um, is here because he had a question about ye so I definitely wanna start with that. Lin, can you, am I saying that right? Can you introduce yourself to the group and just give us an idea of where you are in the world? Everything like that? Yeah. Hi. Yes. You say tract, it's Friedline. Yeah. Um, I am in Zambia. I'm a coffee farmer in Zambia. And, uh. We have started the project like four years ago and we started by, we bought a cattle ranch actually, which we turned, or like a left cattle ranch, which was no more used for quite some time, which we turned into a coffee farm and had our first yield last year, um, on a smaller area. And now this year we are going on quite large area into the production. And just finishing up our actual wet mill now. While last year we used some very basic equipment to get through the season, and now we are, like questioning ourselves a bit like what is our, what is the best strategy to, manage to get a very consistent product. Um, we are looking at like, I think. In an international comparison at relatively large quantities. And, uh, yeah, that's where I, um, started looking more into inoculated fermentations and then relatively fast, uh, found your podcast and, uh, started listening and became quite the fan. And yeah, that's how I ended up here. Awesome. And, the reason why you're on today is because you did have a question about yeast and you asked me about pricing. And so I thought we could use a little bit of this time to go go through some protocols, some things that you can do, because I think that, just to catch everybody up, the last, I don't remember if it was the last. Discord or the one, two times before where we had PNO sharing his back slopping and his kind of growing up his own, cultures in, in India and I was mentioning that PNO has a very special circumstance where they have had the farm for a very long time. Multiple generations. They, with his family. So they, they know all of the inputs that are going into the farm as well as having a lot of biodiversity in terms of many other crops. Not just coffee, a lot of shade trees. Like they've been really taking care of the environment for a long time. And so for him to cultivate his microbes makes a lot of sense and he's able to both have, you know, kind of wild native fermentations. That provide him a lot of control. Also, PNO has a science background and, you know, biology background. So he's very well equipped to undertake this in Lin's, situation. It was a previous cattle ranch, so that is very difficult circumstances usually, in terms of, soil compaction, in terms of, you know, maybe not a lot of biodiversity that was found there. So when you're trying to convert a place. I think microbes is a really great starter, and I like to think of using commercial yeast as kind of like training wheels. It's something to help you get started. It's not something that you may need to use forever. It's something if also thinking about that as an investment, meaning that. It, it is a very expensive initial investment, but what you're gaining is a control, the consistency, kind of understanding your fruit understanding, especially with a new project. Maybe you're doing different varieties and you don't really know the potential of them. So thinking about having commercial strains as your training wheels so that you can. Start to do your fermentations, get that consistency, get your customers, and then you can slowly try to wean yourself off, um, and see if by that time, you know, by a couple of harvest or other practices in the field, you've been able to kind of grow your own microbiome, your own, um, microbe diversity. I do also want to say that it's not. The way that these microbes work. It's not like you can buy it once and then kind of grow it up and then it will take over. So again, that's really positive because we know we're not going to, uh, you know, have some invasive species situation where you buy a bag of yeast and then you let it loosen the environment, but it makes it difficult. Then you can't be cheap about it. You can't just, you know, buy it once and have, have it forever. So this question of economics of how do I balance buying these yeast, which my understanding currently I think is like 30 cents per pound for green, like your finished product. So that's about the investment that you're looking at. And I know that for a lot of people, the, the margins are razor thin, 30 cents per kg. Would it be in our case on Ah, okay. Like. Yeah. Okay. So 30 cents per kg, so maybe closer to 15 per pound. And, you know, there's, there's something that we can do. So the question was, how can I reduce those costs? And the easiest way, or I guess not the easiest, but the most accessible way would be to reduce your dosage. So if I add less yeast, then I can stretch it, and that works. To varying degrees of success because it depends on how your fruit is starting. So the point, the way that these yeast work is kind of by dominating the fermentation. So your yeast, your coffee's coming in with all kinds of different microbes. So you've got millions and millions of different yeast and bacteria that are coming in. And when we're inoculating, we're not killing them off. We're just kind of crowding them out. It's just an idea of just completely. Dominating the fermentation with the selected yeast. So you have that consistency. So if you do. Uh, less than full dosage, then you may not get the domination in your fermentation, and then you're not gonna get the consistency. So the benefits will be, you'll probably reduce defects. So it's not like there's no benefit. You'll definitely reduce your defects, you'll definitely clean it up, but you're not gonna get consistency. So if your number one or one of the most important parts of, of using commercial yeast strains is consistency, then messing with your dose too much. Is not gonna give you that. So another option would be, okay, what if we lower the incoming microbial load? Maybe you have like a sanitization step beginning so that you can have less competition. That can also work. But then if the point is cost, now you're adding another step, adding another cost, which can still be cheaper. So it really depends on your resources. If you have, you know, favorite methods, you know, uh, doing a wash with. Ultraviolet water doing, uh, what did we talk about? Hydrogen peroxide. We can do maybe like a citric acid wash just to reduce that microbial load. You can. Get a little bit creative in this sense. So if you can bring down your microbial load, you don't have to add as much yeast and maybe you can stretch your, your purchase a little bit. Again, this is also really imprecise, so you're still kind of guessing and checking like, did I kill enough? Am I adding my, so the whole point of yeast is that you shouldn't have to think about it and that it's kind of like a set it and forget it. So when you try to play with it, you're taking away that ease of use by. Messing with either the dosage or a sanitization step. The way that I like to work is wherever I work, where whatever country I'm in, whatever situation I'm in, I just add my known dosage that the company has deemed, you know, enough to. Outcompete anything that's coming in because I don't wanna mess with starting to, and I only usually have like a week or like 10 days, you know, at a, at a consulting site. So I don't have a whole season to play with this, so that's why I'm saying this is definitely something that you can do. It's just not something that I've done and it's not my first step, but if cost is really a concern, those are the two things. Um. Y lowering your dosage and just kind of giving up that idea of like complete domination and consistency. But you're still gonna get a cleaner coffee. The other option is figuring out how to reduce that microbial load, so sanitizing before you're inoculating with yeast, and then you could maybe reduce your dosage. And the third option is, well, what if I use that liquid for my next fermentation? So I do my fermentation, my coffee comes in on Monday, I wash it on Wednesday. I have new coffee coming in on Wednesday. I can use that same liquid from my Monday wash for my Wednesday coffee. And that, that is the method that I like the most. That's what I personally do, is I use some of the liquid from a previous fermentation for that fermentation, the limit there. So that will, that can reduce your cost in half, right?'cause now you're using the same yeast twice. I like that method because. The yeast have already grown up and I'm able to reuse it. The, the, the limit there is that you need fresh cherry. So if you have your coffee, your coffee comes in on Monday. I, I said Wednesday'cause I like to do like a 36 hour, uh, fermentation. So we're washing our coffee on Wednesday. That fermentation water needs to be used that same day. Because if you store it and you're like, well, I'm gonna save it for tomorrow, for Thursday or Friday or forever, then it starts. It's already changing. It still has. It's like really rich. It's like you've, it's like a truck that's going down the road and it's got a lot of momentum and a lot of energy. So it's going to change if you don't feed it. So feeding it. And then you, then you get into, okay, do I feed it some cane sugar? Do I like do something? So again, the whole point is to make your life easier. And this is a way to get really into the weeds because okay, maybe last time we saved it eight hours and then this time we're saving it one hour. And then last time we fed it cane sugar, but we're gonna feed it this other thing. So you just, it's possible, you just have to keep really good notes about the temperature. Of the fermentation. So if you had something to keep it cold, which, um, I think PNO said that he does, and that's a key, is like being able to cool down your musto. So then you're like, okay, to save 15 cents on yeast, I'm gonna buy a refrigerator and pay electricity so that I can keep my starter cold so that I can apply it. Maybe electricity is really cheap where you are. It really depends. That could be a good option. So it's just something to think about. Um, so that's why I'm saying you can't keep it forever. And the easiest thing is to use it the same day in the morning I wash my coffee, and then in the evening fresh coffee comes and I use my liquid that same day. I don't like to keep it any more than that. So that only means you can't reuse everything all of the time because maybe your coffee comes in on a Saturday, nothing comes in on Sunday. So that one goes, goes to waste. You can only use it once instead of twice. The other thing I wanted to say about that is. Okay, we use it once. Why can't you use it again? Why can't you Monday to Wednesday and then Wednesday to Friday and you have New Cherry on Friday, use it a second time or a third time. And this is because all of those. Competing yeast are still there, right? The, the, the Lamond or the sema, all of these, these commercial yeast, they're not killing anything else. They're just out competing. They're just kind of taking the spots. So as soon as those yeast get tired, as soon as they have enough generations that they're not. You know, being active, all of the other stuff can come back and just, you know, wake up. It's like, you know, it doesn't rain. It doesn't rain. Right now the fields are brown and dry, and as soon as you get a little bit of water, all of that stuff comes back because it's just sitting there dormant waiting to come back. So the longer you use the. Commercial yeast, if you do a second time or a third time, it's, it's dying because it can no longer compete with everything else. And so you start to get drift, so you're not gonna get the consistency. So the whole point again, of the yeast is the consistency and the promise that it will be similar and it will taste the same. When we start playing with reducing the dosage, when we start playing with using it multiple times, you lose that promise. So I'll say, you're never gonna hurt your coffee. It's not gonna be bad. It's just not gonna be what is promised, which is again, why the company has to be really, really strict and say, use it once and only play with this dosage. I'm more relaxed. Um, so you can do some of those things, but obviously the company can't say that because they, they're making it to promise you something. And as soon as you start messing with it. They can't promise you the, the positive results. So after that, what, what are, what are you thinking about? Yeah, no, I think it's both like interesting thoughts for us. I think like the, with like, uh, I mean they could even work in a combination, I guess, but I think with the sterilization or like the sanitation of the coffee. It, it probably adds a bit of additional cost because I heard you saying citric acid or oxygen peroxide. For us, that's products in the quantities we would use them, we would probably need to import them again from South Africa, so they are not super cheap. Um, when they arrive on our farm, whatever, I think like they could be mixed into the water, which we use for washing. So there would be probably not, no need to be like, uh, an additional. Machinery or so, like in the, in the siphon where we, where we separate the floaters and the, and the heavy. Um, but, uh, reusing the water for one step to me makes a lot of sense. I, I have no. No experience with inoculation anyway. I've never done it before, so I have no clue what, how it comes out if we reuse it. I think my question there is more like what, what from your experience would be the, the quantities would you use, like reuse the whole amount of water into the same amount of coffee or, uh, yeah, that's a good question. I just wanna say you're, you're right. Um. It's gonna be an additional cost to get any of those other sanitizing um, options. But the cost of citric acid is much cheaper than the cost of these yeast, right? Like pound per pound or per, like, per kilo. It's, it's much more accessible. So I think that could be a good route for you. Also, the, I was gonna say using it once is what I feel comfortable with, but there's also different levels of coffee, right? Like use it once for your. You know, your first pick, your first selection, your, your, your premium coffee, and then we all have floats. We all have second quality coffee. Use a yeast a third time on your second quality coffee. So I've done that, um, here in Guatemala with, you know, it's our, our second quality kind of the, the less good stuff because again, it's already something that is. Not the top. So using the yeast a third time on that, if it helps it a little bit, it helps clean it up fewer defects, that that can be a way to get a little bit more benefit from the yeast. So use it, you know, the first two times on your first quality and then that third time on something that you care less about, but would still be nice if like, Hey, what if I can get an extra point or two on this, you know, second tier coffee. So what I do. Is, it depends on how much coffee I have. So I usually do,'cause our mill is really small. I have a one in one out. Um, so I'm washing one fermentation and one new one is coming in because we're small. So I just keep it kind of that way. It's not like, oh, I have 10 tanks to do today. Unless I'm doing a trial. So in that case, I do use almost all of it from the first fermentation, all of that liquid into the second one, kind of a one to one. But if you had two tanks that that yeast has been growing for 36 or 48 hours, that yeast is like multiplied a lot. So you can definitely split that and use that. You know, and spread it into two tanks or three tanks, and then just kind of top it up with water.'cause one of the keys of the method that I recommend is having your fermentation submerged, so that you have for, okay, we're talking about wash coffees. Um. Having your fermentation completely submerged so that you can mix it and get all of that liquid to like touch all of the coffee.'cause if you do the traditional method where we just pulp and it goes dry into a tank and then you just put the yeast on top, the yeast can't move everywhere. It's only gonna be on that little top layer and the rest of your coffee mass is not gonna be able to have access to it. So one method that some people have kind of, um. Used as as getting around that is having like a sprayer so that as your tank is filling, you're like spraying it and it can fill at the same time. I think that's clever. Um, it's, it's just not as consistent as having the submerged method and being able to mix it, because then again, when you have the dry, like obviously there's still some moisture. It's very. Goopy and, and you, the mucilage is kind of runny, so it's not completely dry, but you will get drier pockets, right? The liquid will fall to the bottom and the bottom will be very wet, and it'll be a different environment, different temperature than the coffee that's sitting on top, depending on if it's a five tons or 10 tons. You know? Here we have very large tanks, so. The water will help you do that. So you don't need to completely use your yeast water from the first fermentation to cover the second one. You can again, use a certain percentage and you can also play with that. You can say, I do one fermentation once on Monday when I'm washing on Wednesday, I have three tanks coming in. You split it into three parts and see how that works.'cause then you'll, you'll have to, you have to have the opportunity to cup your coffee, to roast it and cup it and say, okay, these two taste. Similar enough. Otherwise there's no, there's no way to know until the very end. Yeah. Makes a lot of sense. The question which I was also wondering about is, uh, when, um, when do I take it out, for example, is it really the best idea to wait for the fermentation of the first time to come to an end? I, I have a, I'm processing coffee every day. Um, so I was thinking also would it make, I. More sense to take a bit of water out basically after the first day for the next tank, and then refill both tanks with water when you get the fermentation in both tanks to continue, or does it make more sense to basically wait like until um, the first fermentation is ready for washing and then reuse that water for the next fermentation? That's a great question and no one has ever asked if they can take the water out beforehand. That's a great question. Okay, so the short answer is yes, but I wouldn't recommend it to you. I don't do that. And the reason I don't do that is because I'm following this fermentation the whole. Way. So a part of the protocol is just following your pH, what is my starting pH? What is it after 12 hours? What is it after 24? To make sure that it's going in one direction, to make sure that it's going down, that it's acidifying, and to make sure that the mussel is coming off and that my fermentation is healthy. If you take out a percentage of your liquid to a, to add to a different, you know, fresh fermentation. You, depending on how much you take, again, you can be exposing some of that liquid and you don't have your homogenous environment. And then if you refill with just water to cover it, then again you're changing your pH so you've lost your data.'cause now you're gonna have more of the pH of the water that's backup at six. So what you gain with the efficiency of stretching the yeast you lose with your data. Then your data doesn't make any more sense and it's not useful to be able to reproduce. So what I would recommend is the first time you do it the first year, give yourself one season of doing it this way. Wait until the end of the fermentation so you have your data so that you know what a good fermentation smells like, what it looks like, and what your numbers are around give. Get that baseline next year. Yeah, you can experiment with that next year. You can try it before the fermentation is over so that you have that to compare it to, to say, wow, it actually didn't really make a big difference because I know what it should be. So it didn't make a big difference when you compare it. But if you start there, you have no baseline. Right? You, you don't know what you're comparing it to. So I'm not saying you can't do it, but don't start there like that's, you have to, that's like a level. Two thing, and we have to first have our, our first level. I have a question if I can piggyback on Yes, of course. On his, so, because I'm. I haven't even had my first harvest yet. Planning for it next year. And I'm also wondering about that baseline and whether I should definitely not try any fermentation process.'cause I don't know what my. You know, quality is going to be how much, and you know, I don't have any baseline. I don't have any data. So should I collect that that first year before even trying to experiment with different protocols and fermentation and everything else? Hmm. Christine, can you give us a background on where you are? Give the group an introduction. Um, so, okay. Right now I'm in the US but my small farm is in Kenya. And technically, I guess maybe even a micro lot'cause I have a thousand, about 1,700 trees, and I planted them in April last year. So I haven't harvested yet, but I was there a couple of weeks ago. And they're doing fine. And, uh, there are a couple of bushes that I had planted earlier about a, a year and a half previous to the rest. And, you know, I went this time and, you know, they're full of cherries and everything looks good. So I'm pretty hopeful. And it's in a coffee growing area. It used to be a coffee farm until 50 years ago. So I'm sort of bringing it back, but I'm trying to regenerate the soil as well. So I've been putting a lot of good manure and other, um, products as well. This is a, a really great question because we're talking about starting slow so that you know, kind of where you're standing before you get too experimental. However, in your case, I would say the opposite. I would say there's no reason to. Weight with yeast because it's not an all or nothing. Like, yes, you are getting to know your varieties and you're getting to know your farm, and you're getting to know your coffee, but alongside that, you can start to do some yeast trials. So I, the, the recommendation would be, it's not all or nothing. It's not like I don't use yeast for a whole year, or I use yeast on everything the first year. Right. You can do a handful of trials. Do small trials, do you know 20% of your production? Maybe 50%, half and half? And see what wild native microbes you have and what they taste like because that's, that's the option. They could be great and maybe you don't need yeast or with Lin, it was a previous cattle ranch, so there may not be the tastiest microbes there to inoculate his coffee. So he, he doesn't need to wait. He should be trying to like up that. Microbial richness as soon as possible for you. We don't know. So there's no harm in doing a, you know, starting now with some, and definitely getting to know what the native microbes are bringing as well. I'm having a bit of another question. Yeah. Um, to the, uh, in the same range, to the, like, when I started discussing with like, I mean, I, I wrote to different companies, uh, the one which. Replied the quickest was Lamont. And it was also the first one, which I found obviously when looking into the topic. Um, I think they're the longest in, in that business. Mm-hmm. And then we had an initial discussion and they obviously, um, listened a bit to what we, what we tried to do. And then they recommended us some of their least strains, which was I think SEMA oral and uh, intens. And Enzo. And then when I first complained that I found the price is relatively high, then they started speaking about other product ranges as well. Um, which one is something like basic, I think, and then yeah. One. They mentioned this new, uh, initio or something, I don't remember. Um, but is there, like my strategy was initially saying, okay, I take like this three, which they initially recommended, and I do two different fermentation times with all three. To get a bit like an understanding how they influence my coffee, and I wanted to combine two of them also with, uh, lactic acid bacteria. So I had already five different, uh, inoculations with two, um, different fermentation times just to get a bit of an understanding like what these products do with my coffee. Now they start speaking about more, more products. I thought, ah, well let's keep it, but what's your take on these different products? Are there products which are more worse to try? Are there products which are less worse? Yeah, so it it, so other products, so, and maybe a little bit confusing because there's a lot of different strains of yeast, a lot of types of yeast. So the, the main. Series that La Lamont has started with is a, is a CROs yeast. So the Nten, the Oro, and the Basic as well, and sema, all of those are CROs. So those are not that different from each other. It's like having, I'm coming up with this analogy on the spot, so it may not be the best, but we're going for it. It's kind of like having all citrus. It's like you, you have a lemon, you have an orange, and you have, uh, what's another citrus, a lime and you have a grapefruit. Versus having something like a banana and a, I don't know, an apple, like they're, they're in the same family. So of course a lime and a grapefruit are very different, but they're still like, the band of difference is much shorter than if you have a pineapple and a blueberry. And these are not the flavors that you can get from them. It's just a fruit analogy of like the category. So the other option would then be a bacteria. So there's yeast and there's bacteria. So lacto acid, bacteria, lactobacillus, that's a really popular one, and I use that one as well. And that one, now we're getting into a completely different, you know, species. So now we have a lot of difference. And then there's other things that are not. Actives like enzymes. Enzymes are another additive that you can use to either speed up reactions to help remove the mage that can make some of the yeast more effective. It's kinda like a little booster for the yeast. So yeah, you, you can get really. Complicated. Another thing that you could try and that some people have tried are nutrients. Because the yeast, if you're doing longer extended fermentations, adding, you know, like a nitrogen source, you have to feed your microbes away. We feed our plants, we add fertilizer to our plants to grow, you gotta feed the microbes. Usually coffee fermentations are so short that the companies, the yeast companies haven't fed that. But if you do a wine fermentation, a beer fermentation, anything that's extended, you never do that without also adding food, without adding a nitrogen source and like ammonia and all those other compounds. Um, it would just be a suicide. Like you would never do that with coffee. They're like, oh, it's only 12 hours, 24, it's fine. Whereas wine is like. Three weeks. So they definitely need it. But some people are doing four days, five days, six days, like they're doing very long coffee fermentations. And at that point, yes, you need to feed the yeast. So the question is what's worth it and are some things more worth it than other things and where to start. So for you. Because, because La Lamont has a line of three or four different yeasts, the temptation is to try all of them. But I wouldn't do that for with you. I think you have a lot of new things happening right now, right? You, you're getting to know your farm. You have a lot of choices to make. The point of the yeast is this should be the easiest choice. This is the thing. Like I said, I like to use it as a set it and forget it. So I would pick one like right now if you want to, but again. Because then you're doing more data. I don't think the the differences are gonna be as dramatic, and you may feel a little bit discouraged. At least this is the pattern that I've seen where you're making a big investment, you're getting all of these things shipped to you, and you have all these trials, and you're trying to keep track of all your phs and all your temperatures and all your hours, and you've got all of this like noise of data. And then now you have to cup all of these samples. And you could also be doing drying trials at the same time. So even with one. With one. Oh, could we show the, the slide where we, when one decision and then it balloons? It's in our, it's in the presentation. I think Nick is gonna try and find that so we can share it up on the screen. But I have a graphic where it's like, you think you're making one decision, like I'm gonna use this one yeast, but there's so many ways that you can. Um, so many permutations of that one choice. That one choice ends up being like 12. You can have 12 different trials with one different thing, so. For you. My recommendation is try one maximum two. If you're really ambitious, because you still, like you said, you've never done an inoculation, you don't know how it's gonna go. We don't have a workflow yet. You don't know where you're gonna store them, how easy it's gonna be to rehydrate them. Like first we gotta like lay those tracks, that pathway of how do I even do this? Who's gonna do it? How much time is it gonna take? Is it worth the extra? Maybe it's two hours, maybe it's 30 minutes, like getting your workflow. Because a lot of times, like you get really excited and you have to do 10, and then they expire and you don't get around to it, and then it has to be next year anyway. So my recommendation is always start slow. Do way less than you think you wanna do, like whatever you're thinking, cut it by, you know, cut it more than in half. So I would just do one yeast and play with time because. You're gonna have all of your control. Like you're still gonna be able to see what your coffee, like, what your coffee baseline is. And let's just start there. Let's just make sure that the drying protocols are good. Make sure that you know how to rehydrate the yeast. Make sure that you have something that's easy and reproducible.'cause the thing that, that I find the most discouraging or challenging is what if you get the best coffee you love and it's an amazing coffee and. It's such a pain in the ass to make and you never wanna make it again. And now it's like this unicorn that you can't reach. That's really frustrating. So in the chat, Nick has shared, uh, a graphic that I share in, in some of my, uh, fermentation training camps. And every single step is a. A decision that will change something. So if you, if you see it, I dunno if you can open the chat. We have your cherry'cause you can do a trial in Parchment. So puled coffee, wash coffee, or you can do it in the cherry. So that's your first decision. That alone is, you know, two different trials, then your fermentation. Okay, let's say we choose sema, then you can do three different iterations. We can do it for 24 hours, 36 hours, or 48 hours. That's still just one yeast. And then you can do a drying trial. Am I gonna dry it on the patio or raise beds or, uh, you know, mechanically dried versus. Uh, sun dried. So this one yeast allows you to do two for six different iterations. And if you do it all of this in Cherry and all of this in Parchment, then now we've got 12. So the point of kind of this schematic is to say, I'm gonna choose one line. So when you taste all of these. All of these, um, trials at the end of the season, and let's say we liked the parchment with SEMA at 36 hours on raised beds. Now you can start it like, it gives you a direction of, I know I like this kind of baseline, I know I like this direction. And if you wanna play with it, at least you have kind of like your. You're North Star. Now, I'm gonna maybe not go to 96 hours, but maybe 40 is a little bit better than 48. Maybe there's something there. So it takes all of your possibilities and just kind of narrows them down so that you're not going crazy with all of these different iterations. So do less, don't get all of the yeast. Don't mess with bacteria yet. Like just try one thing. Don't worry about nutrition. Don't worry about enzymes. Yeah. All right, and we're back. Sorry about how abruptly the audio ends since it's a live session and the questions are totally random. There are not, nice transitions between topics usually. We'll, then go to talk about our favorite grinder or how we're making coffee or something like that. I hope this helped you consider the main points of fermentation microbe competition, what effect you want to achieve with yeast in terms of consistency and flavor development. And I think my takeaway, like my biggest advice in general is usually to start slow, to pick fewer variables so that you can keep track of the data. I find myself frequently telling producers to have a less ambitious starting project, do less than they think that they wanna do, at least for the first year, because that way when you have. Fewer trials, you can better keep track of the data because it's surprising how much data can be produced when you're doing this. And if you're not following your data, then you don't know what was successful. Then again, it makes it hard to replicate. And then that's when producers find themselves in these spirals of constantly doing new trials and not really feeling like they're going anywhere. Kinda just treading water, not knowing what was the most, uh, successful of. There's trials or if it was successful, not really knowing the key that made that trial successful. I've also included a link in the show notes of the graphic that we talk about in that audio about how one variable, like changing one thing, like using SEMA yeast can quickly become 12 different trials by just tweaking a couple of things. So you don't have to buy 12 different yeast to have 12 different trials. You can have one yeast and. Slightly change things like temperature or, the length of the time or how you're drying it, and that can give you a whole mess of options.

lucia: 42:08

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