Touring Café Rey

Our friends Alex & Adri invited us to visit them in San Jose and join them for a surprise birthday party (with karaoke!) at their home. This was an invitation we wouldn't pass up!

We decided to try out the bus service to San José, instead of renting a car from Thrifty. We took the non-stop bus from Puntarenas (Directo). The buses are modern and certainly the equal of buses in the 'States. The only thing I wasn't pleased with was the 11" spacing between the seats. Being a little on the tall side, my legs spent the journey in the center aisle of the bus! I was amazed to see the bus driver passing long lines of semi trucks uphill on a twisty mountain road in a bus. It might have been better had I not seen... Not surprisingly, we arrived in San Jose ahead of schedule.

We were greeted at the bus terminal by Eduardo and taken to Alex's office at Café Rey. Café Rey is one of the largest coffee roasters in Costa Rica. Established by Alex's father, Café Rey continues the family tradition, roasting Costa Rican coffee only.

Café Rey translates to "King Coffee" in English, so it shouldn't have come as a surprise that the factory looks like castle. Arriving at the factory, when we stepped from the car, we were greeted by the delicious aroma of roasting coffee. Alex showed us into his office, and after a brief discussion, we were off for a tour of the extensive facility.

Coffee is roasted in giant roasting machines, processing 1000 pounds of coffee in each batch! Specialty and single origin coffees are roasted in small batches in special machines.

Café Rey produces a style of coffee only found in Costa Rica and in Spain. In this style of coffee, beans are roasted and then covered with caramelized sugar. The sugar is added after the beans are already roasted and cooked just until the moment it is completely turned to caramel. The caramel-coated beans are then upended into a special (giant) cooling drum to arrest the cooking process. To clean the drum, the workers band on it with rubber mallets! Sugar-coated coffee, called tradicional here, isn't sweet at all. It's smoky and rich and a little bitter. Ticos like the sugar coated coffee, and this is the "local brew".

Alex told us stories of when the roasting machines were all wood fired, and they used to explode like bombs when something went wrong. This was a far cry from the precisely controlled operation we saw! One thing that is still the same is that every batch is controlled by a master roaster. When the coffee is nearing completion of the roasting process, the master roaster is sampling the coffee every few seconds. At just the right moment, the coffee is sent to cool. Every batch of coffee is slightly different!