THE COFFEE PLANTATION
breaks the outside pod and frees the beans. Long tubes, called "dryers," now receive the beans, still wet, and with their skins still on them. In these dryers the beans are continually agitated in hot air.
Coffee is very delicate. It must be handled delicately. Therefore the dried beans are lifted by the cups of an endless-chain elevator to a height, whence they slide down an inclined trough to another building because of the danger of fire. This is the coffee machine house.
The first machine is a ventilator, in which sieves, shaken back and forth, are so combined that only the coffee beans can pass through them. No coffee is lost in them and no dirt is kept by them, for one little stone or stick that may still have been carried with the beans would be enough to break the next machine.
Another endless-chain elevator carries the beans to a height, whence they fall through an inclined trough into this descascador or "skinner." It is a highly delicate machine; if the spaces between are a trifle too big the coffee passes without being skinned, while if they are too small they break the beans.
Another elevator carries the skinned beans with
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