Pulping with the Morovis

We hadn't been out picking for a couple of days, so when we did go out this morning we brought back about four gallons of cherries. Ideally, you want to pulp them no longer than three hours after picking, because they start to ferment instantly, and that degrades the taste if you can taste the difference. Which I can't. But we still pulp immediately after coming back.

We use this antique Morovis disk pulper which we have on loan from our friends up the hill. Morovis pulpers were originally built in the town of Morovis, then for many years by Maquinaria Cafetalera, Inc. in Bayamón. That company officially went out of business in 2014, although hadn't filed an annual report since at least 2009, as far back as digital records go.

The disk pulper was actually originally invented in Puerto Rico, you see, and was patented in 1964 by Juan Rivera, of Bayamón (US Patent 139,919). It's pretty unfortunate that Rivera patented the thing just as the Puerto Rican government was de-emphasizing agriculture, but them's the breaks. There are a few thousand of these antiques around the island, mostly sitting in people's back yards looking picturesque, evoking the coffee days of yore.

And then there's the one we're using, which works perfectly despite never being maintained. You just pour your coffee into the hopper on top, crank the wheel for a while, and the coffee beans come out one side and the pulp falls through  underneath. The pulp is fantastic garden mulch.

Then you leave your beans in water overnight so the mucilage ferments. Makes them much easier to wash.