Don Jesús Ortega, who is 84, carried this coffee pulper down himself, over about 4 kilometers, with a strap across his forehead. The farm on Guatemala’s south coast where it stood has no road access, so there was no other way.
It is a 1941 Bentall, hand-operated, made of cast iron. It now works at Finca Linda Morena in Antigua Guatemala, fitted with an electric motor. This is how it got here and what we did with it.
A gift from don Jesús Ortega
Don Jesús Ortega, who is 84, was the keeper of the machine. It had been forgotten on the farm for years. He could have left it there. He chose to give it away so that someone else could become part of its story.
The trouble was the route. From where it stood, the distance was about 4 kilometers, with no access road. Don Jesús loaded it onto a mecapal and brought it down himself.
If you have not met the word: a mecapal is a carrying strap that rests on the forehead and spreads the load across the back. It is a traditional way of hauling things in Guatemala. People carry firewood, coffee and, in this case, a cast-iron machine with it.
It arrived in very poor condition. Because of its history and the effort it took to bring it down, we decided not to leave it behind and started a restoration project.
What a Bentall is
Bentall was an English maker of farm machinery. According to the sources we checked, the business goes back to 1805 with William Bentall in Heybridge, Essex, and by 1961 its range included coffee and rice plantation machinery. The firm later became Bentall Simplex, and the Heybridge factory closed in the mid-1980s.
From what we know of this type of machine, they were built in cast iron, with a precision drum or discs and adjustable plates, designed to free the bean from the cherry without damaging the parchment. Collectors, restorers and small mills still look for them.
What a pulper does
A ripe coffee cherry has skin, pulp and, inside, the bean wrapped in mucilage and parchment. The pulper strips off the skin and pulp and lets the bean through in its parchment. At a wet mill, the plant where coffee is processed after harvest, it is the first mechanical step.
Everything hinges on a calibrated gap between a moving part and a fixed plate. Set it too tight and beans get marked or broken. Set it too wide and unpulped fruit slips through.
Why it shows up in the cup
A bean damaged at this stage carries on into fermentation, drying and roasting, and nothing fixes it there. Whoever runs a pulper checks that the cherries arrive ripe and even, that the gap is calibrated, that no stones or twigs get in, and that the machine is cleaned afterward so no residue ferments on it.
What happens after pulping also shapes the flavor. We cover that in natural vs washed coffee.
When it is used and when it is not
The pulper belongs to washed and honey processing. With a natural coffee the cherry is dried whole and never goes through it. In a washed coffee, the pulped bean ferments to loosen the mucilage, then gets washed and dried. In a honey process, part of the mucilage stays on the bean before drying. That is why the machine matters more for some cup profiles than for others.
Cast iron is heavy and stiff, and that stiffness helps the gap between the parts hold steady while the machine works. It is one reason these machines still interest people who restore them.
What we kept and what we changed
We restored it keeping about 98% of the original parts. The iron from 1941 is still the iron from 1941.
A manual machine delivers whatever the arm of the person running it can deliver. To raise capacity, we adapted it like this:
- A three-phase motor in place of hand operation.
- A frame to hold the whole assembly.
- A screw conveyor to move the material.
- A circular, rotating screen that works like a rotary sorter and separates the beans that are still unpulped.
A motor keeps a steady pace, and a person gets tired. That is the practical reason for the change. We are not publishing capacity figures in this article.
Why we did not buy a new one
Commercial options exist, and we respect the people who use them. We picked a machine that others had already walked. In every bean that passes through it, we want don Jesús’s effort to carry on as a legacy.
If you want to taste the farm’s coffee, it is in the store. And if labels puzzle you, we wrote a guide on how to read a specialty coffee bag.
Frequently asked questions
What does a coffee pulper do?
It removes the skin and pulp from a ripe coffee cherry and leaves the bean in its parchment. It is the first mechanical step at a wet mill.
What is a mecapal?
A carrying strap that rests on the forehead and spreads the weight across the back. It is a traditional way of carrying loads in Guatemala.
What changed when you restored the Bentall pulper?
We kept about 98% of the original parts. We added a three-phase motor, a frame, a screw conveyor and a circular screen to raise capacity.
Can a 1941 pulper be used for specialty coffee?
The age of the machine matters less than its calibration, its cleanliness and the care of the person running it. That is why we restored it with the original parts and adjusted it on those terms.
