Bean grinding

Today I observed a quality improvement exercise at the local health centre. A regional public health officer went around the centre, with a checklist, looking at all kinds of measures which might affect health outcomes.

So we ended up in the coffee room of the cleaning staff. There was an open charcoal fire in the room, and coffee beans were being roasted. I was allowed to mash the beans with a small mortar and pestle. The mortar was a hollowed tree trunk and the pestle was a piece of rebar. After improving my grinding job coffee was made, which was quite good, as usual. There wasn't any comment about the advisability of having an indoor charcoal fire!