Neil Coleman is a man of many hobbies.
The semi-retired Tararu man is a self-published author; a coffee grower; a part time EAP (employee assistance programme) councillor. His back garden houses a variety of exotic cooking plants including curry and kaffir lime trees, lemongrass, yacon, and different types of bananas. It also sports a six-year-old coffee plant.
Neil has been experimenting with the fruit of the coffee tree for a while, and chronicling his efforts on social media.
“I’d go past and be munching away [on the berries], and I thought, I wonder if I can do something with that,” he said.
“So I picked them all and got a big container, maybe a kilo… I’d sit out there and squeeze the beans out from the cherry, and I’d put the cherry skin in one container and the beans were all slimy in the other.”
Some research and experimentation later, Neil had worked out a process of washing and drying the beans over a number of weeks.
Roasting was another learning curve, and it took three years for Neil to get the beans to a state he was happy with.
“You can do it in a very heavy frypan but you’ve got to watch it… you’re waiting for a cracking sound, and they start changing colour unevenly,” Neil said.
“I did it until I thought they were dark enough but they weren’t… it was still okay, it would have been as good as an instant coffee.”
Now, Neil uses a rotisserie air frying machine to roast his beans.
“The whole house filled with smoke. It was very dark and I thought I burnt it,” he said of his first time using the machine.
“But I put them in the coffee grinder on a fine espresso setting… I got the milk froth in and I thought, oh, this is good.”
Neil also keeps the discarded fruit skins, which he dries and steeps in hot water to make cascara or coffee cherry tea.
The tea and coffee come in handy when Neil has writing to do. He’s a self-published author; his latest novel, Voices in the Mist, was released earlier this year. It’s his sixth book, and it’s set in two different time periods in Thames.
“It’s got a rainbow theme. Split over two generations, a gold-rushing period and post-Covid.”
Neil was inspired to write the story after taking a walk alongside the river.
“It was on a misty day and of course there was grey warblers going… it sounded like a flute and I shivered,” he said.
“I somehow wove that into the story – this [spirit] woman appears all the time to all the characters in both places but then disappears.”
Writing is a hobby Neil shares with his household – his housemate has also released a book, Quest for the Lumenstone, under the name S Mario.
“The way he writes is a fantasy, full of hope, friendship and riddles,” Neil said.
“Whereas mine is more chatty – there’s quite a bit of foodie stuff in mine, but there’s always a kind of a story going through, kind of therapeutic.
“I love writing because it keeps the brain going. And I’ve got stories. Everywhere I look, there’s a story.”
DETAILS: Voices in the Mist is available at Carson’s Bookshop; and online at amazon.com.au along with Quest for the Lumenstone.
