Very Good Coffee

Depending on the specific variety, it takes approximately 3-4 years for newly planted coffee bushes to bear fruit. The fruit, commonly termed cherries, depending on the degree of ripeness, turn from green to bright or dark red – the unripe ones being green in color. Cherries ripen faster under lower altitudes and higher temperatures. Coffee can be hand-harvested by people to ensure that only the ripe cherries are picked. Hand-picking is a hard and labor intensive process where people need to carefully check cherries for ripeness and, naturally, it involves paid labor. Cherries mature at different periods and up to three pickings are needed to clear a farm. In countries such as Brazil where land is flat and coffee is grown on large farms, cherries are machine harvested. Whether by machines or humans, coffee is always harvested by one of the following two methods:

Strip picking – The cherries are stripped off of the branch, either by hand or by machine
Selective picking – The red cherries are picked and the green ones are left to ripen. Picking is carried out at 10 day intervals. Since this method is labor intensive, it is mainly used to harvest the high quality Arabic coffee.

In most regions there is one major harvest season in a year. However in several countries, such as Kenya and Colombia, there are two harvesting seasons; a main and a secondary crop. The coffee harvested at the beginning and end of the season has a poorly developed flavor, while the pick from the middle of the season has the best flavor. Good roasters buy their coffee during mid-season. Gachatha Coffee Factory in Nyeri Country, Kenya was voted as the producer of the best quality coffee in 2015.

After harvesting, cherries are processed as soon as possible to avoid spoilage. Depending on available resources and location, one of the following two methods is used.

The dry method

This is the ancient method of processing cherries and is still popular in regions where water is scarce. This method is also known as ‘unwashed’ or ‘natural’ processing. Most people who own small-scale farms use the dry method. The fresh cherries are spread out on a large surface and left to dry in the sun for 15 to 20 days. They are usually put on drying beds slightly raised from the ground, to ensure air circulation around the berries. They are regularly turned and raked throughout the day to avoid fermentation and to ensure they dry evenly. The berries are then covered at night to keep them from absorbing moisture. Depending mainly on the weather conditions, the drying process may take several weeks for each individual picking run, until picked cherries have a moisture content of less than 11%. At this stage, the outer layer will have dried up and turned black and brittle. The drying makes it relatively easy to remove the outer skin.
The wet method

This method is a relatively new way of removing the skin from coffee cherries. It’s called ‘wet’ because it uses water to both move the coffee fruit through the process and to extract the beans. The wet method involves cleaning the cherries and removing unripe and overripe cherries; just as in the first method. The cherries are then put through a pulping machine that squeezes out the skin without damaging the beans. This is made possible by the fact that coffee beans are relatively hard. If some berries are still left with the pulp on, they are not ripe enough.

These beans are hand sorted and are used to produce lower quality coffee. Coffee pulping leaves mucilage, which is then put into large tanks with enzymes being added to help get rid of the sticky substance. Beans are put in large tanks and stirred often to ensure all the mucilage is dissolved. The entire process takes approximately 24 hours. It’s important to remove all the mucilage to ensure beans are left with the flavor that was developed prior to this processing. After it has dissolved the beans are washed repeatedly to remove any leftover stickiness. The naked coffee beans are then dried in the sun for a day or two. It is worth noting that drying can also be mechanized. At this point the coffee beans leave the processing area and are sorted into different grades. The dry beans are called parchment coffee.
Coffee milling process

Before being taken to the market, the dried coffee beans are processed as follows: Hulling: Hulling parchment coffee involves removing the dried husk; exocarp, mesocarp and endocarp. Polishing: Coffee polishing is an optional step that is skipped by some millers. It involves getting rid of any sliver skin that may have found its way through hulling. Polished beans are considered to be of a higher quality than unpolished ones.

However, in terms of content, there is little difference. Grading: The beans are then sorted and graded based on size and weight. The polished beans are also checked for color inconsistencies and other flaws with human hands being used to remove any flawed beans. The process is painstaking and can take several hours. A better method is sorting them pneumatically using an air jet to separate the light from the heavy beans. The beans are sized by putting them through a series of screens with holes that only allow a certain size of beans to pass through. The sizing takes place on a scale of one to ten. At the end of the milling process, only the finest beans are packaged for sale to the high-end markets. In some countries the lower quality beans are not discarded; instead they are taken for processing and sold as low-quality coffee.