Excellent Coffee

When it comes to the coffee harvest, the coffee trees need heavy rain at the beginning of the season while their fruit develops. As the season continues, the coffee trees needed less rain as they ripen. The coffee harvesting season can extend from three weeks to three months, and in some locations, this harvest will be a year-round process.

Coffee will normally be hand-picked when the fruit is ripe, which offers the advantage of selective picking. This means that only fruit that is ripe will be hand-picked because a tree can have ripe and unripe berries growing at the same time.

Often times, one crop will be have to be hand-picked many times, which causes the coffee harvesting process to be quite labor intensive. The fruit on the coffee tree is normally called a coffee berry or cherry, and when it is opened up, there are two coffee beans inside. Once the coffee beans have been handpicked, there are two different choices available to the farmer in processing the coffee fruit.

The first method available to the farmer is wet processing, which is popular in Africa and Central America. This is where the flesh of the coffee fruit is removed from the seeds inside, and the coffee beans are soaked in water for up to 48 hours to ferment. This will help any residue or pulp on the beans to completely dissolve so that they can be washed and dried out. Many farmers will also use an open air method where the coffee beans are dried in the sun, which is preferable because it provides a better and more authentic flavor than the use of a commercial drying machine.

The second method used for drying the coffee beans is simple and inexpensive, which is why it is frequently chosen for lower quality bean varieties. When the beans are dried, debris and twigs are removed from the coffee fruit, and the berries will be laid out in the sun for up to three weeks at a time. This is a process that requires constant care, and the beans have to be turned regularly to dry evenly. After the beans are dried completely, the dried pulp will be removed from the beans for the final product.

After a coffee tree has been planted, it will normally begin to flower within four years, and it will be ready to be harvested after five years of total growth. Normally, the coffee fruit will begin to ripen eight months after the tree flowers, and they will turn red to signify that they are ripe. This is the beginning of the harvesting season, and in coffee producing countries, there will normally be one harvest per year.

Colombian coffee farmers actually do have an advantage because coffee trees in Colombia flower twice a year, so there are two harvest seasons available to them.

Brazil is a country that has a flat landscape full of coffee fields, which affords them the opportunity to use machines to harvest their coffee crops. This makes it a more streamlined and less difficult process than handpicking. However, when it comes to coffee harvesting, there are normally two methods available.

The first choice would be strip picked coffee, which allows the coffee crop to be harvested all at once. This can be done through the use of a machine or handpicking, but it will remove all coffee fruit from the trees in one process.

In the second method, selective picking is used to handpick individual ripe berries and leave the unripe berries on the tree. This involves the handpickers combing through the trees every 10 days to choose ripe coffee fruit. This is a costly and labor-intensive process, but it is often employed for higher quality gourmet Arabica beans to ensure consistency in their quality.

As an example, coffee picked in Guatemala is harvested by hand, and the workers are paid by the basketful. As of 2009, laborers are paid anywhere from US$2-US$10, with many workers being paid on the lower end of the scale. A skilled coffee laborer can harvest up to seven baskets in one day, which still results in a low payment for the worker.

Depending on the coffee plantation, coffee harvesters may be instructed not to handpick any green coffee fruit because the seeds will not be fully matured within the fruit. This is normally only a standard used for higher quality gourmet beans, where the workers will also be paid a higher wage for their labors.

If a cheaper coffee is being mass produced, green and red berries will be mixed together, resulting in the roasting of unripe beans. This will leave a sharp or astringent taste in the roast product, which is often likened to the taste of grass. Red berries are preferable because they are full of essential oils and a lower acid content, and they offer delicious and fragrant aromas to the roast with a smooth and mellow finish. There is a dramatic difference between the taste of green and red berries, which is why gourmet coffee is often more expensive and of a higher class.

This only underscores how important coffee picking is in the coffee harvesting process because it is the direct determining factor of the quality of the final product in the coffee roast.

When coffee beans are wet processed, all of the fruit in the coffee beans will be removed before the beans are dried. When coffee is wet processed, it is often called washed coffee. This is again a process used for more gourmet and high-end coffee beans because it does call for the use of specialized equipment and large amounts of water, which is often not available in some coffee producing regions.

95% of Arabica coffee exported from Brazil is harvested with the dry method, as well as coffee produced in Haiti, Ethiopia, and Paraguay. Almost all types of Robusta coffee are also processed using the dry method, but it is not a method that is suitable for wetter regions. Since the coffee will be dried outdoors, the drying process can be dramatically altered if the coffee beans are rained on when they are drying. This is also not a method that is used in areas with high humidity or large amounts of rain in the harvest season.

Once the coffee beans have been dried, the outer layers of dry skin and residue need to be cleaned and removed from the beans. This is called the dried milling process, and if it takes place before wet processing, it is called wet milling.

From there, the beans will be sorted by their density and size through a large machine. This machine has the capability to remove rocks, nails, sticks, and debris that can often be mixed in with the coffee beans in the drying process. The machine works by blowing the beans into the air, and the denser beans are selected as those that fall the closest to the air that is blowing. This will also blow away chaff and skin from the beans easily.

After that, the beans will be sorted by their size to remove the heaviest beans from the lightest beans. As a rule of thumb, heavier and denser beans are preferable because they have matured more fully to provide a greater flavor and taste.

Another important component of the sorting process is to sort the beans by color. This is the final step of cleaning the beans, and it is often referred to as color sorting. This allows the opportunity to remove defective beans from the quality beans based on their color, as opposed to size or density. This is a more difficult portion of the sorting process, and potentially the most important in determining the caliber of the coffee product.

This is a process that is done by hand, which allows for all defective beans to be removed. The finest gourmet coffees will be double picked or often triple picked in a method called European preparation. This ensures ultimate superiority in the coffee product by the method in which it was cleaned and sorted.

Coffee beans are also categorized through grading, which is a classification based on the bean size, what altitude it was grown in, how it was harvested, taste, and brew quality.

Some coffee beans can also be graded based on their imperfections, like if they include pebbles, beans, or sticks within the coffee product. To be able to choose the best coffee bean available, it is important for coffee to be grown in strict standards with a high grading criteria. This will create a more superior product that will sell for a higher price