Harvest
After planting the coffee trees, you have to wait patiently from 2 to 5 years until the coffee beans bring fruit and the first harvest can be celebrated! The largest harvest comes from eight-year-old trees.
It takes 6-8 months for dark green fruits to get ripen and become bright red. Coffee cherries are ripe only when they become dark red. During the harvest year this takes more than 2 months.
Approximately 2000 fruits per year are collected from each shrub. About 500 g of beans are produced from 2000 fruits every year. The grower gets 500 to 800 kg of crop from one well-maintained field.
Each coffee country has its own harvest calendar. In some countries, for example in Colombia, coffee is harvested twice.
HARVESTING TECHNIQUES
Hand picking is the oldest and most difficult harvesting of the coffee. Coffee is harvested manually in mountainous areas or on small farms. Only ripe coffee berries are picked. Pickers come back to each tree for 10 times to collect the abundant harvest!
Harvesting by hand, swapping the cherries from the tree together with leaves and twigs.
Mechanical coffee harvesting. On large farms, coffee is collected mechanically with special machines. With the help of vibrating ropes, the coffee cherries are shaken off into a trailer moving afterwards.
Processing of coffee cherries
The cherries harvested from the plantations are brought in for sorting and processing.
The berries are sorted by weight in the water – the poor quality berries will float on the surface and ripe berries will sink.
Main manufacturing methods
A natural way to process coffee cherries
The natural or dry method of processing the coffee cherries is the oldest, the simplest and requires virtually no equipment. During the process, the whole coffee cherry is dried.
This treatment method consists of 3 steps:
1. Cleaning. First of all, the collected coffee cherries are sorted and cleaned, separating unripen, overripen or defective cherries. Dirt, pebbles, twigs, a leaves are removed. This is done with a large sieve or using water.
2. Drying. After that, selected high quality coffee cherries are spread in the sun on the concrete floors or on the raised sieve called the “African bed”. In order to dry evenly and avoid mold, coffee cherries are constantly mixed. Depending on the weather, it can take up to 4 weeks for the berries to dry up to 12.5% moisture content.
3. Hulling. Dried coffee berries are stored in special silage bags or bunkers, then sent to the mill. There they are hulled, sorted, graded and packed in bags. All external dried bean layers are removed at one go, using a hulling installation.
The drying step is extremely important! It determines the quality of the green coffee bean! If the coffee is too dry, it will become fragile and result in a lot of broken beans during the hulling stage. This means poor quality coffee because the broken beans are classified as defective. If the coffee is not sufficiently dried, then it will contain too much moisture and may decompose and rotten.
The natural or dry method of coffee processing is typical for sunny coffee countries or those having no rain during harvesting.
Sun-dried coffee beans with flesh on it will be naturally sweet! The sweet flesh of the cherry dries in the sun transferring its extraordinary sweetness to the beans !
Semi-wash coffee cherries or the so-called “honey” processing method
1. Fresh cherry is peeled with a special machine and water.
2. After peeling, the sweet and delicate pulp remains around the bean. Such beans are then poured for drying on a concrete or a sieve.
3. With the help of the sun, the remaining flesh penetrates the bean and, in the final result, will provide it more sweetness and thickening.
4. The beans are dried to about 12.5% moisture content, then stored for a month in special containers and sent for hulling, sorting, grading and bagging.
During this process, the beans absorb even more sweetness when drying in the sun, after the upper peel is removed. So the consistency of coffee will be thick and even sweeter compared to the naturally process the beans.
After planting the coffee trees, you have to wait patiently from 2 to 5 years until the coffee beans bring fruit and the first harvest can be celebrated! The largest harvest comes from eight-year-old trees.
It takes 6-8 months for dark green fruits to get ripen and become bright red. Coffee cherries are ripe only when they become dark red. During the harvest year this takes more than 2 months.
Approximately 2000 fruits per year are collected from each shrub. About 500 g of beans are produced from 2000 fruits every year. The grower gets 500 to 800 kg of crop from one well-maintained field.
Each coffee country has its own harvest calendar. In some countries, for example in Colombia, coffee is harvested twice.
HARVESTING TECHNIQUES
Hand picking is the oldest and most difficult harvesting of the coffee. Coffee is harvested manually in mountainous areas or on small farms. Only ripe coffee berries are picked. Pickers come back to each tree for 10 times to collect the abundant harvest!
Harvesting by hand, swapping the cherries from the tree together with leaves and twigs.
Mechanical coffee harvesting. On large farms, coffee is collected mechanically with special machines. With the help of vibrating ropes, the coffee cherries are shaken off into a trailer moving afterwards.
Processing of coffee cherries
The cherries harvested from the plantations are brought in for sorting and processing.
The berries are sorted by weight in the water – the poor quality berries will float on the surface and ripe berries will sink.
Main manufacturing methods
A natural way to process coffee cherries
The natural or dry method of processing the coffee cherries is the oldest, the simplest and requires virtually no equipment. During the process, the whole coffee cherry is dried.
This treatment method consists of 3 steps:
1. Cleaning. First of all, the collected coffee cherries are sorted and cleaned, separating unripen, overripen or defective cherries. Dirt, pebbles, twigs, a leaves are removed. This is done with a large sieve or using water.
2. Drying. After that, selected high quality coffee cherries are spread in the sun on the concrete floors or on the raised sieve called the “African bed”. In order to dry evenly and avoid mold, coffee cherries are constantly mixed. Depending on the weather, it can take up to 4 weeks for the berries to dry up to 12.5% moisture content.
3. Hulling. Dried coffee berries are stored in special silage bags or bunkers, then sent to the mill. There they are hulled, sorted, graded and packed in bags. All external dried bean layers are removed at one go, using a hulling installation.
The drying step is extremely important! It determines the quality of the green coffee bean! If the coffee is too dry, it will become fragile and result in a lot of broken beans during the hulling stage. This means poor quality coffee because the broken beans are classified as defective. If the coffee is not sufficiently dried, then it will contain too much moisture and may decompose and rotten.
The natural or dry method of coffee processing is typical for sunny coffee countries or those having no rain during harvesting.
Sun-dried coffee beans with flesh on it will be naturally sweet! The sweet flesh of the cherry dries in the sun transferring its extraordinary sweetness to the beans !
Semi-wash coffee cherries or the so-called “honey” processing method
1. Fresh cherry is peeled with a special machine and water.
2. After peeling, the sweet and delicate pulp remains around the bean. Such beans are then poured for drying on a concrete or a sieve.
3. With the help of the sun, the remaining flesh penetrates the bean and, in the final result, will provide it more sweetness and thickening.
4. The beans are dried to about 12.5% moisture content, then stored for a month in special containers and sent for hulling, sorting, grading and bagging.
During this process, the beans absorb even more sweetness when drying in the sun, after the upper peel is removed. So the consistency of coffee will be thick and even sweeter compared to the naturally process the beans.
Drying
Coffee beans can be dried in the sun or mechanically.
