Coffee beans from farms to cups

Coffee beans are the seeds held inside the berries. When the berries turn to red, it means the beans are ready to pick them from the coffee trees and start its processes to make green coffee beans. Coffee beans come in different types but there are two main types in production and consumption. They are coffee Robusta and Arabica. Each type of coffee beans has its own processing method, but generally, coffee beans have to go through the following steps:

Harvesting coffee cherries

Coffee trees take three years to grow up and have cherries since they were seeded. Time for coffee’s cherries to develop from flowering and pollinating is between 7 and 9 months. During the ripen time, coffee cherries turn from green, yellow and finally red. Red cherries are harvested both by manual and machine methods. Some high quality and pricey coffee beans are usually harvested by hand on deck. A good coffee picker can pick about 50 to 60 pounds of coffee fruits in a day.

Sorting coffee beans

When coffee beans are picked, they are ready to be sorted. We can carry out this step in different ways, depending on the requirement of coffee taste. The first way is called ‘aged coffee’. It is the method of keeping green coffee cherries in a well-ventilated warehouse for 1-7 years. This gives the beans a less acidic taste and a syrupy richness.

Drying coffee beans

This process contains drying the carries under the sun, then removing pulp, parchment and dried skin to take out the coffee beans. Drying process can take 2 weeks to help the beans completely have the amount of moisture and water in order to prevent mildew.

During drying process, green beans can be undergone wet process. It is a method of putting the cherries in water. The cherries are then pressed by a machine to separate the seed and most of the pulp.  The remaining pulp is removed, leaving the beans that are then left to dry leaving about 10 – 12 percent moisture content.

Hulling coffee beans

Hulling is the process of using machine to remove the parchment layer from wet process coffee beans.

Polishing coffee beans

This step uses a machine called Polish Machine to remove any silver skin left from hulling process.

Cleaning and grading

Coffee beans are cleaned by some special methods before packaging. In addition, they are through another step of sorting called “grading”. They will be sorted based on size and weight, and then moving to be checked color and other factors. The under-standard beans will be removed or domestic used.

Tasting coffee beans

This process is considered as the final quality-assessment step. Coffee experts will cup and taste the beans to set out its quality. If the cuppers said the coffee beans are qualified, they will be exported with good prices.

Roasting and grinding

Upon customer’s demand, coffee roasters and coffee producers will roast green coffee beans into different degree and grind them into different sizes to make perfect cups of coffee. There are both roasted and unroasted coffee beans as well as coffee ground on the market for you to choose. There are also plenty of coffee makers, coffee grinders and coffee roasters available in the markets at different sizes.

To sum up, coffee beans from farms to cup are a closed process of treating green beans to ground coffee for a good cup. The process includes at least eight basic steps to have exceptional beans. However, to some specialty coffee beans, it even takes more.