Processing, Pt. 1

Let's say that you decide to take everything into your own hands and grow your own coffee beans. You put in the effort of planting the trees, caring for them and waiting a few years, and finally you have some beautiful bright red coffee cherries. As proud as you are, now you must be wondering, how exactly do I turn these into coffee beans?

I bet if you just squeeze hard enough you’ll get coffee, right?
(Photo by skinnydiver is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0)

Processing, which is removing everything but the sweet bean within, is an important, and sometimes overlooked part of the journey of coffee. There are a few main ways to go about it, and slight variations on them, some of which are associated with different growing regions, but as craft coffee becomes more prevalent this is changing.

Washed coffee is by far the most common processing method. It's consistent, risk free, and produces a clean cup with more crisp and simple flavors. Think of it as the safe sedan of the coffee world. For many people, this is the only type of coffee they've tasted. In washed processing, the cherries are thrown into a machine that removes the fruit,and then the mucilage, or the sticky scraps around the bean, is removed partially by bristles and then finished by fermentation in tanks of water.  The result is a coffee with a clean mouthfeel and clear flavor.

Cherry Pulper (Photo by Coffee Management is licensed under CC BY 2.0)

On the other end of the spectrum is the natural process, which was the first method used. Because it’s simpler than the washed process, it has been common in areas that can't necessarily afford all of the equipment required for washed coffee. All that must be done is pick the ripe cherries and then place them out in the sun until they're dried, like fantastic caffeinated grapes. The coffee is hulled, and voila, naturally processed coffee! The sugars of the cherry and mucilage give coffees processed this way a sweet and rich fruity flavor (like our Brazillian Mogiana). Why is the process uncommon if it's cheap and makes a uniquely delicious cup? It's somewhat of a gamble. Even assuming the weather agrees, there's such a variation in the fermentation that happens naturally that it's guaranteed that there is going to be a lot of inconsistencies within the same batch of coffee, and (unfortunately) at least a little rotting. It's not exactly like playing Russian roulette, but it's a gamble that means decently consistent natural coffees command a high price on the market.

In between these two is semi-washed, also known honey process or pulped natural (it seems no one knows what to call it). Like washed coffee, the cherry is removed from the seed, but the mucilage is left on, so that, like natural coffee, they can be left to dry in the sun or on drying beds. They retain some of the sweetness and mouthfeel of natural coffee, but are a little more refined and a little more stable.

Too much information for you? Relax by looking at these puppies in coffee cups. Next time when we finish talking about processing.

Growing and Picking Coffee

The world’s insatiable need for coffee (or perhaps just caffeine) has to be met somehow. Last post I mentioned that coffee spread pretty quickly, but where did it go, and how much of it?

Coffee is grown in more than 60 developing countries by around 25 milling farmers. Most of those farmers are still small family businesses, but you can find large coffee plantations in the countries with higher production.

There are two types of coffee plants out there, robusta and arabica. Robusta has the benefit of being a little more, well, robust, so it can handle more temperature fluctuation and harsher climates. It has more caffeine, so why do we mostly drink arabica coffee?

Well, that too, but that’s not what I meant exactly

Beans from the Arabica plant taste better. Much better. So much that it’s harder to find a brand that will openly admit to using large amounts of robusta.

There’s also another explanation of robusta’s caffeine content. The caffeine in coffee occurs as a natural defense against getting eaten. So more caffeine might mean more of a buzz for you, but it also means more death for most other things.

Even the smaller farms will generally need some help come harvest time, and some farms also grow other crops in conjunction with coffee. Coffee plants will begin producing fruit three to five years after planting. The fruit itself takes about nine months to ripen.

Don’t worry, the coffee will be ready in about six years. A cup of water while you wait? (Photo by jakeliefer is licensed under CC BY 2.0)

The plant is harvested by hand by necessity. Coffee plants can flower multiple times throughout the year, so this means there will be a mixture of ripe and unripe berries, so pickers have to be careful not to steal from future crops. It's common for the pickers to pass though several times to pick all of the ripe cherries.

(Photo by mckaysavage is licensed under CC BY 2.0)

After the cherries are picked, the have to be processed before they’re of any use to us, a step we’ll learn about in the next few posts.

What Exactly is Coffee?

Coffee is inescapable. You can find it in McDonald's and five star restaurants, the break rooms in offices and just about every gas station around the world. It exists as a simple beverage or a borderline dessert, from whole beans or instant powder. A coffee addiction is an expectation in certain lines of life, and practical necessity for others. But despite it's constant presence in our lives, very few of us know the story of where it comes from or how it got into your cup. Our hope is to change that.

It might be surprising to you that coffee comes from a fruit, though we’re not talking apples or oranges here. 

Pictured: Not coffee
(Photo by atomicbre is licensed under CC BY 3.0)

The coffee cherry is the fruit of a shrub native to Africa and parts of Asia, requiring a mild climate, lots of rain, and if you want to make a decent cup of coffee, a high elevation. 

(Photo by Ignatio Icke is licensed under CC BY 3.0)

1. center cut             2. bean,           

3. silver skin            4. parchment  

5. pectin layer         6. pulp             

7. outer skin                    

We get coffee from the seed, which we call the coffee bean. As you can see to the right, there’s a lot going on in this humble cherry. The bean inside is surrounded by parchment, mucilage and the fruit itself. How exactly do we get the nice brown beans you know and love? It’s complicated, but we’ll get into that later.

No one really know why some humans saw a fruit and decided to take its seed, roast it, and then make a drink out of it, but there is a myth about it. Sometime around the 9th century, a goatherd in Ethiopia was watching over his animals when he noticed that they would become energized and excited after eating the fruit from a certain plant.

Some say that he then decided that he wanted in on that action and ate the fruit as well, then spread the word around to his tribe. Others say that he reported his findings to an abbot at the local monastery where it became used to stay alert during prayers.

Whatever the truth story, we know that by the middle of the 15th century it had made its appearance in Yemen, and from there it spread to the rest of the Middle East, then to Europe, and from there it spread all over the world, imperialists planting it wherever it could grow, most likely because conquering countries takes a lot of energy. It quickly became the drink of choice by everyone from American revolutionary soldiers to the Pope himself. 

This is mow much of the world runs on coffee.
(Photo by Bamse is licensed under CC BY 3.0)

Skip ahead a few centuries and most of us can't face the day without it. Good things spread quickly. Catch us next time to find more about how coffee trees go from seed to tree to bean!