From Field to Cup… How Coffee Is Made
From field to cup… How coffee is made
Do you ever wonder how coffee is made? It’s not a simple process. There are three stages to make coffee: harvesting, processing and roasting. The first stage of making coffee is harvesting. Coffee trees take 3-5 years to produce their fruit and they require special attention to soil, light and climate to produce a quality harvest. The cherries are either picked by hand or machine harvested. Once harvested, the fruit must be removed from the cherry to get to the beans. The second stage of making coffee is processing. After harvest the beans have to be processed to avoid the sticky fruit from fermenting and spoiling the beans. There are two ways of processing beans: dry and wet. Dry processing is a centuries old method in which the harvested beans are laid out in the sun to dry for about 15 days or so. They are periodically turned and spread to dry evenly.wet processing is a more modern approach that takes place just hours after the beans have been harvested. It involves a cycle of washing and fermentation. This allows the pulp left on the beans to soften making it easier to rinse the fruit off. This processing preferable because it causes less damage to the beans. After processing, the beans that are left are bagged up and shipped. The final and the most important stage is roasting. Roasting beans requires an exact science of time and temperature to arrive at the perfect roast. Roasting is actually cooking the beans to a certain roast. During the process, the bean splits and the waxy coating called the “chaff” is released and discarded. The longer the beans are roasted, the more their flavor and fullness are released. This is why beans tend to be milder and darker beans tend to have more fullness and flavor. In conclusion, harvesting, processing and roasting are the three stages of making coffee. These stages must be performed carefully to produce high quality
Do you ever wonder how coffee is made? It’s not a simple process. There are three stages to make coffee: harvesting, processing and roasting. The first stage of making coffee is harvesting. Coffee trees take 3-5 years to produce their fruit and they require special attention to soil, light and climate to produce a quality harvest. The cherries are either picked by hand or machine harvested. Once harvested, the fruit must be removed from the cherry to get to the beans. The second stage of making coffee is processing. After harvest the beans have to be processed to avoid the sticky fruit from fermenting and spoiling the beans. There are two ways of processing beans: dry and wet. Dry processing is a centuries old method in which the harvested beans are laid out in the sun to dry for about 15 days or so. They are periodically turned and spread to dry evenly.wet processing is a more modern approach that takes place just hours after the beans have been harvested. It involves a cycle of washing and fermentation. This allows the pulp left on the beans to soften making it easier to rinse the fruit off. This processing preferable because it causes less damage to the beans. After processing, the beans that are left are bagged up and shipped. The final and the most important stage is roasting. Roasting beans requires an exact science of time and temperature to arrive at the perfect roast. Roasting is actually cooking the beans to a certain roast. During the process, the bean splits and the waxy coating called the “chaff” is released and discarded. The longer the beans are roasted, the more their flavor and fullness are released. This is why beans tend to be milder and darker beans tend to have more fullness and flavor. In conclusion, harvesting, processing and roasting are the three stages of making coffee. These stages must be performed carefully to produce high quality