Growing and Harvesting Coffee – From the Tree to Your Mug
Most people take their cup of morning coffee for granted – it’s easy enough to wake up, grind up some coffee beans, and make a pot or a cup whenever it’s needed. Yet, fewer people think about the process that’s involved in actually getting those coffee beans to them in the first place. Where does the coffee come from, and what exactly is a coffee ‘bean’ anyway?
The Coffee Plant: Its Main Characteristics
Surprisingly enough, a coffee bean isn’t a coffee bean for its entire lifespan – it actually starts out as a flower on the coffea arabica tree, an evergreen plant with shiny, broad leaves. The leaves are fairly large, growing anywhere between three to six inches in size, and tend to be shaped similarly to an arrowhead - while the tree itself can grow up to 20 feet tall in the wild. Cultivated coffea arabica trees are often kept much shorter – around 6 feet tall – in order to make picking the beans a far easier task!
From the base of the leaves then grow small, white flowers or blossoms, which bear what are often referred to as ‘cherries’. These little coffee berries are oval in shape and the same size of a small cherry, colored red and composed of three parts: the outer skin, a fleshy pulp, and two coffee beans in the center.
Coffea arabica trees thrive best in moderate climates with well-drained soil but a decent level of moisture. Two hours of direct sunlight per day is ideal for the typical coffee plant, which results in many growers building protective shading areas in order to control the amount of sunlight. These trees are also the most productive in terms of flavor when grown at an altitude of somewhere between 3,000 and 6,000 feet. The colder climate actually encourages a denser bean, which compacts the flavor to give it more intensity.
Harvesting: Picking Cherries
The right time to go ‘cherry picking’ on a coffea arabica tree is during the dry season in the growing country – berries should be glossy and firm when they’re pulled off the plant. There are several methods of cherry harvesting available to growers: selective picking by hand; stripping, which includes removing all beans regardless of whether they are unripe, just right, or overripe; or mechanical harvesting using a larger machine.
The problem with stripping and mechanical harvesting is that it doesn’t take into account the fact that coffee cherries do not ripen uniformly – so in order to get the most out of the plant, it should be harvested on several occasions, removing only the ripe beans each time. Then on the same day that the cherries are harvested, they need to be pulped – that is, the fleshy part must be removed from the coffee bean, in order to prevent fermentation and maintain freshness.
Processing: Working with Dry vs. Wet Methods
Once the coffee has been harvested off the plant, it needs to be processed before it can be packaged up and sent off for commercial purposes. There are two different methods through which this can be done: the dry method or the wet method.
The dry method of processing involves drying out the coffee berries immediately after they’ve been harvested, until the beans inside are at the proper humidity level for packaging and consumption. Typically, berries are either laid out in the sun, or are placed within special mechanical drying machines that can regulate humidity levels. After the berries are dried, the shriveled husk is easily removed by hand or machine.
The wet method of coffee processing involves the removal of the berries’ outer flesh before the beans are dried, after which the coffee beans are soaked in water to removed the sticky layer of pulp from the outside of the beans. After this ‘fermentation’ period, the coffee beans are washed, dried, and thrashed to remove the outer two layers of the bean called the parchment and silver skin.
The final step in either processing method is a final cleaning and then a quality check to ensure that only the best coffee beans are selected for packaging. These packages of beans then make their way to commercial centers as green coffee beans, or to their next stop where they’re roasted and repackaged for your morning cup of java!
About the Authors
Andréanne Hamel and Luc Cloutier are successful business owners and espresso lovers, providing helpful espresso machine supply and information, all the way from reviews of super automatic espresso machines to stovetop espresso maker comparisons. Their many articles offer valuable insight in a fun and entertaining way.