Coffee Picking...
Picking is hard, the fastest of the pickers can pick about 400 pounds a day, but an average would be more like 100 pounds. The professional pickers work all day, sun up to sun down, rain or shine. With a farm of 4,000 trees, it would take several weeks for one person to pick them. It would then be time to start all over again with the next batch of newly ripened coffee, therefore hiring a crew of pickers is the only reasonable option. During the height of the season, a crew of a half dozen pickers can pick nearly two thousand pounds of coffee cherries in a single day. |
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The Coffee Bean Process...
The coffee cherries are then pulped right away in order to ensure peak flavour. Beneath the red outer skin (exocarp) is a fleshy pulp (mesocarp). If a ripe cherry is squeezed, the bean will pop out of the pulp. Using a machine like a large cheese grater, the ripe cherries go in the top, the beans come out the side and the pulp is discarded through the bottom. The bean accounts for just 20% of the original cherry weight.
Below the pulp is a thin slippery layer (parenchyma) referred to as the mucilage. The mucilage needs to be removed before the beans can be dried properly. Letting the beans ferment for 12 to 48 hours allows natural enzymes to break down the mucilage layer so it can be washed off. There are fancy (and expensive) machines that can do this but it can be completed by hand.
The beans are dried, dryers can be used for this process, but the more traditional method is to spread the beans out in the sun. Some of the old coffee farm houses had sliding roofs over their hoshidona (coffee drying patio). The roofs could be opened up when it was sunny and closed when it rained. While drying, the beans need to be stirred occasionally, often by hand. The moisture of the beans is measured to monitor progress, this can take several weeks. Once dried, the beans (now called parchment) can be stored. A few months of storage in a cool, dry place actually helps age the coffee, just like wine.
Inside the parchment (endocarp) layer are two beans which are covered with one final "silver skin" (spermoderm) layer. Once you get to the actual coffee bean, it can then be graded, certified, roasted, ground and brewed. Wholesalers usually buy "green" coffee with all the outer layers removed but before it has been roasted.
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