From Cherry to Bean: How Coffee is Grown

Our Friend, the Green Coffee Bean

When most of us hear the word “coffee,” we’re likely to think of a steaming cup of our favorite roast, or maybe the brown beans that we use to brew that tasty beverage. But there are a number of steps that coffee undergoes before it reaches this stage in its life. Actually, when coffee began, it wasn’t a drink at all. Tribesmen in Ethiopia (where coffee was first discovered) used to chew on the coffee cherry to give them energy. You might be asking, what is a coffee cherry?

The Coffee Cherry

The coffee bean grows inside of what most coffee connoisseurs call a “coffee cherry”. It is named as such because it is a small, bright red fruit that very much resembles the common cherry. The coffee bean is actually the seed of the fruit, and there are usually two of them inside each cherry. Sometimes there is only one seed inside the cherry, these rarities are referred to as “peaberries”. It should be noted, however, that not all coffee cherries are created equally.

The lesser respected cherry in the coffee community produces the “Robusta” bean. The Robusta bean has the advantage of growing more quickly, but it creates a less flavourful cup of the good stuff. The Robusta bean is arguably easier to grow too, because it is able to grow at low elevations. Usually,coffee with a low price tag will be contain a good portion of robusta beans.

Robusta’s more respected cousin is the “Arabica” bean. Many companies that pride themselves on selling first-rate coffee make a point to let their customers know that it is Arabica beans making up their gourmet beverage. The Arabica bean is more difficult to grow, because it does not grow below an elevation of 3500 feet. The Arabica bean also grows more slowly, but it produces a much more worthwhile flavour when roasted.

Harvesting Coffee

Harvesting the cherries is sometimes done by machine. However, this method can be wasteful because the cherries ripen at different speeds, and machines harvest all of the beans at one time. This means that a lot of cherries cannot be used because they are harvested when they are not ripe. Even in a modern era fueled by technological break-throughs, most coffee cherries are still picked by hand.

This is largely because a great deal of coffee still comes from small family farms, sometimes in remote areas and third world countries. We pride ourselves on buying coffee’s from these small co-operatives, like the coocafe co-op, who use profits to fund new builds for schools and colleges. By hand picking the coffee, each cherry can be picked at the peak of its ripeness, resulting in a much better tasting coffee.

Getting to the Coffee Bean

As any coffee drinker knows, we don’t see much of the actual coffee cherry. You can’t get them at any conventional supermarket, and you won’t see them at your local coffee shop. So how do we get to the coffee beans buried inside the cherry?

There are three methods of doing so

• The most common is the “washed” method (“Ferment-and-Wash Method” and the “Machine-assisted wet processing”) During this process a specially designed machine is used to remove the bean from its cherry, often underwater.
• Another method is called “semi-washed.” In the semi-washed method, the skin of the cherry is first removed, this can be done manually or by way of machine. Between the bean and the skin there is a fleshy pulp that usually just gets discarded. After the skin is removed, the bean is left to dry inside of the fleshy portion that is still attached.
• Lastly, there is the “natural/Dry” process. This was the very first method used to dry the coffee bean. When this method is employed, farmers lay out the cherries outside, and let the sun dry out the cherry. Around 95% of the Arabica coffee produced in Brazil are dry processed, along with most of the coffees produced in Ethiopia, Haiti, Paraguay, India and Ecuador.

After processing has taken place, a farmer is left with ready-to-roast coffee beans. The next step in turning these green coffee beans into a cup of coffee is roasting the bean!

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