How coffee fruits turn into raw beans

1 drying refining method (also known as natural drying or non-washing): after fruit harvest, it is necessary to go through natural (sun) drying or machine drying to dry, shell and take out raw beans. The natural drying method, as literally shown, is to put the fruit in the open air and dry it in the sun. To avoid uneven drying or fermentation, it must be stirred at the right time. The number of days in the sun depends on the maturity of the fruit, the higher the maturity, it only takes a few days, and the immature fruit takes a week or two to repair.

The original cherry-red fruit will turn black after a week in the sun, and the skin and flesh will become hard and easy to take off. At night, cover with a tarp to block the night dew and make it black (dried cherries). If the drying is smooth, the water content is about 11% to 12%, and the water content of coffee and raw beans for export is about 12% to 13%.

The operation process of the natural drying method is simple, the cost of equipment investment is low, and the cost is relatively low, because this method has been adopted by almost all producing countries in the past, which can be described as a refining method with a long history. However, because this refining method is subject to weather and time-consuming, almost all Arabica coffee-producing countries except Brazil, Ethiopia, Yemen, Bolivia, Paraguay and other countries have switched to water-washing refining.

2 washing refining method: the washing refining method began in the middle of the 18th century. In the refining process, the pulp of the coffee fruit is first removed, then the residual mucous membrane on the inner pericarp is removed by a fermentation tank, and the beans are washed and dried. The difference between non-washing refining and water-washing refining is that the non-washing refining method removes the pulp after drying, while the water washing method dries after removing the pulp.

The washing refining method can remove impurities and defective beans through every step, so the level of raw beans is extremely high, the appearance is uniform, it is generally considered to be of high quality, and the trading price is higher than that of coffee beans refined by natural drying.

(3) semi-washing refining method: this is the conversion between drying type and water washing type. The practice is to wash the harvested coffee fruit, remove the skin and pulp mechanically, dry it with sunlight, and then dry it with a machine. Different from the washing refining method, the coffee fruit is not put into the fermentation tank in the process, and the quality is more stable than the drying refining method. The Syrador region of Brazil is refined by semi-washing.