Fruit to raw coffee beans

A coffee tree can harvest 3-5 kg of fruit, and raw coffee beans account for 1/5 of the fruit mass. Going from fruit to green coffee beans is indeed a time-consuming and laborious task.

Arabian, Robusta, Liberian

Arabica coffee accounts for about two-thirds of the world's coffee production. The plant is not suitable for high temperature, low temperature, rainy and little rain environment. Coffee beans are oval and flat, with high quality and rich aroma.

Robusta coffee has a strong bitter taste, no sour taste, and no good aroma, which is better mixed than used alone. It is often used to make frozen coffee, instant coffee and canned coffee. Suitable for planting in low-lying areas. The plant has strong disease resistance and fast growth characteristics.

Liberia grows coffee, which is of low quality and yield and is exported only to Europe.

Flat beans and round beans

The ripe red coffee fruit, shown here, has a multi-layered structure. The pale green kernel with a bluish center is the coffee bean.

The core of the coffee fruit is generally oval. When the two stones are paired together, they form a flat bean; sometimes the stone grows singly, forming a round bean. The difference between the two types of beans is mainly in taste.

From harvest to delivery

After harvest, the skin and flesh must be removed. Coffee beans are made by removing the endocarp and silver peel. There are two methods: drying (natural drying, non-washing) and washing.

Drying type, the operation is relatively simple, the harvested fruit spread on the dry site, in the sun for a week or two, turning when you can hear the sound of cluck cluck said dried. Then use a hulling machine to remove the flesh, endocarp and silver skin of the dried fruit.

This method gives coffee beans a mild acidity and a mild bitterness. Brazil, Ethiopia, Yemen and other places to use this method. Disadvantages: easily affected by weather, defective beans and foreign bodies mixed with more opportunities. Therefore, careful selection is required before shipment.

The method comprises the following steps of: pouring harvested fruits into a water tank, removing floating matters, transferring the fruits in water into a pulp removing machine, peeling off the skin and pulp, then putting the fruits back into the water tank, removing floating matters, pouring "fruit cores" in water into a fermentation tank, soaking for half a day or one day, removing colloid on the surface of fermented beans, washing, drying or mechanically drying, removing endocarp on a hulling machine, and obtaining commercial green coffee beans.

The advantages of washing: coffee beans luster is good, mixed with less foreign matter, sour slightly better. This approach has been used in Colombia, Mexico and Guatemala. Coffee beans produced with water washing account for almost 70% of the total coffee bean production.

Sometimes bad fermentation time will produce fermentation odor and special sour taste; well processed, coffee beans can form a personalized aroma.

At this time, coffee beans can be packed into sacks and sent to various places, or packed into special containers across the ocean.