Sowing and harvesting of Coffee

Coffee harvesting (1) hand picking: with the exception of Brazil and Ethiopia, most Arabica coffee producing countries use hand picking. Hand picking involves not only picking ripe bright red coffee fruits, but also sometimes along with immature cyan coffee fruits and branches, so these immature beans are often mixed with refined coffee beans, especially when refined by natural methods. If these beans are mixed with baking, they will produce a disgusting stench.

(2) shaking down method: this method is to hit the ripe fruit or shake the coffee branch with a random stick, so that the fruit falls and accumulates into a pile. Larger estates will use large harvester, while small and medium-sized farms will harvest with a sea of people mobilized by the whole family. This method of shaking the fruit off the ground is easier to mix with impurities and defective beans than the hand-picking method, and beans from some places can be stained with a strange smell or fermented because the ground is wet. Producers of Robusta coffee beans such as Brazil and Ethiopia are mostly harvested in this way.

Coffee drying method (1) drying refining method: also known as natural drying method, is to spread the fruit in the open-air sun field, drying in the sun. To avoid uneven drying or fermentation, it must be stirred at the right time. The bright red fruit like a log cherry will turn black after a week in the sun, and the skin and flesh will become hard and easy to take off. At night, it is necessary to cover with a tarp to block the night dew. If the sun drying is smooth, the water content can reach 11% / 12%. This method has the advantages of simple process, low equipment investment and relatively low cost, so it has been adopted by almost all producing countries in the past.

(2) washing refining: the washing refining of coffee began in the mid-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. This method can remove impurities and defective beans through each step, so the appearance of raw beans is uniform and is generally considered to have high quality, but the finer the engineering division of labor, the more procedures for operation and hygiene management, and the higher the risk. The cost of washing equipment is high, and the process and steps of refining are also quite laborious, so the production cost is naturally very high.

(3) semi-washing refining method: coffee semi-washing method is a compromise between drying method and water washing method. 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. It is different from the water washing method in that the coffee fruit is not put into the fermentation tank in the process, and the quality is more stable than the dry refining method. The Silado region of Brazil uses semi-washing to treat coffee.