Coffee picking

Coffee trees generally bloom in 3 to 4 years, about 2 to 3 months each year, similar in appearance and smell to jasmine flowers, closely clustered on branches when flowering, flowering 3 to 5 days. After flowering, they bear small green fruit, a few months later mature into red can be picked ripe fruit.

The ripe fruit skin is red, and due to its shape and color similar to cherries, mature coffee fruits are called coffee cherries in many places. Beneath the bright red exocarp are the pericarp, pulp, and a sweet, sticky yellow substance that encases the beans.

Normally, each fruit has two coffee beans, flat faces facing each other. There are also coffee trees that sometimes produce smaller fruits containing only one coffee bean, which has different names-peaberry, single bean, or perla-and which have no flat sides and are almost round. Because it is very small in quantity and must be specially selected and collected together, the price is much higher than ordinary coffee beans. Many people think that round beans taste particularly good, because their round bean shape can tightly wrap the original flavor of coffee in the beans, the taste is extremely strong, is regarded as the best coffee beans.

Most Arabica beans mature at 6? In August, robasta coffee beans are 9? October. Therefore, although in some countries where the dry and wet seasons are not obvious, such as Colombia and Kenya, there are two flowering times a year, that is, two harvests, but strictly speaking, there is only one harvest a year.

The harvest period of coffee varies from region to region. Areas north of the equator (such as Ethiopia and Central America) generally harvest once in September to November. South of the equator, in areas such as Brazil and Zimbabwe, the main harvest occurs in April or May, although it can last until August. Equatorial countries, such as Uganda and Colombia, harvest year-round, especially plantations that exploit a variety of altitudes.

Coffee fruits are harvested immediately when ripe, and because fruits of different maturity periods appear on the same tree, harvesting is not easy. Generally speaking, from early harvest to complete harvest, it takes up to 4? Five months. If ripe and immature fruits are harvested at the same time, the quality of coffee will be reduced. Therefore, good quality coffee is hand-picked one by one to maintain the perfect coffee taste.

In one year, a typical Arabica coffee tree harvests less than 5 kilograms of fruit, making about 1 kilogram of beans.