Coffee Starts Here

Did you know coffee comes from a stone fruit? These stone fruit are known as coffee cherries. A new planted seed takes 3-5 years to bear fruit, and then they give one major harvest every year. Once the colors of the fruit turn a bright deep red like in the picture above. They are ready for harvest.

Volcanic rock soil is great for this plants to thrive, This picture above was taken in Guatemala on a coffee farm near the Three Sisters Volcano Range.

These tropical climates are the perfect combination of temperature, humidity and sunlight for these delicate plants.

These plants can grow to be medium sized trees but are usually pruned to be manageable by farmers.

The fruit is covered by a juicy skin called Cascara, which can be dried and used to make delicious tea like drinks. These drinks are becoming more and more popular. On farms today it is mainly used for compost.

These fruity skins hold seeds inside them what we know as coffee beans.

In order to get these beans from the fruit there are processes such as

Washed, Natural, and Honey.

Washed Processing is the most popular because of its clean flavor profile. It starts with sorting, to get rid of any defective or unripe cherries. Usually this is done by putting the cherries in water and removing any floaters. The lower the density of the bean the lower the quality of the coffee. After sorting has finished the cherries are sent through a depulper machine, Like the one in the picture below.

This rolling machine removes the pulp of the cherry. Next, they are transported to soak and ferment the rest of the pulp off the bean. Leading us to the last step of the process which is Drying.

Drying

There are many different ways to dry the beans. A lot of farmers like to use the energy of the sun. Spreading the beans along a huge concrete platform for them to dry or in raised garden beds. They must be turned over with rakes occasionally in order to balance airflow. This is done for about 2-3 days and then send the beans through a mechanical dryer.

Natural Processing is the process of drying the whole fruit without any washing. The cherries are still sorted by removing any floaters from water beds but then the whole fruit is dried. This can take 2-6 weeks. After they dry they have their skins removed and sent to dry milling. To get prepped for importers.

This process can bring some of the most unique flavors out of the coffee beans. A good comparison would be to a dessert wine. All the sweet, pulpy, chocolate, and nutty flavors from the fruit get soaked into the beans,

Honey Processing is the process in between. The cherries are mechanically depulped to a specific level of fruit remaining. Which is like gummy womb around the beans, It is similar to if honey was hugging the beans,

They are then dried like natural processed beans but there is less risk of over fermentation and it takes less time.

Coffee starts here and then is imported into roasteries such as Sati Coffee Co.