How Do Coffee Beans Become Coffee?

Coffee beans grow on shrubs in warm climates such as Africa, Latin America and southern Asia. They are actually referred to as coffee berries at this stage and they are a green or red, fleshy berry on the evergreen bush of the Coffea. They undergo several processes before they resemble the coffee you buy in a shop.

Plants need to be at least 3 years old before they produce anything useful and at the stage that the berries turn from green to red, they are ready to be picked.

Firstly, the berries are harvested (either by hand or mechanically). If the berries are picked by hand, only the ripe ones need to be harvested. If strip picked, the whole crop is harvested at once, whether by hand or by machine.

The flesh then needs to be removed to get at the seeds (beans) inside. There are two ways of doing this - the wet or the dry method.

In the wet method, the berries are put in water to sort the good ones from the bad. The berries are pushed through a screen and some of the pulp is removed. To remove the rest of the pulp, they are either fermented and then washed in clean water or mechanically scrubbed. The beans are then dried in the sun or by machine.

In the dry method, the berries are dried in the sun on large sheets. They are turned frequently and protected from rain. It can take several weeks to dry the berries to the required amount. This is the traditional method and good for places where water is in short supply.

The next stage is to hull the beans to take off any remaining layers of berry. This can leave behind silvery skin still but these can be removed if the beans are polished (an optional process). The now clean and dry beans are sorted by size, density and colour. This part of production is called Milling.

Some people like their coffee to have an aged flavour. The taste for this came about because the first coffee to arrive in Europe was brought on boats and took many weeks to make the journey.

The green beans need to be roasted to make the coffee you buy in supermarkets. This involves them being put into a drum and heated. They are kept on the move to stop them burning. It transforms the physical and chemical properties of the beans. This is actually this process that gives the characteristic flavours because the heat causes the beans to expand and change in colour, small, taste and density. At an internal temperature of approximately 400 degrees, the tasty oils (caffeol) start to come to the surface. The degree to which the beans are roasted will determine the flavour.

The beans all darken during roasting. Light roasts are ones such as cinnamon roast or New England, medium roasts are those such as American, and strong roasts are those such as Viennese.

Once roasted to the desired degree, the beans are removed and cooled.

The roasted beans can be sold to the consumer to grind at home, or they can be factory ground before they are packaged and sold on for home use.

By Rebecca G Wishford.
Try Pour Moi for coffee vending machines.

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