Hi Friends,
We are roasting next on Sunday, October 5, and any orders received through noon that day will be shipped or delivered on Monday the 6th. If you are local, email me, and away orders are easier if they go through the website (www.freeportcoffee.com).
We have sadly run out of the wonderful organic Honduras, but we have a nice new organic from Costa Rica you might like to try – details are on the store page on the website. Not on the site is the amazing Barack O’Java. You can order this through us or through the Obama headquarters in Yarmouth, Portland, somewhere in Michigan and northern NC. When ordered through us, we donate $1 from each pound to the campaign and orders through their offices get a $5 donation. Go Obama!!!
I am sending these messages now from my home email address, as some of you have spam filters that don’t like hearing from the ISP behind freeportcoffee.com.
As promised, I am writing today about the processing of coffee – taking you all the way from the harvest through to the roaster. Coffee travels a long road to reach your cup, and I think it is interesting to understand the many steps along the way.
What is Coffee?
What we call “coffee beans” are the seeds of a woody perennial evergreen tree grown in Latin America, Africa and Southeast Asia. These seeds are found in a fruit typically referred to as “cherries,” though they aren’t actually related to the more common fruit of the same name.
Usually, these seeds are found in pairs facing each other – you can imagine this pairing by placing the flat surfaces of two beans together. In about 5-10% of the cherries, only one bean is found, and these “peaberries” are more rounded and oval in shape.
Broadly speaking, there are two main species of coffee, formally known by their Latin names, Coffea Arabica (aka “Arabica”) and Coffea Canephora (aka “Robusta”). The specialty coffee we enjoy in the US is virtually all Arabica, and you are unlikely to encounter Robustas unless you drink very inexpensive instant coffees or blends. About 70% of world production is now Arabica, but Robusta, which is cheaper to grow, continues to flourish in commodity markets. I tasted it in its pure form exactly once, and it reminded me of a cross between cough syrup and paint thinner. Yuck.
The cherries are covered in a thick skin, and between the skin and beans is a sticky layer called mucilage. We’ll learn more about these below, as the methods for removing the skin and mucilage have a lot to do with the taste of your coffee.
When we talk about “processing methods,” these describe what happens in the removal of the skin and pulp, the removal of the mucilage and the drying of the bean. The other steps I’ll discuss have a lot to do with product quality, but you aren’t likely to hear about them in the descriptions of coffees; these are more the responsibility of the growers, processors, importers and roasters.
Picking
Coffee cherries grow in tight clusters along the branches of the tree – and an important thing for you to know is that the cherries don’t all ripen at the same time. Green and red cherries can both be found in abundance on the same branch.
The cherries can be picked from the tree selectively by hand (meaning only taking the ripe red fruit), “stripping” the branch (a faster method where all fruit is pulled off a branch at once) or through mechanized methods that shake the trees to loosen the ripe fruit so that it falls into a collector below.
So you can see that in the first method above, the fruit collected is all ripe and is all picked by hand. And, in the other two, some number of unripe cherries ends up in the mix. From here forward, the degree to which the unripe fruit is sorted out has a major impact on coffee quality.
The decision for the farmer on which method to use is based on a tradeoff between his or her cost of production and the likely price to be received when the coffee is sold to a broker or processing facility. In small farms, it is much faster to strip the branches, but the quality (and probably the price) goes down. To pick more selectively, the price needs to justify the longer labor hours (or expense of picking machines).
Processing Methods
The expression “processing method” for coffee refers to one of three techniques used to remove the fruit surrounding the coffee beans (pits of the fruit). The method used is, for the most part, a matter of local convention, though the care taken in executing the method can vary greatly from place to place.
Dry/Natural Processing:
In the oldest method, “dry” or “natural” processing, the just-picked cherries are spread on open terraces or raised “beds” (elevated tables with screened surfaces to allow air to circulate around the coffee) and then dried in the sun. A careful program of monitoring and turning the beans assures they all dry evenly, and at night the beans are stacked and covered to guard against moisture.
When the cherries are dried to a target moisture level, the fruit is stripped away and the beans moved to storage to await milling and shipping.
Dry processing is used in areas with abundant sunshine and low rainfall – and most coffees from Brazil, Ethiopia, Yemen and Indonesia use this method. You’ll find these coffees to be sweet, complex and full bodied. Most espresso blends (ours included) use dry processed Brazils as a “base” coffee to provide these characteristics.
Wet Processing:
“Wet processed,” or “washed” coffees go from the harvest through water-based sorting steps in which unripe and defective cherries are sorted out of the mix via differences in weight and buoyancy. The cherries then pass through a “pulping” machine that removes the skin of the fruit and the pulpy layer beneath. These machines range in size from homemade, hand-cranked apparatus used by small farmers and cooperatives all the way up to the scale of major industrial machinery.
What remains are coffee beans covered in a dense, sticky layer called mucilage. The coffee moves to fermentation tanks where soaking for 16-36 hours softens and loosens this layer so it can be removed. The amount of time the beans remain in each tank varies a great deal from region to region, and new research is coming out shortly that will compare fermentation methods to see which has the greatest impact on cup quality and flavor. I’ll pass this along when I see it.
While passing through the fermentation process, additional sorting of the beans for defect removal and grading can be done based on bean density.
These now clean beans move to a drying step, either outdoors in the sun or using mechanical dryers, with the choice of method based on local weather conditions and access to drying equipment.
Washed coffees are typically “cleaner” tasting, fruity and sweet.
Pulped Natural Method:
This is a hybrid of the two methods above, with the cherries undergoing the pulping step, but then dried without undergoing fermentation. Coffees processed in this way have a nice sweetness and body like those of the natural process, but they retain the citrus-like “acidity” of the washed coffees.
Environmental Issues
The processing of coffee can yield very substantial amounts of waste, including the pulp of the cherries and sugar-infused fermenting water – and in many cases, these have been dumped into local rivers, having a dramatic impact on aquatic ecosystems. The handing of these wastes via composting or reuse is now an important element of more progressive farms and “beneficios” (processing stations).
Milling, Shipping and Distribution
What results from the processing steps is now called “parchment coffee,” or “pergamino.” The coffee beans are covered in a thin yellow hull, and they will be kept in this form until just prior to shipping. By keeping the coffee in this hull, the moisture content of the beans can be maintained in the often very hot conditions of the ports used to transport coffee.
Before shipping, the beans go through a final milling step to remove the parchment layer, are packaged into 60-70K bags and then transported via ship to destination ports around the world. (If you ever need one of these bags for a project or just to hang on your wall, drop me a note and I’ll save you one.)
In the US, coffees enter the country typically via the large west coast ports (Long Beach, Oakland or Seattle), New Orleans (they lost a LOT of coffee during Hurricane Katrina) and New Jersey. Importers take over at this point and become the conduit by which reaches roasters like me.
Defect Evaluation by Importer and/or Roaster
An important part of the purchase decision for a coffee broker making the decision to buy coffee in an origin country or a coffee importer buying from a broker is related to the cleanliness of the coffee. In this case, we’re not talking about a “clean” taste sensation (as in the washed coffees above), but more an assessment of how well the coffee has been sorted to remove defects. In a very low-grade coffee, you would see immature beans, beans damaged by insects and mold, and broken beans. A score based on the number and type of defects found in a sample in part determines the value of the coffee and whether it will achieve “specialty” grade status. All of our coffees (and those of most reputable roaster) are true specialty grade coffees.
That’s all for today. Thanks again for your wonderful support, and feel free to write back with any questions or if I can help in your purchasing or brewing of great coffee.
Kent
