The way of the coffee: Growing and harvesting coffee - what the beans go through before we get your hands on them.

The way of the coffee: Growing and harvesting coffee … what the beans go through before we get your hands on them. 

coffee cherries

The farmers definitely do not have an easy life. They have a fickle plant to deal with. The coffee trees need the right kind of shade - water - drainage - temperature. And then there are different issues, like mites, coffee borers, coffee rust and root rot to deal with. Sounds like a tough task to even bring trees to a harvesting age which is usually between 3 and 5 years. 

Arabica plants are more prone to these issues - robusta plants a bit more - erm robust. 

After 3 to 5 years the trees should be ready and coffee cherries can be harvested. But again the farmers are faced with a challenge - not all cherries are ripe at the same time. In order to achieve a uniform harvest, the cherries need to be selectively picked. Only when this is done right, we can expect a delicious coffee. If not, all kinds of beans will be mixed together - over ripe, ripe and underripe. You can imagine that this will not give you the best of results. 

A person carefully hand-picks ripe coffee cherries from lush foliage, highlighting the artisanal process of coffee harvesting.

Unfortunately commercially grown coffee is often strip-harvested, all cherries will be stripped from the tree at the same time and the harvest will consist of a mixture of all ripeness levels. 

This is one of the reasons why we pay more for our green beans. More hands are involved in the process. For me a little price to pay for way better flavours.