All About Green Coffee Beans

Raw Coffee Beans

The raw product fully determines the quality of the finished product. Starting with a high quality coffee with minimal defects is key in producing the best cup of coffee possible.

Coffee is a very labor intensive commodity. The cherries ripen at different times so they must be picked by hand. There are about 4000 coffee beans in a pound. The average coffee tree will produce only about 2 pounds of roasted coffee per year.

These green coffee beans are then sent to be dried. After drying, they are sorted by size and graded (usually by hand). Then they are bagged and sent to the roasters. The beans will remain green until roasted. It is important to note that green coffee will stay fresh for a very long time. When freshness is talked about in coffee, it means from date that the green beans have been roasted.

Different methods are used to harvest ripe cherries from the coffee shrubs. Once the cherries have begun to turn red or yellow, harvest begins. On large plantations, various machines are used to move through the plantations and strip all cherries from the plants. This process is not ideal, as many cherries will not have reached peak ripeness when the harvest begins. On smaller plantations, those typical of where Planet Bean sources beans from, harvest is done completely by hand. The entire family is involved in this stage of coffee production. With baskets and hooked canes in hand, producers move through their land picking only the ripest of cherries. A typical coffee tree may be visited 3 or 4 times before harvest is complete.

Next, the fruit exterior of the cherry needs to be removed from the seeds. This is accomplished by either of 2 ways, the dry process or the wet process.

The dry process allows the cherries to dry out in the sun or in dryers and then use machines to strip the dried fruit off of the coffee beans.

The wet process uses a soaking method to make the fruit come off and produces coffee which is referred to as washed coffee.

With these methods, coffee can be compared to wine in that dry processed coffees are like red wine; wild, complex and robust. While washed coffees are like white wine; clean, crisp and perfectly balanced.