How are coffee beans processed?
• The fruit from the coffee plant is harvested either mechanically or by hand. It is best to harvest when the fruit is ripe (i.e., red in color). • The harvested fruit is sorted. Since some of the fruit will not be ripe or even damaged, they are sorted out. • The pulp is removed (or mostly removed), leaving behind just the coffee bean. There are a couple of ways to remove The pulp: • One way is to use a huge machine to thoroughly soak the bean with fresh water. That makes the pulp easier to remove, but requires a lot of water. Even after this process a thin film is left behind on the bean. In order to remove this film, the bean is thoroughly dried so that the film can simply fall off. • Another way is to leave the coffee fruit out to dry. This is a very long process as it can take many weeks for the fruit to dry to the proper level. • Once the fruit undergoes one of those two processes, it is hulled. That is, whether there is a thin film on the fruit or the dried out pulp, this hulling
