Do you know how the coffee beans are processed?

Coffee is popular all over the world which has become a part of cultural life. Many people even form the habit of drinking coffee every day. But do you know how coffee berries become coffee beans?

The fruit of the coffee plant is commonly called a "coffee cherry" which is made up of the outer skin, pulp, pectin, endocarp, silver skin, and the innermost embryo. The coffee bean we usually talk about is actually the embryo in there. After the coffee cherries harvest, the outer skin, pulp, inner skin and silver skin are removed to get the coffee beans.

Harvest of coffee cherry

There are many steps needed to separate the beans, including the three common treatments which are sun drying, water washing and honey treatment. Sun drying method is to dry the whole fruit which can bring the flavor of rich fruit while washing method is to remove the pulp and pectin through fermentation before dying which has the obvious sour taste and clean flavor. Honey treatment is to dry both the pulp and pectin after peeling the fruit that requires constant turning to avoid stickiness during the whole process, which is difficult but reduces the acidity of the beans and brings a delicate aroma.

Sun Drying Method

Water Washing Method

Honey Treatment Method

There are a lot of processes to get the fine coffee beans from coffee cherries on the tree. It is the complexity and rigor of the process that makes coffee beans have the good flavor. Therefore, if one wants the coffee beans with good quality it is necessary to sort the fresh coffee fruits.

Coffee Fruit Sorting Machine from Henning Saint can sort coffee fruits immediately after harvest or the wet fruits after washing. The equipment can remove green fruit, black fruit, yellow fruit, semi-ripe fruit efficiently. The equipment from Henning Saint can also replace the traditional manual sorting to get efficient grading in processing raw and baked coffee beans.