Bean To Cup

The Harvest

The harvest is the most labour-intensive and expensive part of the whole process of bringing coffee to your cup.

• Nine months or so after the blossom appears, the beans can be harvested
• Harvesting lasts for around four months, however, in countries closer to the equator, it lasts throughout the year
• Arabica beans are usually gathered by hand when pickers select only the ripest berries
• There are many other methods of harvesting: for example when all the berries are stripped from the branch and the ripe ones are chosen later and some of the very large Brazilian plantations use machines
• In order to extract the beans from the cherry, one of two methods (wet or dry) is used
• The wet method involves washing the berries and allowing the ripe ones to rise to the surface of the water. The beans are now 'jet washed' to remove any pulp from the cherry and then fermented for two days in water to ensure that nothing other than bean remains
• The dry method means leaving them out in the sun for up to a week or placing them in large metal drums full of hot air

You now have ready-to-roast beans. For that special Rombouts moment, however, there's still much work to be done