Coffee Berries and their seeds undergo several processes before they become the familiar roasted coffee

Berries are traditionally selectively picked by hand; a labour intensive method, it involves the selection of only the berries at the peak of ripeness. More commonly, crops are strip picked, where all berries are harvested simultaneously regardless of ripeness by person or machine. After picking, green coffee is processed by one of two methods — the dry process method, simpler and less labour intensive as the berries can be strip picked, and the wet process method, which incorporates fermentation into the process and yields a mild coffee.

Then they are sorted by ripeness and colour and the flesh of the berry is removed, usually by machine, and the seeds – usually called beans – are fermented to remove the slimy layer of mucilage still present on the bean. When the fermentation is finished, the beans are washed with large quantities of fresh water to remove the fermentation residue, which generates massive amounts of coffee wastewater. Finally, the seeds are dried. The one method of drying coffee is using drying tables. In this method, the pulped and fermented coffee is spread thinly on raised beds, which allows the air to pass on all sides of the coffee, and then the coffee is mixed by hand. In this method the drying that takes place is more uniform, and fermentation is less likely.

Most African coffee is dried in this manner and certain coffee farms around the world are starting to use this traditional method. Next, the coffee is sorted, and labelled as green coffee. Another way to let the coffee beans dry is to let them sit on a concrete patio and rake over them in the sunlight. Some companies use cylinders to pump in heated air to dry the coffee beans, though this is generally in places where the humidity is very high.

The next step in the process is the roasting of the green coffee

Coffee is usually sold in a roasted state, and with rare exceptions all coffee is roasted before it is consumed. It can be sold roasted by the supplier, or it can be home roasted. The roasting process influences the taste of the beverage by changing the coffee bean both physically and chemically. The bean decreases in weight as moisture is lost and increases in volume, causing it to become less dense. The density of the bean also influences the strength of the coffee and requirements for packaging. The actual roasting begins when the temperature inside the bean reaches approximately 200 °C (392 °F), though different varieties of beans differ in moisture and density and therefore roast at different rates.

During roasting, caramelization occurs as intense heat breaks down starches in the bean, changing them to simple sugars that begin to brown, changing the colour of the bean. Sucrose is rapidly lost during the roasting process and may disappear entirely in darker roasts. During roasting, aromatic oils, acids, and caffeine weaken, changing the flavour; at 205 °C (401 °F), other oils start to develop. One of these oils is caffeol, created at about 200 °C (392 °F), which is largely responsible for coffee’s aroma and flavour. At Beans About Coffee we only use the drum roasting process. We believe that with drum roasting we can create coffee with a much richer and fuller mouth feel. Drum roasting has the great ability to bring out the nuances of flavour as it is much more controllable. Our goal is to have fresher fuller coffee available thus we have invested in small drum roasters so that we roast only within our consumption, usage, and needs in our own specific areas.

Coffee is a brewed drink prepared from roasted seeds, commonly called coffee beans, of the coffee plant. They are seeds of coffee cherries that grow on trees in over 70 countries. Green unroasted coffee is one of the most traded agricultural commodities in the world. Today, coffee is one of the most popular beverages worldwide.

The energizing effect of the coffee bean plant is thought to have been discovered in Yemen in Arabia and in the northeast region of Ethiopia, and the cultivation of coffee first expanded in the Arab world. The earliest credible evidence of coffee drinking appears in the middle of the fifteenth century, in the Sufi monasteries of Yemen in southern Arabia. From the Muslim world, coffee spread to the rest of Europe, Indonesia, America. Coffee has played an important role in many societies throughout history.

Coffee berries, which contain the coffee seed, or “bean”, are produced by several species of small evergreen bushes of the genus Coffea. The two most commonly grown are the highly regarded Coffea arabica, and the ‘robusta’ form of the hardier Coffea canephora. Both are cultivated primarily in Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Africa. Once ripe, coffee berries are picked, processed, and dried. The seeds are then roasted to varying degrees, depending on the desired flavour. They are then ground and brewed to create coffee. Coffee can be prepared and presented in a variety of ways. An important export commodity, coffee was the top agricultural export for twelve countries in 2004, and it was the world’s seventh-largest legal agricultural export by value in 2005. The method of brewing coffee has been found to be important to its health effect.

Making coffee using a drip brewer of a French Press – use 1 heaped tablespoon of coffee per 180ml water used.