The journey of how coffee gets from its origin, usually some exotic location in the world, to a delicious drink that nearly all Americans enjoy is much more fascinating than one might think. Coffee production can really be broken up into 3 major steps: planting, harvesting, and roasting.
Planting the coffee seeds is the start of the very long, but important procedure in growing coffee. What a lot of people do not really think about is the fact that coffee beans are actually seeds that are planted in the ground and used to grow coffee trees that will eventually bear fruit called coffee cherries. This process of planting coffee trees and waiting for the fruit to ripen is a long process that usually takes about 3 to 4 years in most coffee growing regions of the world. Some countries, like Colombia have trees that will bear fruits twice a year, but most just have an annual harvesting period. Coffee growers can tell when the fruit is perfectly ripe enough to be picked when the coffee cherries turn a very deep red.
Harvesting and processing coffee fruits is one of the most important parts of the entire process of growing coffee, because there are certain requirements that have to happen to ensure that the coffee batch is perfect and can be stored correctly. There are two methods to processing coffee after the cherries have been harvested, the dry method, and the wet method. The dry method is the most popular method, and is known as the original way to process coffee. The dry method takes all of the newly picked coffee cherries, lays them out to dry in the sun on a huge tarp, and ensures that they are turned every so often so that each angle of the fruit is hit by the sun. It is also very important that the fruits are covered during rain and at night to make sure that moisture doesn’t get in. After many weeks of these fruits being dried in the sun, they are brought to be milled by a machine, which will take off the outer shell of the fruit exposing the bean.
The final step in the preparation of coffee is probably the step that we all know: actually making it possible to drink. There are a few steps to make coffee. The first way is to roast the beans, which means heating them up to a temperature of about 550 degrees and keeping them moving to release the flavor. After roasting, coffee beans are to be ground up to really release the flavor, and make it nice and easy for water to pass through and collect this flavor. Finally, in the brewing stage, coffee is made via heating up water, and letting it pass through the ground up coffee beans to produce a traditional cup.
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