Once the coffee is mature, which takes about three to four years, it will start to produce coffee and the process starts with flowers. This beautiful, jasmine-like flower is where our branding has evolved from!
Once the flowers disappear green cherries are left which turn into yellow or red cherries (for most varietals anyway). Once the cherries are ripe they are harvested.
Arabica coffee prefers to live at relatively high altitude with temperatures of 15-24 C. It is a rather picky tree and likes quite specific conditions compared to Robusta. Arabica certainly does not like frost and prefers around 1500 - 2500 mm of rain over a nine month period.
The Coffee Tree
The coffee tree (or technically plant) is an evergreen shrub which belongs to the Rubiaceae family and grows in countries all over the world between the tropic of Cancer and Capricorn. Once the tree is about three years old it will start producing coffee. There are many different types of coffee species with the two most popular being Arabica and Robusta.
Arabica (Coffea Arabica) accounts for 75% of the world's total production. Robusta (Coffea Canephora), which is mostly grown in West Africa and Asia (especially Vietnam) has a much bigger yield compared to Arabica and a higher caffeine content. Both species can grow up to 10 meters tall but are usually kept low for harvesting reasons. Arabica is self pollinating and the Robusta tree requires cross pollination.
The coffee tree
Selective picking involves picking only the ripest cherries and is very labour intense. Pickers often go to the same tree multiple times. Stripping is done when the cherries are sorted afterwards and unripe cherries are discarded (or sold separately) - this is often done in Brazil where the cherries mature at the same time and the volumes are extremely large. Coffee can also be collected by harvesting machines which shake the coffee trees.
Every 100kg of coffee cherries produce around 15kg of coffee.
Harvesting coffee
During the dry season coffee will be harvested from the coffee trees. The ripest coffee cherries obviously produce the finest coffees and this is usually when the coffee cherries are a beautiful red colour. When you think that a coffee cherry contains two seeds and we need about 100 coffees beans to make a double shot of coffee... it is quite a bit of work!
Once the harvesting period starts, which is usually September to March north of the equator and April and May south of the equator, the workers go through the coffee plantation to harvest coffee cherries. Coffee is usually harvested by selective picking or stripping.