What does it take to enjoy the perfect cup of coffee?
It begins at the source. The world’s finest coffee is planted, grown, harvested and milled packaged, and shipped under the strictest supervision and care. Everything must be done with utmost patience and painstaking attention to detail.

The plant

Despite the term being popularly used, coffee is not a true “bean”. Coffee “beans” as we know them were once seeds inside of a coffee fruit, or cherry. A single coffee tree will take up to 5 years before it begins producing cherries. Each tree produces roughly one pound of coffee per year. The Arabica plant grows at a higher altitude and requires significantly more care then it’s lesser quality, higher caffeine-content counterpart Robusta. Higher grown coffees result in a smaller, denser, more flavorful bean.

The harvest

Coffee is harvested when the coffee cherry turns bright red. Ripe coffee cherries are then hand-picked by a discerning harvester, with defective or damaged cherries being disposed of. Even after cherries are selectively harvested, they are placed in large water tubs prior to processing. Unripe cherries sink, ripe cherries float.

The processing

The processing begins with the cherries. The problem, there is delicious coffee yet to be untapped within the pulpy mess of fruit. The beans themselves are also encased in a hull. There are two main systems for getting those little beans out of the cherries, Dry processing and Wet processing. These terms affect the resulting cup character in very profound ways.

Dry process

Dry processed coffee is cleaned and then put in the sun to dry out. After around 4 weeks of raking and turning, the coffee is hulled. Dry processed coffee allows the coffee cherry fruit to continuously shape the flavor of the bean during drying and results in a complex cup with a heavy body.

Wet process

Wet processing starts by passing the cherries through screens that strip off the skin. The remaining pulp is typically allowed to stay on and ferment under much supervision, and then removed with large quantities of water.

Hulling

Hulling is one of the final steps in this process. The coffee beans still have the parchment (or hull) and silver skin. The hulling process typically uses a machine to remove these flaky remains. Sometimes coffee is polished after hulling to allowed the green bean to look pretty. Shiny coffee does not trick us however, since we blind taste test the many samples we receive in order to make unbiased, quality choices.

The shipping

Once the coffee has been graded and sorted, little pests such as sticks and pebbles have been removed, it needs to be stored in Jute bags (those big burlap sacks with fun logos) in a cool, dry place. Coffee at this stage can stay stable for approximately 1 year. This environment must be maintained during shipping. Unfortunately, many good coffees at the farm can end up becoming flawed by the time they reach American warehouses due to improper storage. The final step is the coffee reaches a warehouse owned by a Coffee Broker. These brokers send us many samples, and we get to enjoy lots of free coffee trying to find the best of the best. When we find a coffee that truly sticks out, we buy a bag and the roasting begins! And that’s all the work that goes into specialty coffee, before it even reaches us as the roaster! Clearly, a great cup of coffee is not something that is created by a roaster, but is something that a roaster brings out of an already great cup. The Paravisini Coffee Company standard is that we only select the finest coffees available to start with. Happy coffee drinking!

Comments