COFFEE HARVESTING

Coffee is an abundant and widespread beverage all over the world. Supplies of Coffee currently outmatch the demand for coffee. Brazil is the largest producer of coffee in the world and accounts for about 25% of annual coffee production. Brazil single-handedly produced over 3 million metric tons of coffee in 2019. It is evident that quality, not quantity, is becoming the primary keyword in the coffee industry.

The coffee plant grows as a shrub or small tree well across the Bean Belt, which lies between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn. The Bean Belt includes South America, Central America, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. The coffee plant (tree) begins to bear fruit after 3-4 years, depending on the specie. Coffee fruits are called cherries. These cherries first appear green (mature, unripe), then hard-red (mature, ripe, hard, less juicy), and soft-red (mature, ripe, soft, moist), and then garnet red (mature, over-ripe). This period of ripeness usually spans about 3-7 months. The ideal time to harvest (pick) coffee fruits is when they are hard-red. Unripe green cherries will make the coffee bitter while garnet red, over-ripe cherries will give the coffee an arid taste.

There are several ways of coffee picking; in different places and for various reasons. However, it is essential to note that the coffee brew is as good as the cherries when picked. The overall quality of the coffee depends on the cherries when they are selected, and the no processing technique can improve this quality. It is crucial to keep an eye on the cherries as they mature and ripe (as they become hard-red). However, coffee cherries don’t mature and ripe at once. You are most likely to find the green, red, and garnet red cherries on one coffee tree. Therefore, it is imperative also to choose the best harvesting technique for optimal coffee quality when picking your coffee cherries for processing. There are two main coffee bean harvesting techniques: Handpicking and Machine Harvesting techniques.

Handpicking Techniques of Coffee Harvesting

Coffee is traditionally handpicked when ripe (or due for harvest). There are two methods of handpicking coffee: selective handpicking or strip handpicking.

Selective handpicking requires laborers to pick only ripe coffee fruits selectively. Every coffee tree has fruits at different stages of maturity and ripeness. Selectively going through the plantation and picking only ripe fruits will increase the overall quality of the coffee. However, it is labor-intensive and time-consuming. It will take more laborers to go round the plantation every 3-8 days to pick ripe fruits. The particular handpicking method is far the best method for harvesting coffee fruits. However, production will be slow, and labor costs will increase. This method is famous in Colombia and Hawaii, where man labor cost is cheap.

Strip handpicking is common in Brazil where production is high, and harvesting is only one round. This method requires laborers to just place their hands around the base of the fruit-bearing branch, and then pull their hands along it, taking all the fruits there. Strip handpicking is common in commodity coffee production. It includes all the coffee fruit in the plantation irrespective of their stage of maturity. However, strip harvesting is used in most of the coffee cherries that are hard-ripe. In this case, selectively remove the unripe cherries from the ripe cherries before processing.

Mechanized Coffee Harvesting

There are two levels of machines used to harvest coffee. It is a piece of equipment because it still requires some degree of man labor. The other is more mechanized. These machines do strip-harvesting like strip-handpicking. The difference is that you don’t get to use your hands here. The first machine is called a Derricadeiras, and the second machine looks like a tractor.

The Derricadeiras handheld machines have two vibrating arms. It has a remarkable “Y” shape with the handle underneath the two vibrating arms. Laborers are required to place a plastic container or canvas under the coffee tree and then bring the running Derricadeiras to the coffee fruit-bearing branches. The vibrator will apply mild pressure to the stalk holding the fruits, loosen them, and cause the nuts to fall into collection container or canvas.

The more mechanized “tractor-like” machines also operate like the Derricadeiras. However, these stripping machines rotating and vibrating rods that tug the cherries lose and knock them into an assembly of plates and pipes that transfer them to a collection container or canvass. These machines are time-efficient and can be used to harvest large hectares of land in a few passes. However, they are applicable in farmlands or plantations that have flat-topographies. These machines are conventional in Brazil and Hawaii, where there are flat topographies, and coffee produced as commodity-grade.

Coffee Quality after Harvesting and Processing

Coffee fruits are processed immediately after picking. There are two main methods of processing Coffee: drying method and wet method. The drying method is standard in Brazil, where the coffee fruits are dried whole without pulping. Mill the coffee fruits (graded and packaged for shipment) after thorough drying before removing the pulp and other parts of the skin The wet method is more common in Hawaii. It is longer and often better. Here, remove the flesh of the cherries first, and then other parts of the cherries’ outer skin are subjected to fermentation and thorough washing before the fruits are dried. Once they are thoroughly dry, the cherries are milled, graded, and packaged for sales.

It is important to note that the quality of coffee depends on the harvesting of the fruits. Coffee processing cannot improve the coffee beyond the variety of fruit after picking. However, faulty processing can reduce the quality of the coffee, even if they are correctly picked.

Final Verdict

Coffee beans harvesting is a significant determinant of the quality of the coffee. A coffee cup is as good as it was when the beans were harvested. Therefore, coffee growers and producers need to have an excellent eye on the maturation of the seeds in their plantations and use the best methods to preserve the quality of their coffee products.