Did you ever sit down with a cup and wonder where the beans came from and how coffee harvesting actually works? You probably know that coffee beans grow on trees, but not many lovers of this liquid, black gold know much more than that. Our comprehensive harvesting guide will give you some insight into how coffee harvesting works and what’s involved in it.
There’s more to coffee harvesting than just picking coffee cherries off a coffee tree. The harvesting process has quite an influence on the quality of the beverage in your cup. If the farmer and the workers don’t do it right, you’ll end up with a beverage that is low quality and tastes like vinegar was poured into the mix! So, let’s take a look at what needs to happen to avoid that.
Coffee Harvest Season
The harvest season varies depending on the region and climate. Some countries in the coffee belt are even lucky enough to have multiple harvest seasons per year (often a main and a secondary crop harvest). The harvest season usually happens during the months of the year during which cherries turn a deep red color.
If you’re interested in finding out the times during which coffee is harvested in various countries, you can look at harvesting calendars.
Just a few examples from three different continents:
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In Brazil, the harvest usually happens between May and September.
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Vietnam harvests beans from October to December (Robusta beans) and November to January (Arabica beans).
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In Ethiopia, the main harvesting season usually runs from October to February, but there’s also the extended harvesting season, which means beans are sometimes harvested as late as March.
Ripening of the Coffee Cherry
The ripening of the cherry is a gradual process. It can take seven to nine months from flowering to a fruit that's ready for picking. During that time, the cherry gradually changes its color a few times.
It is important that cherries are picked when they are truly ripe, not before (that results in a pretty acidic beverage) and not after (overripe coffee cherries give you a beverage with less sweetness and less flavor or an unpleasant flavor).
So, what stages do cherries go through?
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At first, they are green. Unlike a traffic light, green doesn’t mean “go ahead and pick it.” Quite the contrary. Green cherries are basically unripe fruit!
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The cherry starts growing but stays green during that process. It then starts turning yellow or orange, depending on the actual species.
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Now, the interesting and important stage is when the cherries become red, which means they are ripe and ready for picking. It’s important to note, however, that some cherries turn a bright, intense yellow or orange instead. That’s why it’s important that the farmers and pickers know their cherries well!
If you leave the cherry on the tree too long, it will slowly start the wrinkling process and become darker.
In that process, the cherry will lose sweetness and flavor. To get a nice, flavorful coffee, the cherries absolutely need to be picked at the right time.
The short of it: coffee harvested too early gives a far too acidic cup, while coffee harvested too late generally doesn't taste nice at all.
Coffee Plant Yield
One interesting part about harvesting that many people don’t know about is that not all trees yield the same amount of cherries. While this depends a lot on the type of coffee, it also has to do with altitude, climate, soil conditions, and farming practices.
The coffee plant yield can differ quite dramatically, but without taking extremes into consideration, a firmly established and well-cared-for tree produces around 4,000 beans per year. Depending on the variety, this can be anywhere between 1 and 2 pounds.
Coffee Harvesting Methods
With all that in mind, the next thing to think about is how the cherries are harvested. You may have the romantic idea of all coffee being handpicked by happy, fairly paid farmers in your head, but the reality looks a little different.
There are several methods used to harvest coffee cherries, each with its own advantages and disadvantages.
The choice of method for harvesting coffee depends on factors like the size of the farm, terrain, availability of labor (and cost of labor), and desired quality of the coffee beans.
Mechanical Harvesting
As you may have guessed, mechanical harvesting is a harvesting method that involves machines! It’s fairly simple and fast:
Machines shake the coffee cherries loose and collect the falling cherries. It is an efficient method that is used by large-scale farms on relatively flat terrain (machines struggle on hilly farms with challenging terrain).
The downside is that mechanical harvesting can damage the trees and result in lower-quality coffee. After all, machines can't make sure that only ripe cherries are harvested! This often leads to the need for manual sorting later on.
Strip Picking
In this method, workers strip the entire branch of all the cherries, regardless of ripeness. Strip picking is a quick and cost-effective method.
This method is often used by small-scale farmers because it reduces the need to send pickers out into the field more than once (reducing labor costs).
However, like mechanical harvesting, strip-picked coffee usually is a mix of ripe and unripe cherries, and isn’t the best option for the quality of the final cup!
Selective Picking (Hand Picking Coffee)
Selective picking is the most labour-intensive (expensive) and time-consuming method, but it produces the highest-quality coffee (and you’ll usually pay higher prices).
Workers hand-pick only the cherries that are ready, which means only the ripest cherries are selectively picked individually.
This method is preferred by specialty coffee producers from the specialty market who prioritize a coffee's quality over its quantity. Of course, this also lets them charge a premium for their product (rightfully so!).
Ground Harvesting
Ground harvesting isn’t a very popular method, but for some coffee farms, it’s the only way to access fruit from coffee plants that are too tall or on challenging terrain.
As the name suggests, fallen coffee fruit is picked up from the ground.
While only the ripe cherries usually fall to the ground, these cherries are often of lower quality.
They could be damaged from the fall and could be contaminated from their contact with the soil.
What Happens Next?
After the coffee cherries have been harvested, the next step in coffee production process is the transport to a processing plant (unless they are processed on the actual farm).
During processing (which can happen in various ways and can also be pretty labor-intensive), the coffee bean is removed from the coffee cherry. The result of that is green coffee beans, which then need to be roasted.
We have multiple articles about coffee processing, so check these out if you’d like to learn more about coffee processing and how it affects the taste of coffee.
Conclusion
Coffee harvesting is a more difficult process than people think. While it is easy to explain in a short article, it’s quite the undertaking for coffee farmers, and it takes a good picker to recognize the difference between a fruit that's ready or not quite there yet.
A lot of work has to happen before we can enjoy a lovely cup made with freshly roasted beans - and it’s nice to sometimes spare a thought for the process that’s required to make one of the best drinks in the world!
