Coffee Processing

What is coffee processing? Coffee processing, or the coffee bean process, is the way in which the raw fruit from a coffee plant is converted into green coffee beans. This is where you cold process coffee before the coffee roasting process. In the field of processing coffee, there are two general route that one can go: the wet process and the dry process.

In the wet process, you use special coffee processing equipment from a company such as Coffee Processing Systems, Inc (that you can look up in one of the many coffee processing equipment directories) which is capable of using microbes to break down the cellulose in the coffee beans and then control the drying of the coffee beans. Cellulase and food processing in coffee are subjects that relate to the wet process. Parts of the wet process are typically controlled by machines, although it can be handled by humans as well. The wet process for coffee processing is the most common form of coffee processing in the world by far.

The dry process involves basically just waiting for the fruit of the coffee plant to sun dry, after which the pulpy parts of the plant can be removed by hand. This takes longer and is more human effort intensive; as a result it is much less common than the wet process, although if you are willing to pay the price for gourmet coffee you may be able to find more varieties of gourmet coffee products that are made using the dry process.

Finally, coffee processing sometimes contains other steps that improve the quality of the coffee product. These steps include sorting grading (to remove beans that are bad or the wrong shape), polishing (to remove the skin), correct storage techniques, aging and decaffeination. Also, the green coffee beans that result from the processes listed above are then roasted at some point. In some cases the roasting is done by gourmet coffee companies before the coffee is delivered to the buyers, in other cases people purchase the green coffee beans directly; the end users of the coffee beans then carry out the roasting process however they like to get the precise taste that they are looking for and the best possible roast for the particular variety of coffee beans and the qualities of the particular season that they have received. All of these techniques and methods come to play in the world of coffee processing.