Coffee plants are harvested for their cherries one season a year, harvested in multiple passes as the cherries ripen.

Harvesting & Processing

Harvesting is a laborious process, usually done by hand because of the nature of the plant. Coffee cherries do not mature at the same time and should be picked when they are red and mature. Immature beans will not ripen after they are picked. However, an over mature cherry is called a natural or raisin. While at Kona the cherries are usually picked by hand, at Ka‘anapali conditions make it more cost effective to us mechanized equipment for harvesting the cherries. The harvesters use dangling grabbers to shake the trees at the perfect tension, aiming to release only the mature berries.

After the cherries have been picked they must be processed in order to remove the seeds (the coffee beans). This involves removing multiple layers covering the beans.

Natural processors let the fruit dry before they remove the beans, which allows the beans to absorb the flavor of some of the surrounding fruit, making the coffee sweeter. Besides the natural process of drying coffee, natural can also mean the coffee came into the mill with the dried pulp on it, but still underwent the wet process. The true wet process means the coffee comes in ripe and is pulped in the sun or machine dried. Another term for this is "washed coffee". In other words, wet processors go for a cleaner taste and immediately remove as much fruit as possible by hand or machine and then allow the beans to ferment.

Anatomy of a coffee bean

During fermentation, the seeds and what is left of the fruit are given a water bath which softens the mucilage for removal. After the mucilage is removed the seeds are still encased in parchment and must be carefully dried by a turning process. Sometimes a mechanical dryer is used to dry the beans completely to 11 percent humidity, but this is often done under the sun. At this point the dry milled, or green coffee can be stored for market.

The parchment keeps the coffee fresh for storage, but eventually must be removed. At this point the beans are sorted by size, weight and color. Beans with defects are removed. Today this is usually done by machine. Green coffee must still be roasted, ground and brewed before it reaches the cup.

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