click on our logo to come inside |
Strip picking means the entire crop is picked in just one pass. Selective picking is, obviously, more expensive and is usually only used for arabica beans. It does, however, produce the best results. During the harvest season, whole families turn out and all the hands - men, women and children - join in the work. The Colonos, as the coffee pickers are called in Brazil, carefully select only the fully ripened fruit for a second, third, or fourth visit over the four to six month harvest season. On an average coffee farm, the pickers may gather between 100 and 200 pounds of coffee cherries per day. Of this total weight only 20 percent is coffee bean. Industrial processing must begin immediately after the fruit is harvested, to prevent the pulp from fermenting and deteriorating. The coffee beans can be prepared for roasting in one of two ways. The oldest, simplest, and cheapest, is the dry method. This produces so-called 'Natural' coffees and is adopted mostly in Brazil and Western Africa. Firstly, the harvest ed cherries are usually sorted and cleaned to separate the unripe, overripe and damaged cherries and to remove dirt, soil, twigs and leaves. This can be done by winnowing, which is commonly done by hand, using a large sieve. Any unwanted cherries or other material not winnowed away can be picked out from the top of the sieve. The ripe cherries can also be separated by flotation in washing channels close to the drying areas. The harvested cherries are then spread out, in the sun, on large concrete or brick patios or on matting raised to waist height on trestles. They are raked to avoid fermentation and to expose them evenly to the sun's rays. If it rains or the temperature falls considerable, the cherries have to be covered for protection. Alternatively, after two or three days, coffee can be put in drying rooms, where it is dried by the heat of a burner at 45-60 degrees C. It can take up to four weeks for moisture content of each cherry will have fallen to the optimum 12 percent of their original amount. The outer shell will have become dark brown and brittle. The cherries are then stored in large silos where they are able to continue to lose moisture. The drying operation is the most important stage of the process, since it affects the final quality of the green coffee. A coffee that has been overdried will become brittle and produce too many broken beans during hulling (broken beans are considered to be defective beans). Coffee that has not been dried sufficiently will be too moist and prone to rapid deterioration caused by the attack of fungi and bacteria. The other method of preparation is the wet method. It produces so-called 'Washed' or 'Mild' coffees and is adopted in Central America, Mexico, Colombia, Kenya and Tanzania. This involves more capital outlay and more care than the dry method. It does, however, help to preserve the intrinsic qualities of the bean better, producing a green coffee which is homogeneous and has few defective beans. Hence, the coffee produced by this method is usually regarded as being of better quality and commands higher prices. The main difference between the wet and dry methods is that the wet method removes the pulp from the bean within 12-24 hours of harvesting instead of allowing the cherries to air dry. The beans are separated from the skin and pulp by using a pulping machine which squeezes the cherries between fixed and moving surfaces. The flesh and the skin of the fruit are left on one side and the beans, enclosed in their parchment covering, on the other. The clearance between the surfaces is adjusted to avoid damage to the beans. The lighter, immature beans are then separated from the heavier, mature beans through specially designed washing channels or by shaking the beans through a strainer into a tank of water. The beans are then stored in fermentation tanks for up to two days during which time the slimy layer of the cherry is separated from its parchment like covering by natural enzymes. The length of the fermentation process is based on the condition of the beans an d the climate's condition. When the altitude is low, the fermentation time is short. At higher altitudes, the fermentation can take up to 48 hours. The coffee is then washed in huge quantities of water (about 100 litres for 10 kilos of coffee). It must then be dried so that it retains only about 10 percent moisture.In 1906 he started experiments and put his product, Red E Coffee, on the market in 1909. In 1938, Nestl?after being asked by Brazil to help find a solution to their coffee surpluses, invented freeze-dried coffee. Nescafe was developed and first introduced into Switzerland. Instant coffee really took off after 1956 when commercial television was introduced. The commercial breaks were too short a time in which to brew a cup of tea, but time enough for an instant coffee. The entrepreneurs of the coffee world like Nestl?nd General Foods realised this was their big chance and advertised their instant coffee during the breaks. In retaliation, the tea companies introduced the tea bag in a desperate bid t o compete. The government took over the tea trade in Britain during the Second World War introducting rationing which continued until 1952. After the war, however, people didn't start drinking as much tea again as expected - they drank coffee instead. The modern-day espresso machine was perfected by Achilles Gaggia in Italy in 1946. He managed to use a higher pressure than steam by using a spring powered lever system. Gaggia brought his revolutionary espresso machine to London in the 1950s and opened a mocha bar in Frith Street in Soho - hence the modern day coffee bar was born. The first pump driven espresso was produced in 1960 by Faema. Because of the economic importance of coffee exports, a number of Latin American countries made arrangements before World War 2 (1939-1945) to allocate export quotas so that each country would be assured a certain share of the coffee market. The first coffee quota agreement was arranged in 1940 and was adminstered by the Inter-American Coffee Board. It was not, however, u ntil 1962 that the idea of establishing coffee export quotas on a worldwide basis was adopted. This was set up by the United Nations as the International Coffee Agreement. During the five-year period when this agreement was in effect, 41 exporting countries and 25 importing countries agreed to its terms. The agreement was re-negotiated in 1968, 1976 and 1983. Participating nations failed to sign a new pact in 1989 and, as a result, world coffee prices plunged. There were a series of crop failures, most notably in Brazil in the early 1990s which meant that coffee prices increased dramatically. Only recently have prices begun to drop again. Coffee is the seed of a cherry from a tree which grows from sea level to approximately 6,000 feet in a narrow sub-tropical belt between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn around the world. There are typically about eight different stages that the humble coffee bean goes through in the process from being a humble seedling to being part of a freshly brewed cup. I n this section we follow the life of the bean from being a part of the coffee plant, to being harvested, processed, exported, taste tested, blended, roasted, ground and finally brewed. We also look at some of the coffee substitutes that are sometimes used in the making of coffee and the processes that coffee has to go through to be decaffeinated. Coffee comes from the Latin form of the genus Coffea, a member of the Rubiaceae family which includes more than 500 genera and 6,000 species of tropical trees and shrubs. Other members of the family include the gardenias and plants which yield quinine and other useful substances, but Coffea is by far the most important member of the family economically.Eighteenth century Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778) first described the genus but, to this day, botanists still disagree on the classification because of the wide variations that occur in coffee plants and seeds.
ground coffee roasted coffee coffee beans filter coffee fresh coffee gourmet coffee mailorder coffee organic coffee fairtrade coffee gift ideas coffee gift green teas fruit teas herbal teas tea
ground coffee, roasted coffee, coffee beans, filter coffee, fresh coffee, gourmet coffee, mailorder coffee, organic coffee, fairtrade coffee, gift ideas, coffee gift, green teas, fruit teas, herbal teas, tea, premium coffee, organic coffee