Stage Three: The Coffee Tree Flowers

After years of growth comes one of the most beautiful stages of coffee production.

The tree flowers.

Coffee trees produce small white blossoms that can cover their branches after periods of rainfall. They are delicate, fragrant and short lived. Those flowers are also extremely important because they are the beginning of the next coffee crop. After pollination, the flowers eventually fall away and small green fruits begin developing in their place.Those tiny fruits will become coffee cherries.

Stage Four: The Coffee Cherry Develops

Coffee does not grow on a tree looking like the brown beans you see inside a bag. It grows as fruit. Young coffee cherries begin green and gradually mature over several months. Depending on the coffee variety, ripe cherries are commonly red, although some varieties ripen to yellow or other colors. Inside that fruit are several layers surrounding the seeds.

Those seeds are our future coffee beans.

The quality of that fruit matters because producing exceptional coffee begins long before roasting. A roaster can develop the flavors already present in a coffee, but roasting cannot magically transform poor quality green coffee into exceptional specialty coffee. That is why careful farming and harvesting matter so much.

Stage Five: Harvesting the Coffee

Eventually, the cherries are ready to harvest. Depending on the farm, terrain, country and production system, coffee may be harvested by hand or with machinery. For many specialty coffees, selective hand picking allows workers to focus on ripe cherries rather than removing every fruit from the branch at once. Imagine picking blueberries. Some berries may be perfectly ripe while others on the same plant still need more time. Coffee can be similar. Selecting ripe fruit requires more labor, but ripeness can have an important effect on the sweetness and overall quality of the finished coffee. And harvesting is only the beginning. Now farmers have to get the seeds out of the fruit.

Stage Six: Processing Changes the Coffee

This is one of the most fascinating parts of the entire journey. After harvesting, coffee cherries need to be processed. The processing method can significantly influence how a coffee ultimately tastes. Three terms you will commonly encounter in specialty coffee are washed, natural and honey processed.

Washed Coffee

With washed processing, much of the fruit is removed from the seed before drying. Fermentation and washing help remove the remaining mucilage.

Washed coffees are often associated with clarity and a cleaner expression of the coffee's acidity and origin characteristics.

Natural Coffee

With natural processing, the coffee cherry is dried with the fruit surrounding the seed. During this extended contact, the fruit can influence the flavor of the coffee.

Natural coffees can sometimes produce pronounced fruitiness, sweetness and fuller flavors.

Honey Processed Coffee

Despite the name, honey processed coffee does not mean honey is added to the beans. Instead, some of the sticky fruit mucilage remains around the seed while the coffee dries. The word honey describes the sticky texture of that mucilage.

Honey processing can create an interesting balance between the clarity associated with washed coffees and the fruit driven qualities often associated with natural processing.