Greg in the Islands – part 2
Coffee cherries on the tree–you can see how they ripen at different stages. This is why great quality comes from hand picking and not from stripping the cherries all at once. Over ripe cherries put a sour taste in the coffee. Under ripe can make the flavor bitter, astringent, and metallic–even rotten fish.
Squishing the cherry to pop out the beans
two in the hand.
This is the processing station at Greenwell farm. After the cherries are de-pulped they undgo a dry-fermentation to remove the mucilage from the parchment. Microbes actually eat the pectins and sugars.
After fermentation the coffee is placed on a drying patio and raked until it dries to 12% humidity. In this picture the wet cherries are being placed in the wheelbarrow and dumped on the patio. They have a retractable roof system like Safeco Field that they can cover the parchment with if it begins to rain–a daily event at 4:00 PM inKona.