Farm to Cup Coffee Process
What is farm to cup coffee? What’s involved in ‘processing’ coffee? Here at Hog Heaven Coffee farm, we have over 700 coffee trees which are individually pruned, fertilized and maintained by hand.
It takes approximately three years for a keiki (baby) tree to fully grow and start producing cherry. First come the flowering (small fragrant white flowers), then green beans, then red beans, called cherry, because they resemble the cherry fruit. Not all the cherries ripen at the same time so we individually pick the red cherries and leave the others for later. Once the ripe cherries are picked, they go through the wet mill.
Wet mill is a machine that pulps (takes out the outer skin), separates out the bad cherry, and washes the beans which are then put on racks to dry.
- As the beans begin to dry, they’re referred to as “Parchment.” Parchment is actually an outer layer of the bean similar to the “skin” on peanuts;
- Every day we agitate the beans by hand to achieve even drying;
- Our parchment is dried by sun and wind in our barn until the moisture level reaches15-16% moisture content. (This is as low as we can go naturally, in an environment that gets 150-200 inches of rain per year); and
- The parchment is then dried further (ideally to12-13% moisture content) using our mechanical dryer, then double bagged in airtight in “Grain Pro” bags which are then placed in burlap bags for storage, awaiting your order.
Whew, this is a long journey from tree to cherry to parchment. But there’s more! Once we receive an order, the parchment is dry milled; that is peeling the ‘skin’ further. This results in “green bean” and that is then ready to be roasted.
When we first started, rather than using the wet mill, all the process was done manually. A short video of both manual and wet mill process can be seen YouTube channel, Hog Heaven Coffee farm.