Manufacturing Coffee

Coffee, which is a widely consumed beverage in the modern society, is prepared from roasted seeds, commonly called beans. Coffee berries, which are known as ‘cherries’, are produced by several species of small evergreen bush of the genus Coffee. Coffea arabica and Coffea canephora, which are the two main cultivated species of the coffee plant, are cultivated in Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia. Coffee beans from different countries usually have different characteristics such as flavor, aroma, body, and acidity. These taste characteristics are dependent not only on the coffee's growing region, but also on the process of manufacturing coffee. The process of manufacturing coffee has several steps.

First of all, the coffee berries, each of which contains two coffee beans, are picked by hand. After coffee berries are picked, the flesh of the berry is removed and the beans are squeezed out in pulping machines. After that, the beans are slightly fermented in tanks for 24 hours. When the slight fermentation is finished, the beans are washed in a washing canal with large quantities of fresh water to remove the fermentation residue. Then the beans are spread on the ground and turned over regularly by hand for two to three weeks until the beans are dried completely. When the beans are dried, they are hulled and polished with hulling machines to remove remaining outer skin. After the beans are hulled and polished, they are sorted for size and graded; following that, they are loaded onto ships and exported to other countries. Arriving in these countries, the green beans are unloaded from ships and taken for roasting by roaster companies. The final step in the process is that the roasted beans are ground with coffee grinders before they are sold.

In conclusion, the process of manufacturing coffee contains a series of steps: picking, pulping, fermenting, washing, drying, hulling and polishing, sorting and grading, loading and exporting, unloading and roasting, and grinding. Among these steps, the roasting process is the most important step to decide the taste of the coffee.