Harvest Season Magic: The Art of Perfect Coffee Cherry Selection
Buenos Dias Everyone!
World class coffee begins with attention to every small detail leading to the harvest. Picking out coffee cherries is an art. We have been fortunate to have generations of wisdom meet modern technology to ensure that every specialty coffee bean carries the best possible flavor.
The magic you taste in your cappuccinos is a direct result of understanding the biology of the coffee tree and the chemistry of its fruit. Let's explore the science behind this incredible process.
-If it’s good for EARTH it’s GOOD for YOU
The Heart of Coffee: The Ripening Process
Just like an apple or a grape, a coffee cherry is the fruit of its plant, and its journey from a green, unripe state to a flavorful ripe one is a complex biological process. Just like other fruits, coffee cherries go through a ripening process.
This process is called ontogeny, a fancy word for the development and growth of an organism from its earliest stage to maturity.
As the coffee cherry ripens, several key biological and chemical changes occur: the breakdown of chlorophyll(C55H72MgN4O5), the pigment that makes the fruit green, allows other pigments like carotenoids (C40H56) and anthocyanins (C15H11O+) to become dominant, giving the cherry its ripe red or yellow color.
At the same time, complex carbohydrates inside the coffee cherry are converted into simple sugars like sucrose, fructose, and glucose. This process, known as hydrolysis, is what makes ripe cherries taste sweet.
Step-by-Step Breakdown of Ripening
The ripening process of a coffee cherry is a slow transformation. Here's a breakdown of the key stages:
Green Stage: The cherry is hard, dense, and has high levels of chlorophyll (C55H72MgN4O5). It's bitter and astringent because of a lack of developed sugars.
Yellow/Semi-Ripe Stage: As ripening begins, some chlorophyll breaks down. The coffee cherry starts to soften, and the conversion of starches into sugars begins, though the fruit is not yet at its peak sweetness.
Red/Peak-Ripe Stage: At this stage, chlorophyll has almost completely disappeared. The ripe color comes from high concentrations of anthocyanins (C15H11O+) and carotenoids (C40H56). The cherry is at its sweetest, and the internal bean has a perfect balance of moisture, density, and flavor precursors.
🌱 Simple Farming Tips: For your home garden, pay close attention to the color of your coffee cherries. Don't rush to pick them all at once. Wait for the fruit to turn a deep, radiant red or yellow, depending on the variety. This ensures the maximum sugar development for a sweeter, more flavorful cup of coffee.
Why Hand-Harvesting is a Selective Science
Hand-harvesting is better than machine harvesting from a scientific perspective because it is a form of selective picking, a highly effective quality and control measure. Humans can differentiate between subtle variations in color and firmness. Machines can't.
This allows our team to select only the best coffee cherries that have reached their peak ripeness, leaving underripe cherries on the branch to continue maturing. This process is a great example of phenotypic selection in agriculture.
Choosing plants or plant parts based on desirable traits (in this case, ripeness). This selective process also helps in disease control by removing any damaged or infected coffee cherries that could spread disease.
The Risk of Fermentation
There are factors we really have to oversee in the process of transforming our coffee fruit into roasted coffee beans, such as overripe cherries being fermented. Fermentation is a metabolic process where microorganisms like yeast and bacteria break down sugars into acids and alcohol.
If an overripe coffee cherry is left on the branch for too long or mixed with ripe cherries, it can start this process prematurely, producing off-flavors (sour, vinegary, or even rotten tastes) that can contaminate an entire batch of our specialty Puerto Rican coffee beans. This is a critical risk that selective hand-picking helps to prevent. By removing only perfectly ripe coffee cherries, we avoid the introduction of fermenting fruit that could ruin the entire lot.
🌱 Simple Farming Tips: Small farmers and home gardeners should always opt for selective hand-picking. Instead of harvesting your entire lot of coffee cherries at once, plan to pick cherries multiple times over the harvest season. Go through the coffee tree every week or two and only harvest the ripe cherries. This ensures you're getting the best quality coffee possible and helps you avoid the risk of fermentation in your harvested batch.
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If it’s GOOD for earth, it is GOOD FOR YOU!
The Importance of Timing: A Bio-Rhythmic Process
The saying "timing is everything" is especially true for harvesting, as this practice is based on both plant physiology and environmental science. Picking coffee cherries in the cool, early morning hours, before the midday sun heats up the coffee fruit is a common practice, because it's when the cherries are at their most hydrated and firm. This firmness is due to turgor pressure, which is the internal water pressure that keeps the plant's cells plump and strong. Harvesting at this time preserves the coffee cherry's essence and freshness.
The plant's hydration is directly linked to rainfall. A process called osmosis keeps the coffee plants and its fruit hydrated. Think of osmosis as the natural movement of water from the rain-soaked soil, which has a higher concentration of water, into the plant's roots and then into the fruit itself, where the water concentration is lower.
This movement ensures coffee cherries stay plump and firm, preventing them from shriveling and providing the necessary water for the biochemical reactions that create spectacular flavor during the ripening process.
Built-in Quality Control
The final step in the harvest process is quality control, which starts even before the coffee cherries are processed. Every basket of cherries is inspected. This is a crucial step for maintaining consistency. Our team manually remove any cherries that are:
Underripe: Green or yellowish cherries that haven't fully developed their sugars.
Overripe: Cherries that are too dark, soft, or have begun to ferment.
Damaged: Cherries that have been bitten by pests, are moldy, or have split.
This extra step ensures that only the best coffee fruit moves on to the next stages of coffee production, protecting the integrity of the lot and guaranteeing the best coffee you’ll ever taste.
🌱 Simple Farming Tips: Try to harvest your coffee cherries early in the morning. This simple step can help you get the freshest, and best tasting coffee. After picking, sort the coffee cherries immediately to remove any that are underripe, overripe, or damaged. This built-in quality control will make a huge difference in your coffee.
A Harvest of Human Growth
The journey of a perfect specialty coffee bean is a lot like our own. Just as a coffee cherry must be picked at the peak of ripeness for the best flavor, our lives are a process of growth and development. The decisions we make when to embrace a new challenge, how to nurture our skills, and what knowledge to absorb are guiding us toward our full potential.
We are coffee, because we are energy, we can achieve our own unique balance of wisdom, strength, and character. The art of a life well-lived, much like the process of coffee, starts not at the finish line, but with the careful, intentional choices we make along the way.
Come see the art of the perfect harvest for yourself. We invite you to visit Hacienda Iluminada, where you can witness firsthand how we make it happen.
We hope to see YOU SOON!
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From our hands on Hacienda Iluminada to your cup, 787 Coffee is on a mission to redefine what it means to drink Puerto Rican coffee.
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Every sip you take supports local farmers, protects our forests, and keeps our coffee legacy alive for the next generation.
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