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The seeds
Our farmers plant Coffee seeds when the weather is wet to help the roots become firmly established. It can take anywhere between three to four years after planting for coffee plants to bear the cherries. They start by producing white blossoms and around eight months later, coffee cherries will usually appear. The cherries contain the coffee beans. Each cherry usually contains two beans. Occasionally, in around 5% of coffee cherries, there is just one seed, this is known as peaberry.
Harvesting
Once the coffee cherries begin to turn red, our farmers are ready to harvest. There is usually one major harvesting period between October to December and the second crop occurs between April to June. Our coffee beans are harvested by hand, in which our farmers strip pick or selectively pick. If the cherries are harvested too green, the coffee will be sour, and if they are overripe, the beans may ferment and spoil the flavour of the final brew.
Our selective picking ensures that only the red cherries are harvested, and any unripe fruit is left to further develop. It is a more labour intensive and a costly process but brings the right quality and best taste.
Wet Process
Once we harvest the fruit, it must be processed quickly to prevent oxidisation as it can impair the flavour. We use wet processing method which brings the name "washed coffees."
The cherries are pulped to remove the skin (spermoderm), the papery hull (endocarp) and the pulped fruit (mucilage) that surrounds the beans before they are later milled to remove the rest of the surrounding layers.
We immersed and soaked all beans in water. This causes the unripe fruit, cherry skin and pulp to float and the beans to sink to the bottom. This process provide more aroma but less body to the final coffee. The beans are then fermented between eight to 36 hours.
Milling and hulling
Hulling is part of the milling process and is used to remove the parchment skin (pergamino) and the fruit residue. It can be performed wet or dry and is performed by a machine.
Cleaning and sorting
Cleaning and sorting is another step, to reach finer coffees.We clean any miscellaneous items such as debris from the land to remove it from the coffee beans.We also sort beans by size and density.
Grading and cupping
We do the coffee grading process to determine higher quality coffee and higher value. The beans are judged on farmers visual appearance through to their flavour on a scale of one to five.
All 6 steps are done in Colombia by our professional farmers. Beans that are ready for roasting are packed and shipped to Charlotte, North Carolina where we do the roasting process.
You might be curious why this process is not done in Colombia and the answer is very simple.
We want to bring our clients very fresh roasted beans because that makes the beverage unique and irreplaceable.
Roasting the beans
Our beans are then roasted, in Charlotte.
We use digitalised machines that control temperature, humidity, airflow, colour of our beans in time. This process is very preciousely controlled because this process causes chemical reactions inside the beans.
The starches turn to sugar, the acidity weakens, and the beans become oily, which develops the aromatic flavour.
We are vefy confident our beans have the best flavour that gets very easly anyone's simpaty and creates an acceptable addiction.
Thrilling?!
Now that you know much more about coffee roasting, not only can you share these learnings with your friends, but you are also ready to appreciate every single note and tone of your cup and hopefully taste not only its greatness in flavor but also The Story behind every single coffee bean.