From cherry to cup.
A coffee bean is the seed of a red fruit called a coffee cherry. Each cherry usually holds two seeds. Here is how they get from the shrub to your bag of beans or pod.
Grow
01Coffee grows on shrubs in tropical highlands. A plant takes three to four years to bear fruit, and most farms are small family plots.
Altitude, soil and plant variety set the base flavor before anything else happens.
Pick
02Cherries on the same branch ripen at different times, from green to yellow to deep red. Careful farms pick by hand, returning to each plant several times.
Only ripe cherries taste sweet. Underripe fruit adds sourness and a grassy edge.
Process
03The fruit is removed and the seeds are dried until they are stable enough to ship. These dried seeds are called green coffee.
Method matters: washed coffees taste cleaner, naturals taste fruitier. See below.
Roast
04Roasters heat the green seeds until they turn brown and develop aroma. The roast date on the bag tells you when this happened.
Light roasts keep more of the origin; dark roasts lean toward chocolate and smoke.
