Coffee harvesting and processing
Coffee is a fruit before it’s a drink. When the cherries are picked, and how the fruit comes off and the seeds are dried, shapes how your coffee tastes.
Harvesting
Harvest: from cherry to crop
Harvest is a season, not a date. Altitude, rainfall, temperature and distance from the equator all affect when coffee cherries ripen, so one region can be picking while another is still in flower.
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Ripen
Coffee cherries ripen unevenly, even on the same branch. They turn from green to yellow or red as their sugars develop.
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Pick
On most speciality farms, pickers return to the same trees several times a season and take only the ripe cherries. Where the land is flat enough, some farms strip whole branches or harvest by machine.
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Sort
Cherries are checked before processing. Many farms float them in water, because underripe and damaged fruit tends to float, then pick out defects by hand.
Why careful picking matters
A few unripe or overripe cherries won’t spoil a whole lot, but many can. Underripe fruit tends to taste astringent and green; overripe fruit can bring ferment-like flavours.
Picking and sorting by hand is slow, skilled work. It’s one of the biggest reasons speciality coffee costs more to produce.
When coffee is harvested
North of the equator, most coffee is picked between autumn and spring. South of it, most is picked between spring and autumn. Close to the equator, some places have two harvests a year.
The chart shows the approximate main harvest for the origins we cover. Timing shifts with altitude and weather, and changes from year to year.
| Origin | J | F | M | A | M | J | J | A | S | O | N | D |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BrazilApril – September | ||||||||||||
| PeruMarch – September | ||||||||||||
| ColombiaYear-round, varies by region | ||||||||||||
| GuatemalaNovember – April | ||||||||||||
| HondurasNovember – April | ||||||||||||
| El SalvadorOctober – March | ||||||||||||
| Costa RicaOctober – March | ||||||||||||
| EthiopiaOctober – January | ||||||||||||
| KenyaOctober – December, plus an early crop May – July | ||||||||||||
| Indonesia (Sumatra)April – June (main crop) |
After the harvest
Picked cherries need processing quickly, usually the same day, before the fruit starts to spoil. The fruit is removed, before or after drying, and the coffee is dried until it’s stable enough to store.
Once dry, coffee is often rested in its parchment for a few weeks, then milled, graded, bagged and shipped. Getting from farm to roastery can take months, and every journey is different. That’s why speciality coffee ranges change through the year, and why our new coffees and limited lots arrive when they do.
Processing
Three ways to process coffee
A quick comparison of the three main methods. These are tendencies, not guarantees: variety, altitude, fermentation, drying and roasting all shape flavour too.
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Washed
- Fruit removed
- First, within hours of picking
- Basic stages
- Pick → depulp → ferment or wash → dry
- Possible in the cup
- Often clean, clear and bright
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Natural
- Fruit removed
- Last, once the whole cherry has dried
- Basic stages
- Pick → dry the whole cherry → hull
- Possible in the cup
- Often fruity, with a fuller body
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Honey / pulped natural
- Fruit removed
- Skin first; some fruit dries on the seed
- Basic stages
- Pick → depulp → dry with mucilage → hull
- Possible in the cup
- Often sweet and rounded
How each method works
Open a method to read more.
Washed
In a washed coffee, a machine called a depulper strips the skin and most of the fruit from the seed soon after picking. What’s left is a sticky layer of fruit called mucilage.
Most producers then leave the coffee in tanks, dry or under water, for anything from a few hours to a couple of days while fermentation loosens the mucilage. It’s then washed off. Some farms remove the mucilage mechanically instead.
The clean seeds, still in their papery parchment, are dried on patios, on raised beds or in mechanical dryers until they’re stable enough to store, usually around 10–12% moisture.
Washed processing is common across Central America, Colombia, Kenya and much of East Africa. Because the fruit comes off early, washed coffees are often described as clean and bright, which lets the character of the variety and place come through.
Natural
The oldest way to process coffee is to dry the whole cherry, fruit and all, and remove the dried husk at the end.
Drying takes longer than for washed coffee, often several weeks. The cherries need turning regularly so they dry evenly and don’t go mouldy or over-ferment, which takes space, labour and good weather.
Because the seed sits inside the fruit for so long, naturals are often fruit-forward with a heavier body. Handled less carefully, the same process can produce boozy, ferment-like flavours.
Natural processing is traditional in Ethiopia, Yemen and Brazil, and producers everywhere now experiment with it. Read our Ethiopia guide.
Honey and pulped natural
This sits between washed and natural. The skin comes off, but some or all of the mucilage stays on the seed while it dries.
In Brazil this is usually called pulped natural. In Costa Rica, where farm micromills made it famous, it’s called honey. Producers there often name the style by roughly how much mucilage they leave, from yellow through red to black honey. Read our Costa Rica guide.
Honey coffees often taste sweet and rounded, with some of a natural’s fruit and body. They dry faster than naturals but still need careful turning.
Wet-hulled (Indonesia)
Much of Indonesia’s arabica, especially from Sumatra, is wet-hulled. Locally it’s called giling basah.
The parchment is stripped off while the beans are still damp, and the green coffee finishes drying without it. It’s a big part of why Sumatran coffees often have a heavy body and an earthy, low-acid character.
What fermentation really means
It’s easy to think fermentation only happens in a tank. In fact, yeasts and bacteria start feeding on the fruit’s sugars as soon as a cherry is picked, and they carry on in every process until the coffee is dry.
What producers control is how much fruit is left, how long, and in what conditions. Temperature, water, shade and how often the coffee is turned all make a difference, which is why two farms using the “same” process can produce very different coffees.