From Farm to Cup: The Fascinating Journey of Coffee with Salento Coffee Roastery

From Farm to Cup: The Fascinating Journey of Coffee

COFFEE

Coffee is enjoyed by millions of people worldwide. Ground and roasted coffee beans are used to make coffee, a popular beverage.

It has a rich, dark colour and a bitter, low-acid taste. The main ingredient that makes coffee enjoyable is caffeine, which also gives it its revitalising effects.

Millions of people around the world drink this beverage every day because of its invigorating effects.However, have you ever thought about the trip from the farm to your cup?

Understanding its journey can make every sip even more memorable. Let’s look at the fascinating story of coffee beans and how they are used to make the popular beverage.

The Origin Of Coffee Beans :The Legend of Kaldi

Long before coffee became a global obsession, it began with a curious goat…

In the ancient highlands of Ethiopia, a young goatherder named Kaldi noticed something unusual, his goats were dancing energetically after nibbling on bright red berries from a wild shrub.

Intrigued, Kaldi tasted the berries himself — and soon felt a surge of vitality.

He shared his discovery with a local monk, who experimented with the berries by brewing them into a drink to stay awake during long hours of evening prayer. Word of this magical bean spread far and wide, eventually making its way from Ethiopia to the Arabian Peninsula — and from there, to the rest of the world.

And so, a humble berry born in the hills of Africa became the for millions around the globe.
Welcome to the magical journey of coffee.

When is the coffee Plant ready to harvest?

Coffee beans come from a coffee plant, a busy evergreen plant. The plant produces a bunch of cherries. Each cherry has two coffee beans inside, quite known as Arabica or Robusta.

The coffee plant begins producing white, fragrant flowers approximately one year after planting. After that, it takes an additional 3 to 4 years for the plant to start bearing fruit and 10 years for it to produce beans . The coffee plant typically has a life span of 30-40 years with proper care.

We can start harvesting once the coffee cherries turn red or yellow in color. There is an ideal time for picking, as the early or late harvesting may affect the flavor. Ripeness is judged by the color, sugar content, and texture of the fruit.

Coffee Production

The Coffee production starts at the harvesting of coffee cherries from the coffee plant.The seeds should be extracted carefully to produce green coffee beans.After that, the beans are ground into fine particles and roasted to release their deep, rich flavours. When these ground, roasted beans are soaked in hot water to create a freshly brewed cup, then true magic begins.

The process of making coffee starts with the separation of the seeds from coffee cherries, which are the fruits of the Coffea plant, to create unroasted green coffee beans. After being roasted, the “beans” are ground into tiny pieces. Ground roasted beans are used to make coffee; they are usually steeped in hot water before being filtered. Typically, it is served hot.

The process of making coffee starts with the meticulous extraction of the seeds from coffee cherries, which are the colourful fruits of the Coffea plant. Each cup of coffee we enjoy is made from these seeds, also referred to as unroasted green coffee beans.

The two most commonly grown coffee bean types are Arabica and Robusta Coffee plants are cultivated in over 70 countries, primarily in the equatorial regions of the Americas, Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, and Africa.

Green, unroasted coffee is traded as an agricultural commodity.

Preprocessing

Traditionally hand-picked selectively, coffee berries are chosen just from the ripe ones—a labor-intensive process. More often, by hand or machine, crops are strip picked—that is, harvesting all berries at once independent of ripeness.

Green coffee is picked then processed either the wet method (which uses more water, produces milder coffee) or the dry method (simpler, less labor-intensive). After that, the berries are arranged according to color and ripeness; typically, machine removal of the pulp follows. After fermentation to eliminate mucilage, the seeds are thoroughly cleaned producing a lot of wastewater. They dry later on as well.

Common in Africa and some specialized farms, the best—though least used—drying technique is spreading the beans on raised drying tables for improved airflow and even drying. In humid areas, heated air cylinders are instead used. At last, the beans are arranged and marked as green coffee.

ROASTING

The second is roasting the green coffee beans. Coffee is almost everywhere roasted before consumption, either through the form of being supplied ready-roasted or home roasting. Roasting is what physically and chemically changes the beans, causing them to lose weight as they shed moisture and increase volume, which affects density and packaging demand.

Roasting typically commences once the internal temperature of the bean is around 200 °C (392 °F). Various beans roast at varying rates because they have varying amounts of moisture and density. As heat degrades starches into sugars, caramelization pigments the beans darker. Sucrose is rapidly lost, particularly in darker roasts. Oils and acids that impact flavor start to degrade, while at about 205 °C (401 °F), fresh oils such as caffeol are created—responsible for coffee’s taste and smell. Caffeine levels vary very little between light and dark roasts.

Grading Roast Beans

Roasted coffee beans are typically sorted by color—light, medium light, medium, medium dark, dark, or very dark—on visual inspection. A more precise method uses near-infrared spectroscopy to measure reflected light, providing a consistent numerical value that describes the roast level or flavor development.

In the majority of nations, coffee has traditionally been graded by bean size rather than quality. It’s usually done using numbered sieves, with each sieve having corresponding perforation sizes to grade the beans in accordance.

ROAST CHARACTERSTICS

Roast level affects flavor and body in coffee. Color of coffee when brewed is also affected by the roasting level.

Stronger coffee roasts are darker since they have low fiber content and high sugar-like flavor.
Lighter roasts have a more complicated and therefore perceived stronger flavor from aromatic oils and acids otherwise lost with longer roasting times.

Roasting does not alter the amount of caffeine in the bean, but does yield less caffeine when the beans are measured by volume since the beans expand during roasting.A small amount of chaff is produced during roasting from the skin left on the seed after processing.Chaff is usually stripped from the seeds by air currents, although a small amount is added to dark roast coffees to soak up oils on the seeds.