Harvesting Coffee

During the dry season coffee will be harvested from the coffee trees. The ripest coffee cherries obviously produce the finest coffees and this is usually when the coffee cherries are a beautiful red colour. When you think that a coffee cherry contains two seeds and we need about 100 coffees beans to make a double shot of coffee... it is quite a bit of work!

Once the harvesting period starts, which is usually September to March north of the equator and April and May south of the equator, the workers go through the coffee plantation to harvest coffee cherries. Coffee is usually harvested by selective picking or stripping.

Selective picking involves picking only the ripest cherries and is very labour intense. Pickers often go to the same tree multiple times. Stripping is done when the cherries are sorted afterwards and unripe cherries are discarded (or sold separately) - this is often done in Brazil where the cherries mature at the same time and the volumes are extremely large. Coffee can also be collected by harvesting machines which shake the coffee trees.

Every 100kg of coffee cherries produce around 15kg of coffee.