How is Coffee Made?
Coffee grows best in tropical climates, so of the 70 or so countries that produce coffee wordwide, all of them are within 1,000 miles of the equator.
The 5 main coffee regions of the world are: the Americas, Oceania, the Pacific, Arabia, and Africa.
Each region is known for producing a different variety of coffee.
Within each region, every country also produces additional twists on those varieties.
All of this adds up to coffee being one of the most complex and diverse foods on the planet.
Before coffee beans can become coffee, there is a 7-step process we need to go through.
1. Planting
Coffee beans are actually seeds, if you plant unprocessed coffee beans into the ground, they will grow into coffee trees!
Be prepared to wait though, coffee plants take about 3 – 5 years before they bear fruit.
2. Harvesting
Coffee trees grow little round fruits called coffee cherries. When those fruits turn bright red they are ready to be harvested.
Coffee cherries are harvested in one of two ways: strip harvesting or selective harvesting.
Strip harvesting means taking all of the berries off the tree at the same time.
Selective harvesting means carefully combing through the tree to only pick the ripest berries at the right time.
Selective harvesting is far superior in terms of producing high quality coffee beans.
3. Cherry Processing
Once the coffee cherry is picked it needs to be processed to avoid spoiling.
There are two ways to do this: the dry method and the wet method.
The dry method is the traditional way of spreading out the cherries to dry under the sun.
The wet method is a modern complicated process where the cherries are sorted and fermented in water tanks before being dried.
4. Milling
After the coffee cherries are dried, they are referred to as parchment coffee.
Parchment coffee is then hulled, which means they break open the coffee cherry to get the coffee beans inside.
The coffee beans are then cleaned, sorted and put into bags for shipping.
The coffee is now referred to as green coffee.
5. Roasting
After the green coffee is bagged, it is exported for roasting all over the world.
Roasting turns the green coffee into the great smelling brown beans that we all think of when someone says coffee beans.
There are 3 different types of roasts, light, medium, and dark.
6. Grinding
Once the coffee beans have been roasted, they need to be ground before they can be turned into coffee.
There are many different consistencies coffee can be ground into and they all serve different brewing methods.
7. Brewing
After the coffee beans have been ground, they can be brewed into coffee.
Different types of coffee grinds like coarse or fine are used with different brewing methods such as drip and or espresso.
Every step of this long process is essential in creating your perfect cup of coffee.
This is why it is only by knowing exactly where your coffee is coming from and how it's produced that you can ensure you're getting high-quality coffee.
Here at Red Supplements, we know exactly where and how each of our 3 coffees are produced from when the coffee beans are planted in the ground to when we ship you your package.
RED Coffee is an organic Peruvian Arabica grown from 4,000 to 6,000 feet above sea level in the rich volcanic loam soil on a family operated farm in San Ignacio, Cajamarca, Peru.
BLACK Coffee is an organic Sumatra variety sourced from the family run Jagong Mill surrounding farms located in the Takengon and Atu Lintang coffee region of Aceh province in Sumatra, Indonesia.
GOLD Coffee is an organic Ethiopian Yirgacheffe sourced from family owned farms organized around the Biloya Cooperative located in the village of Biloya in the southern district of Kochore, Ethiopia.
Now you can have coffee from Indonesia for breakfast, coffee from Peru before lunch and coffee from Ethiopia after dinner all for less than $30!
