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Texas ISD School Guide
Texas ISD School Guide







Short Stories for Teachers

Growing and Harvesting Coffee Beans
By:George Pettit <seo.articles@yahoo.com>

There is no doubt that everyone loves coffee, it is the favorite morning beverage brewed in coffee machines all around the world. This remarkable beverage starts as a flavorful bean waiting to be harvested. The flavor and quality of the coffee is very much affected by the region where the coffee beans are produced.

Coffee trees look more like bushes and are grown on coffee plantations, where they are cultivated and nourished. Each tree needs to have very specific conditions to grow and flourish. Coffee trees need heavy rain at the beginning of the season and the trees can only tolerate direct sunlight for a few hours a day. The best coffee beans are produced by countries with tropical and sub-tropical environments, such as Brazil, Indonesia, Africa, Mexico, Guatemala and Columbia.

The general life span of each tree is approximately 15 to 20 years, with most trees reaching full maturity around the fifth year. After nine months or so, the tree will produced blossoms that signal when the coffee beans are ready for harvesting.

The coffee bean looks very similar in appearance to the cranberry, once the beans have matured, they must be harvested right away. This is the most important aspect of the harvesting process- picking of the coffee beans.

The actual bean itself is a flat brown seed located inside of the berry. Harvesting takes a long time because workers pick each berry by hand. This process is repeated every 10 days to ensure that all of the mature beans are picked.

Harvest time varies and it depends on the region where the coffee bean is grown. The beans can only be harvested during the dry season of each region. The harvested bean is either wet processed or dry processed. Wet processing involves soaking the beans in water, where they sit and ferment for 2 days. During dry processing the coffee beans are thoroughly sorted by hand. Once any excess debris is removed, the beans are simply laid out in the sun to dry or processed by a special drying machine. Dry processing is the less expensive and results in a lower grade of coffee. Coffee that is produced by this method is usually mass produced for general consumption.

The wet processing method requires the most labor and is the more expensive method of processing the harvested beans. This process is usually reserved for higher quality gourmet coffee.






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