At the beginning of the year 2017, I had the amazing opportunity to go on a Coffee Farm and Plantation tour through Central America. I was fortunate to work next to pickers on the farm, harvesting the red cherries and learn all about coffee cultivation. Next to that, I got an inside into the complex processes involved after harvesting the coffee, such as the wet-milling (removing the cherry skin and drying the coffee) and dry-milling (removing the parchment, sorting and preparation for export).
Wet-milling is mostly done on the farm. There are multiple ways to remove the cherry skin – oftentimes it involves a fermentation process (washed or semi-washed process). You can check out the steps of the washed process in one of my videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAnZkFUUozQ
Once the cherry skin is removed, the coffee is dried and recollected. At this point, the coffee is not yet ready to be exported or shipped – this happens at the dry-mill.
The dry-mill process (removing the parchment, sort and pack the beans) is typically done by partnering collecting points.
In this video, I briefly outline the steps involved at the dry-mill:
1. Cleaning the batch
2. Removing the parchment
3. Sorting by size
4. Sorting by density
5. Sorting by color
6. Packing
Special thanks to FECCEG – Federación Comercializadora de Café Especial de Guatemala (http://fecceg.com) for taking the time and for the interesting inside into your dry-mill process.