Professional coffee makers

Each morning coffee or mid-afternoon pick-me-up you’ve consumed has been for an incredible journey, with many coffee ingredients coming from the other part around the world and undergoing countless refining processes before they reach your coffee cup. Here’s a tad bit more about the life cycle of the typical coffee bean.

The Growing Stage

There are two forms of evergreen plants that produce the majority of the world’s coffee. To start, there’s the Arabica bean. Largely grown in Latin America but with plantations also in Africa and Papua New Guinea, this plant produces beans which may have a softer, sweeter taste. Arabica plants require very exact conditions to develop - they have to be grown in a certain altitude, and they’re quite vulnerable to disease and pesticides.

The other type of plant would be the Robusta. Grown exclusively during the eastern hemisphere in parts of Africa and Indonesia, Robusta (when the name might suggest) is a little more robust.

Picking and Processing

Once the berries on these plants ripen from green to red, they’re picked yourself or machine. Then a beans need to be processed. There are two sorts of processing:

•Dry Processing - this longer, more laborious method involves leaving the beans (technically berries) out under the sun. After 2-four weeks, the berry sheds its outer skin to start to be much more like the coffee bean we all know a love.

•Wet Processing - this method uses a lot of water and a lot of expensive equipment, which makes it well suited for the mass producers of coffee across the world. Viable berries rise during immersion, then they’re fermented and wash to take out any pulp. Once they’ve dried, they generate a coffee with a little less body than those that have been dry processed.

Milling and Roasting

The beans need to be milled - such as hulling, cleaning, sorting and grading the beans accordingly. Optional steps with this area of the process include polishing, ageing and decaffeinating.

From here, the coffee beans head away and off to be roasted, when they’ll turn from fresh, bright green for that rich brown colour we understand so well. This is usually performed with huge commercial machines - but home roasting can be done for any enthusiasts available!

With respect to the temperature from the roast, the bean will emerge having a slightly different colour. Beans roasted at 475 degrees Fahrenheit are called Italian roast and so are usually employed for espresso. As the temperatures decrease, the colour becomes lighter and fosters some other type of roast - French roast, Vienna roast, City roast, American roast, etc.

Packing and Shipping

From this point, the roasted beans are packed and shipped to locations around the world! Coffee is just about the world’s most favored and commonly imported drinks, so the scale of the packing and shipping process defies belief!

Grinding and Brewing

Once the beans come to their destination, they’ll be ground - either by using a machine or by hand. Then they’re brewed using one of the different methods and tools - for example the wonderful selection of professional coffee machines available. Fully automatic coffee machines combine the processes of grinding and brewing for total efficiency. The machinery also brews and grinds every batch in the same way, making it possible to have consistent coffees, whenever. Milk can even be added at any stage during the process, along with other tasty additions like chocolate to focus on any tastes or cravings.

The Drinking Stage

The stage we’ve all been awaiting! So you are aware of the journey each little coffee bean undertakes on its approach to your morning coffee or afternoon treat. Hopefully now you can appreciate every delicious sip more than ever before before! For special recipes look at the 'Passion for Coffee' section on our website.