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Coffee Production and Trade Coffee processing Dry processing
Essentially, the whole cherry is dried to allow separation of the bean from the exocarp and mesocarp. There are some local variations on how the process is completed, according to the facilities available1, but there are three basic steps: cleaning, drying and hulling. Harvested cherries are initially sorted to separate unripe, overripe and damaged cherries, and cleaned to remove soil, twigs and leaves, usually by winnowing using a large sieve. As with wet processing, ripe cherries can also be separated by flotation in washing channels.
As mentioned elsewhere, the drying process is the most critical in terms of the quality of the product. Coffee that is not dried sufficiently and quickly will be too wet, and is thus prone to fungal infection and the concomitant risk of OTA development. Coffee that is over dried becomes brittle and will break during hulling, broken beans being considered defects. Once dried the cherries are either stored in silos before hulling, or sent directly for hulling, grading and bagging/export. The hulling of dried cherries removes the outer layers in one go, leaving the dried green bean behind. 1 For example, in parts of Indonesia, cherries are frequently 'split' in order to speed up the drying process. |
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