Coffee is a deciduous, shrub-like tree. Most cultivars used in commercial production are pruned back each year to less than 8 feet in height, and every 8-10 years the tree is pruned nearly to the ground.
The life of the tree in terms of good coffee production can be 50 years, and it will live much longer but will probably stop producing coffee with good organolepticOrganoleptic refers to any sensory properties of, in this case, the coffee beverage. It involves flavor, color, odor and mouthfeel. Organoleptic testing involves inspection through visual examination, smelling... qualities at some point.
The coffee cherryOriginally coffee literature referred to the fruit of the tree as a "berry" but in time it became a cherry. It is of course neither. Nor is the... matures for about 5-6 months on the branch! At any time in this period it is susceptible to damage from weather, rain (or lack thereof), hail, insect damage, etc. Below is an image of coffee from green, to ripe (second from right) to rotten. The cherryEither a flavor in the coffee, or referring to the fruit of the coffee tree, which somewhat resembles a red cherry.: Either a flavor in the coffee, or... must be ripe when picked, which is why all quality coffee is harvested by hand. At any given time a branch contains ripe and unripe fruit simultaneously so picking is done with continuous passes on the same trees.

Bad coffee is picked less discriminately, and the cup quality bears this out. Green cherry is unacceptable in good coffee. Yellow to red cherry is not necessarily going to ruin a cup, but ideally all fruit is deep red to crimson. Overripe cherry can give interesting nuance to a cup in small amounts and ruin it if there is too much. In the wet-process method, cherry must be depulped within 6-12 hours after picking or it will began to rot.
In dry-processing, the whole ripe coffee cherry is laid out on patios to sun-dry. Then the seed is milled out of the cherry once the moisture content is down to about 12%. So in the image below you basically jump from the far left to the far right in one step. It can be done in remote areas without water or electric, one reason this is ideal for small-plot farms. But only coffee for local markets is processed this way in Central America.
In wet-processing the coffee cherry is harvested by hand, and brought to the wet millThe wet mill is a processing center where coffee cherry from the tree is brought for initial processing.: The wet mill goes by many names (Beneficio, Factory, Washing... in baskets. In GuatemalaGuatemalan coffee is considered a top quality coffee producer in Central America. Due to our proximity to Guatemala, some of the nicest coffees from this origin come to... a full basket is called a Quintal. The cherry enters a deep water flotation tank. Ripe cherry sinks, unripe cherry floats. The floatersFloaters are defective coffee cherries or depulped seeds that float to the surface of a water bath.: During the wet-process method, coffee cherry or the de-pulped (without skin)... are skimmed off the surface and the ripe cherry enters the pulper. At this stage the external skin of the fruit is removed/abraded and the fruityIn some coffee taster’s lexicon, “fruity” means the coffee is tainted with fruit, and “fruited” means a coffee is graced by positive fruit notes. We don't exactly see..., pulpyCan refer to fruited flavor or sometimes mouthfeel. In terms of flavor, which is how we normally use it, pulpy fruit, it tends toward the rustic side of... mucilageMucilage indicates the fruity layer of the coffee cherry, between the outer skin and the parchment layer that surrounds the seed. It readily clings to the inner parchment... is exposed.

The coffee then enters a water tank to fermentAs an aroma or flavor in coffee, ferment is a defect taste, resulting from bad processing or other factors. Ferment is the sour, often vinegar-like, that results from.... FermentationFermentation in coffee processing traditionally referred to the stage in wet-processing of the coffee. We now understand that fermentation happens more broadly in nearly all processes, including honey... is natural and it begins to break down the remaining muilage and makes the wall of the parchmentGreen coffee still in its outer shell, before dry-milling, is called Parchment coffee (pergamino). In the wet process, coffee is peeled, fermented, washed and then ready for drying... (the tough blonde-colored inner layer surround the seed) thin. Fermentation is carefully controlled to avoid giving the coffee any off flavors, and lasts between 12-48 hours, sometimes as much as 72 hours in colder, high altitude locations.
Then the coffee is channeled in a water stream to the drying patio. At this point it appears as the third from the third from the left (count the split halves of the seed as 1.) Drying is anywhere from 4-8 days depending on the weather, until the coffee reaches about 12% moisture content, and it will shrink a bit in size (third from right). It is now ready for the dry millA facility that accepts dried coffee cherry and mechanically separates the coffee bean from the dried fruit and parchment layer. The facility can be highly mechanized, as in... (dry beneficioIn Kenya, a "Factory" is actually a coffee wet mill (called a washing station in other parts of Africa) where the fresh cherry is brought for wet-processing. It...) where it is removed from parchment, sorted by densityThe density of a coffee bean is often taken as a sign of quality, as a more dense bean will roast more with a better dynamic. The density... and screened, hand prepped, and bagged for export (far right)!
