Green Coffee Processing
May 2, 2026
Coffee Knowledge
During harvest season, ripe coffee cherries are carefully picked by hand and then sorted. These cherries are inspected in a water container or large bucket filled with water to check for defective beans, such as those with only half a seed, underdeveloped seeds, or rotten seeds. These float to the surface of the water and are immediately removed. The cherries are turned over by hand several times until no more coffee cherries are floating.
The cherries are then fed into the pulping machine while still wet. Here, the beans are separated from the pulp.
In the next step, the selected, hulled coffee beans are fermented for 3 days in airtight containers. To do this, our farmers place the coffee beans in a plastic bag and insert a tube. This tube then leads into a plastic bottle filled with water, so that the gas produced can escape but no oxygen can enter.
The beans are then sun-dried to about 14% moisture content. To prevent contact with the ground, a plastic tarp and often a mat made of natural material are used. Depending on how long the fruit pulp remains on the bean and the duration and intensity of the drying process, the parchment layer turns white, yellow, red, or black, and we describe it as white honey, yellow honey, red honey or black honey.
Due to the prevailing weather conditions in Colol, our farmers process the beans as yellow honey.
In this form, the farmers store their coffee individually in their homes until a potential buyer (such as us) contacts them. Then the hulling machine is used to separate the green beans from the parchment layer (which is parchment-like). The beans are then sorted by hand again to ensure that only the best beans remain as specialty coffee.
Due to the manual nature of the process (which leaves room for human error), it is possible that farmers may overlook up to 2 to 3 defective beans per 100 g in the “Specialty” grade.
Finally, the coffee beans are dried to a moisture content of 11.0 to 12.0%. Since the 2024 harvest, farmers have been using a moisture meter for this purpose. Sorting continues here as well. The beans are then packed in special plastic bags (GrainPro) to protect them from moisture and other external influences.
This process was first implemented by Benediktus Rudin during the 2025 harvest season.
