Sorting | Dry Process

Sorting

Graded green bean coffee must be sorted to remove defective and bad beans.
As you know, the grading process separates the green bean into distinct physical sizes, and then only the good, heavy beans are used. Now the coffee must be sorted within those physical sizes. This enables the producer to sort the coffee to a particular quality. In Papua New Guinea, there are 3 main grades of quality. These are Plantation, Premium Smallholder Coffee (PSC), and Native. Below are the different quality coffees, and the allowable defects for each size.

Plantation
Size Grading                          Maximum allowed defects
AA                                            5 per kilo
A                                               5 per kilo
X                                              10 per kilo
Ax                                             10 per kilo
T                                              No defect count, but at least 60% of coffee must be full beans

Premium Smallholder Coffee (PSC)
Size Grading                       Maximum allowed defects
AA                                          20 per kilo
A                                             20 per kilo
X                                             20 per kilo
Ax                                           20per kilo
T                                              No defect count, but at least 60% of coffee must be full beans

Native
No grading to size, coffee is sold ungraded and only sorted for quality.

Quality Grading                 Maximum allowed defects
Y1                                            70 per kilo
Y2                                            90 per kilo

As you can see, the quality grading is very important. If we sold you an "A Grade" coffee from Papua New Guinea, but didn't specify which quality, the defect count of your "A grade" could be either 5 defects/kg, 20 defects/kg or maybe even 70 defects/kg. Now, consider this. Did you know that a "defect" doesn't necessarily mean one bean? A defect can be 3 black beans or 5 brown beans or 7 chipped/broken beans or 1 un-hulled bean and so on. The important point to note is that, when a coffee is given a defect count of say 50 defects per kg, it can actually mean that the coffee has quite a few more than 50 defective beans per kilo.

Kokoda Coffee uses PSC A Grade Papua New Guinean Arabica coffee for the majority of our products. Our Plantation coffee is a Plantation A grade. We do not use any native coffees in our products.

Unsorted green bean straight from the factory

In Papua New Guinea, there are two methods used to sort coffee, by hand or using machinery. Every bean used in Kokoda Coffee is hand sorted at the field. While hand sorting is tedious and time consuming, there are several good points that we would like to mention. The best way to speed up hand sorting is to hire more workers to sort the coffee. As demand for Papua New Guinean coffee grows, some exporters are moving away from hand sorting in favour of mechanical sorters that do the work much quicker. At Kokoda Coffee, we try to make sure that our coffees are bought from fields and factories where hand sorting is used, so as to increase the jobs available to the local workers. Please take a look at our Corporate Social Responsibility page for some more information on our CSR initiatives.

Local workers hand sorting coffee in Papua New Guinea

Hand sorting is also very accurate. In Papua New Guinea, as you can see in the photos, it is normally the older women who do the sorting. These ladies have the quickest eyes and fingers that we have ever seen on a human being. A person has a much better chance of correcting mistakes in sorting "on the fly" as opposed to a sorting machine.
Our Organic product is hand sorted to ensure that the flavours are as pure and chemical free as possible.

More hand sorting coffee in Papua New Guinea

While we do try to make sure that every bean purchased for Kokoda Coffee is hand sorted, some coffees are sorted a second time via a mechanical sorter. One of the most amazing machines used for this purpose is called a colour-sorter. This sophisticated machine feeds coffee onto a fast moving conveyor belt. The coffee is accelerated along the belt and flung off the end. Mounted above the end of the belt is a row of almost 100 computer "eyes". They are programmed to tell the difference between good green coffee beans, and bad coffee which is defined as "any colour other than green". Behind the row of cameras is a second row of what are best described as extremely accurate "air rifles". When an eye detects a bad bean, it instructs the air rifle behind it to fire. The bad bean is knocked down out of the flow of coffee and into a catching bin. This machine is capable of sorting several metric tonnes of coffee per hour whilst being incredibly accurate. When previously hand sorted coffee is fed into this machine, the quality of the colour-sorted coffee is stunning.

Now that the green bean has been graded and sorted, it is ready for Export. Click here , or use the menu to your left to follow the Journey of Coffee.

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