Kokoda Coffee

A coffee cherry on the tree slowly turns from a green to red colour as it ripens.  Once the cherry reaches a bright red colour it is ready to be picked. In Papua New Guinea, the cherry is picked by hand every day.  The pickers, usually women, walk through the fields every day, using finger and thumb to pick only the best ripe cherries each day.  Picking in this matter every day reduces the chances of unripened fruit being processed.  Strip picking, which is just stripping every cherry of a stalk regardless of ripeness is not allowed.  

Local cherry pickers weighing their bags of freshly picked cherry

A bag of fresh picked cherry

In other countries, mainly first world and some third world, mechanical harvesters and harvesting methods are used when harvesting coffee. These methods employ machines called cherry shakers which do what the name suggests. This machine grabs the trunk of the tree and shakes loose the cherries, no matter whether they are ripe or not. This increases the speed of the harvest but decreases the accuracy and quality of the cherry as unripened fruit are shaken loose with the ripe fruit.  

The combination of ripe cherry, semi ripe and unripe cherry when processed together creates a very unbalanced raw coffee for roasting.

Cherry ready for pulping

After the cherry has been Picked it must be Pulped within 6 to 12 hours. To continue the Journey of Coffee please click here or use the menu to your left.