Kokoda Coffee

Coffee cherry needs to be Pulped as soon after it is picked as possible, at the most 12 hours after picking.  The reason for this is that when a ripe cherry is picked, a chemical process is begun inside the cherry, the same as if the cherry had naturally fallen to the ground.  The pulp around the coffee beans inside the cherry is the beans "food/fuel" to begin growing.  The coffee bean is actually the "seed" of the coffee fruit so once the ripe cherry is removed from the tree, the bean will begin the germination process. As this process involves chemical changes inside the bean, if allowed to continue the end flavour of the bean will be impaired.  Pulping between 6-12 hours after the bean is picked negates this problem.
The entire wet process must be completed at most 36 hours after the initial picking to ensure no fermentated taste can be found in the finished green bean.

Some of the boys holding fresh cherry, ready for pulping

The day’s harvest is put into a flotation tank. The good ripe cherry is heavier and sinks to the bottom. The unripe, unformed and defective cherry floats to the surface and is siphoned away from the main pulping area to be processed separately.

The cherry must be pulped to remove the tough outer skin and the majority of the pulpy mucilage around the inner coffee bean. The mucilage is best broken down by washing and exposing the washed parchment to sunlight to dry.  If this is not done within 6-12 hours, the cherry ferments, adding a fruity and fermented taste to the end product.

Cherry to be pulped, still wet from the flotation tanks,  is pumped into large machines.  These machines are cleverly named "Pulpers".  A pulper is basically a screw shaft rotating at the open bottom of a large hopper.  The cherry is poured in while the screw shaft is turning slowly.  The design of the machine squeezes the cherry, pushing the coffee beans out of the cherry into a receptor, and discarding the removed pulp and skin.

A coffee pulper

Once pulped, the coffee is now referred to as wet Parchment. The pulped parchment is fed into a large vat where it will be washed once the vat is full.  The parchment must be washed, firstly to remove any loose mucilage still on the parchment and secondly to slow down the chemical fermentation process.

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