The coffee beans' journey around the world
On the plantation
Coffee is grown on small, evergreen trees in plantations across South and Central America, Africa and Asia.
As they require exactly the right amount of shaded sunlight, regular watering, fertilizing, and pest and weed control, young coffee trees demand constant care from farmers. It can take up to four years for a coffee tree to reach mature production. Once this stage is reached, coffee trees, if managed well, can be maintained for 40 years.
Arabica and Robusta
Among approximately 60 existing species of coffee, Arabica and Robusta are the two grown for commercial and manufacturing purposes.
Robusta, which is from a botanical classification point of view a variety of Canephora, is grown at low altitude, from sea level to about 800 m (this is also influenced by latitude). Robusta is characterized by strong note, strong body and very little acidity. It is mainly grown in Vietnam, Brazil and Indonesia. Arabica grows at higher altitude, usually above 800 m, and up to 2500 m. It includes several well known varieties such as Bourbon, Tipica, Caturra, Catuai, Catimor, Mundo Novo, Colombia, etc. Arabica is characterized by fine aroma, less body, and pleasant acidity. Brazil, Colombia, Ethiopia, Central America, Mexico, India, Eastern Africa are among the best-known Arabica producing countries. In your NESCAFÉ you will find different blends of Arabica and Robusta coffee offering you the best in terms of flavour and aroma!
Picking the beans
Once coffee trees begin to produce fruit, it takes about nine months for the fruit to ripen into red coffee ‘cherries’. Coffee is still mostly picked by hand. For best quality, only the ripe, red cherries are selectively picked, leaving unripe cherries on the branches to ripen for later picking. As each tree must be visited several times during the harvest, this is a more expensive method. Alternatively, the farmer may judge the time to harvest, and then strip the trees of both ripe and unripe cherries in one go. This is done by the pickers sliding their hands along the branches, allowing the cherries to fall into a basket or onto a tarpaulin spread beneath the tree, from where they are collected. This is more efficient, but results in lower overall quality.
Preparing the green beans
The fresh coffee beans must be dried before roasting. There are two ways of preparing coffee beans – the ‘dry’ method and the ‘wet’ method. With the dry method, freshly picked red coffee ‘cherries’ are spread across special mats and left in the sun to dry for two to three weeks. Once dried, the outer shell of the cherries is mechanically removed from the green coffee bean. With the ‘wet’ method, a ‘pulping’ machine is used to remove the outer pulp away from the ‘cherries’. The resulting "parchment coffee" is fermented and soaked to remove any remaining pulp. Then the parchment coffee is hulled to obtain the beans.
Beans selection
At this stage, coffee beans have a greenish tinge and are therefore known as 'green beans' with none of the typical "coffee" smell or taste. Before being packed into bags and shipped across the world, green beans are sorted, graded and checked to ensure a high quality end product. Stinkers, blacks, sours and foxes are just a few of the names for imperfect beans that are rejected.
Blending
Tasting and blending procedures are complex, and each coffee manufacturer follows the blends for its coffees very closely.
The beans chosen for NESCAFÉ coffee come from all over the world – Brazil, Colombia, Kenya, Costa Rica, etc. It’s up to a skilled team of blending experts to ensure that the quality and flavour of the coffee they produce is consistent, year in year out.
Roasting the beans
It is not until the green beans are roasted that they release the coffee aroma and flavour as we know it.
Depending on the roasting equipment and the desired flavour of the coffee being made, green beans are roasted at between 180°C and 240°C for between three and 12 minutes.
Grinding
Before it can be brewed, roasted coffee must be ground. Grinding increases the surface area of the coffee, allowing the flavour to be extracted more easily when brewing.
Make it soluble
Soluble coffee is made exactly the same way as brewed coffee: beans are blended, roasted, and ground before brewing with water only. Finally, this fresh coffee brew is carefully dried, removing the water and leaving you with 100% soluble coffee. NESCAFÉ Decaff offers you also all the coffee taste but without all the caffeine.
By weight, the amount of caffeine found naturally in coffee is only about 1% for Arabica and 2% for Robusta coffee beans. When you read '97% Caffeine Free' on the label, 97% of that 1% or 2% has been removed.
In your cup
Just add freshly boiled water, and enjoy all the taste and aroma of NESCAFÉ!
