The Coffee Process: From Bean to the Cup


1. COFFEE PLANT CULTIVATION

Coffee Nursery Here is a coffee nursery where the story begins. The nursery takes care of growing the coffee plants. It takes 5 years for a plant to become a tree.

The coffee tree then joins a coffee plantation. The quality of the coffee differs depending on: the soil, the height, the atmospheric conditions, the inclination of the slope, the care given to the tree and the water quantity. For instance, if the temperatures are too low, the coffee tree may freeze and die.


The blossom generally lasts between one and two weeks in October. After the blossom, the coffee tree produces coffee cherries. Once ripe, the green cherries become red and ready to be picked. There are 3 picking processes : Coffee Cherries

  • Hand Picking: this method involves selecting the beans one by one according to their stage of development. Only the red cherries will be picked and the green ones will be left on the tree until they reach a mature stage. This process aims at obtaining a higher quality coffee but is much longer and can last up to 2 months.
  • Stripping Method: consists in stripping the coffee cherries off the tree all at once regardless of the fact that some cherries may still be green.
  • Mechanical Stripping Method: this method is used in large plantations to save on costs and time.

Rombouts aims at buying the best coffee beans and therefore prefers to select coffee from plantations that adopt the Hand Picking method.


2. STORAGE

Coffee Nursery The cherries are now transported down from the plantation to the "factory". Mules can be useful as some of the plantations are in very remote areas with no road access. The cherries then have to be dried up, so that the shell of the cherry falls off to liberate 2 coffee beans. There are 2 methods to extract the coffee beans from the cherries:

  • The dry method: the cherries are laid in the sun to dry.
  • The wet method: the cherries are put in water to soften the shell. Once the shell is soft, the cherries go in a de-pulping machine that will extract the coffee beans.

Coffee Nursery These 2 methods aim at extracting the 2 coffee beans from the cherry shell. The coffee beans are then dried in the sun. Once the coffee beans are dried up, they are called "green coffee beans" – at this stage they are ready to be sold.

In the best plantations, the green coffee beans are carefully sorted by hand so that only the best beans are selected. Rombouts prefers to buy coffee from these plantations.

The next stage is the grading stage: buyers judge the quality of the green beans first on the basis of their appearance and then by tasting.

Coffee Nursery Coffee beans either travel by container or in joust bags. It is believed that packing coffee beans in joust bags ensures better quality. Rombouts only buys coffee packed in joust bags. At reception of the beans, the samples (from the tasting) will be matched to the coffee beans delivered and be tasted a second time.

The coffee beans are then stored. The green beans can be kept for months – the quality will only be slightly altered in the sense that older beans loose some of their aroma. If old beans persist in stock then, they will be combined with the new crop to ensure that the taste of the coffee delivered to the consumer is consistent. Before any production, the beans are tasted a 3rd time.


3. ROASTING

Coffee Nursery At Rombouts, we can mix up to 30 different types of beans in the roaster according to the taste we want to achieve.

A pure origin coffee (e.g. 100% Colombian) will only be issued from beans of that country. Rombouts strives to deliver a consistent taste even though this would depend on the quality of crop in the country of origin.

On the contrary, if you blend several coffees (e.g. Rombouts Original), you can slightly change the recipe to deliver a consistent taste to the end consumer.

From the picture, you can see coffee beans coming out of the roasting machine – they are now much darker. Rombouts believes in a slow roasting method (18 minutes) rather than a fast roasting method that could be used by other companies. This allows to give a more fully rounded flavour. It is just like in an oven: if you bake a cake, each part of the cake will deliver the same taste. If you grill it, the outside will be burnt when the inside will still be raw.


4. GRINDING

Coffee Nursery Coffee beans come out of the roasting machine and are cooled down before grinding and packing.


5. PACKING

Coffee Nursery The packing process used at Rombouts is done as quickly as possible after roasting and grinding so that all the aromas of the coffee are kept and secured in the pack for the consumer’s pleasure.