While touring the harvest season in Ethiopia, David Farley learned the basics:
Coffee, it turns out, touches a lot of hands. “It’s a very finicky process,” [coffee buyer Geoff] Watts said of coffee’s march to the market. “There are so many little things that could go wrong to change or taint the flavor of the coffee.” He spelled it out for me: There’s the farmer who plucks the (ideally ripe) cherry from the tree. The washing station manager who (also, ideally) removes any unripe cherry before processing. The many workers who, after the cherry has been stripped and soaked in water for 24 to 48 hours, push the beans around on long tables to make sure each one dries properly. Then there are the workers who load the dried beans into jute sacks, and the driver who transports the coffee to Addis Ababa to be sold or shipped off. Eventually, there’s the roaster who, if all goes well, treats the bean with respect and doesn’t overroast it. Finally, there’s the person sitting in front of a cup of coffee, not complaining (ideally) that it costs too much.
(Photo of Ethiopian coffee by Flickr user furtwangl)
The Dish 