What Is a Coffee Bean? The Anatomy of The Coffee Cherry

Where does your coffee come from? Most of us know that coffee is a plant and we may recognise that the shiny brown beans came from a bright red coffee cherry. But what is inside the coffee cherry and what does it mean for our cup?

Take a look at the anatomy of the coffee cherry to better understand your daily brew.

You may also like From Seed to Cup: How Do Producers Grow Coffee?

A ripe coffee cherry.

Understanding The Coffee Plant

The beans we roast, grind, and brew to make coffee are the seeds of a fruit. The coffee plant produces coffee cherries, and the beans are the seeds inside.

Coffee trees can naturally grow to over 30 ft/9 m. But producers prune and stump plants short to conserve the plants’ energy and to help harvesting. Smaller trees have better yield and quality in a limited space.

Each tree is covered with green, waxy leaves that grow in pairs and coffee cherries fruit along its branches. Dependant on variety, it takes three to four years for a coffee plant to produce fruit. The National Coffee Association USA states that the average coffee tree produces 10 lbs of coffee cherry per year, which results in around 2 lbs of green beans.

Learn more in Get to Know The Coffee Plant

Coffee cherries on a branch.

The Layers of A Coffee Cherry

A coffee cherry’s skin is green until it ripens to a bright red, yellow, orange, or even pink, depending on variety. Green coffee cherries should not be confused with green coffee beans, which are the unroasted seeds from inside the ripe coffee cherry.

Beneath the cherry skin is a thin layer of pulp known as mucilage that is responsible for much of the sweetness in your cup.

Then we reach the coffee seeds, which we know better as beans. There are usually two beans in a coffee cherry, each of which is covered by a thin layer known as the silverskin and a papery layer that we call parchment.

The parchment is usually removed in hulling, which is the first step in the dry milling process. Machines or millstones are used to remove any remaining fruit and the dried parchment from the beans. But sometimes green beans are sold as parchment coffee. That is, with the layer intact.

The silverskin comes off during roasting, when it is known as chaff.

Coffee cherries being depulped.

Sometimes there is just one seed inside a coffee cherry. This happens in about 5% of coffee cherries and the seed is usually larger and rounder than average. These coffee beans are known as peaberries.

There is some debate over whether peaberries have a sweeter, more desirable flavour and they are sometimes sold at a premium. Regardless of whether you think they taste different, their rounded shape allows for better rolling in the roasting drum. So it’s best to keep them apart from other beans to avoid an inconsistent roast.

Dry parchment coffee.

How Anatomy Impacts Your Cup

Coffee cherry skin and fruit are usually discarded, but sometimes they are dried to make cascara for tea and other products.

It is difficult to remove skin and mucilage from coffee beans and different processing methods have been developed to do so. Each method has an effect on the flavour and profile of the final coffee.

For example, washed coffee has all of the fruit flesh removed before drying. But in natural processed coffee the fruit flesh is removed after drying.

In honey and pulped natural processing, the skin and sometimes part of the mucilage is removed before drying but the remaining mucilage and other layers are removed after.

Coffee beans being washed.

Leaving the mucilage on results in sweeter coffee with more body. This happens because sugars in the fruit ferment during drying and this affects the sugar content of the bean. But it’s harder to ensure consistency in methods that leave the fruit on because fermentation is hard to control.

This means that washed coffee has clean, more consistent flavours that can show off a lot of acidity. Natural processed coffee has a lot more fruitiness, sweetness, and body. But without careful monitoring and consistent drying, there can be inconsistent quality in honeys and naturals because of the unpredictability of fermentation.

Find out more in Processing 101: What Is Washed Coffee & Why Is It So Popular?

Yellow coffee cherries.

Understanding the basics of the coffee cherry can help you better understand production, processing, and roasting. Next time you are choosing between a wet and a honey processed coffee, you can have more confidence in knowing what that means and its impact on your cup.

Enjoyed this? You may also like What Is Coffee? A Basic Explanation From Seed to Cup

Written by Hazel Boydell.

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