There are generally two or three main harvests in the course of a year, and cultivation aims to direct the crops as closely as possible to that end, but in a greater or less degree the shrub bears blossoms and fruit contemporaneously all the year round.
The flesh or pulp of the fruit, sweet and agreeable in flavor and frequently eaten by the pickers, encloses two seeds or beans, each inside a thin parchment like skin. These seeds, oval in shape, rounded on one side and flat on the other where they rest together, with a little groove running the length of the flat side, constitute the raw coffee of commerce. They are at first of a soft bluish or greenish color, becoming hard and flinty on exposure and changing generally with age to a pale yellowish tint.
When only one bean is found inside the berry—occasionally in all varieties and frequently in a few—the "flat side" still holds the distinguishing groove, but it is nearly as round as the other. These beans are known as "pea-berries," "male berries" or "caracolillo" (Mexican). They are most plentiful on old bushes.
There are many varieties of coffee plants, but they all have the same general characteristics, and botanists differ as to whether or not they are really divisible into different families. The variety of general cultivation to-day is that known as the Arabian coffee plant. Increasing attention is, however, being devoted to the Liberian and the Maragogipi because of the more vigorous growth of the shrubs and the larger size of the beans ( see Color Page of COFFEE BEANS). They do not present the fine cup quality of the better grade Arabian, but their size and strength of flavor give them value for blending. The Liberian is native to Liberia, Africa, and is culti vated to a considerable extent in several countries, including Brazil, the Dutch East Indies and Ceylon. The _Maragogipi is a native of Brazil.
The coffee shrub grows best in rich, well-irrigated soil in upland countries. Tropical climate, entire absence of frost and protection from the wind, are among the essentials.
Propagation is by buddings, cuttings and seeds, the custom varying in different countries. The young plants are transferred from the nurseries to the plantation when about eighteen inches high. In some countries they are planted close together—from four to eight feet each way; in others they are spaced as wide as ten to twelve feet and other crops are planted between the rows. The first crop is generally gathered
when the shrubs are four years old, and they continue to produce for from ten to twenty years—and sometimes longer.
The berries are picked when just fully ripe—if not mature, the best flavor of the beans is lost, and if allowed to become over-ripe they may fall off and become spoiled on the ground. The picking is done by hand, the berries being dropped into a basket suspended around the neck of the gatherer, or into broad, flat bamboo receptacles placed beneath the shrubs, and thence emptied into hampers or sacks located at convenient points.
Under the old method, the berries are allowed to dry before the pulp is removed, but in what is known as the "new," "washing" or "West Indian" process (WT. I. P.), they are taken direct and as fresh as possible to the "pulping house," where the pulp or meat is at once removed by machinery—leaving only the beans inside their "parch ment" covering. This work is very carefully done, for to scratch the skin of the bean itself, called the "silver skin," to distinguish it from the parchment covering, is to render it worthless because of the processes to follow.
From the pulping machines, the "parchment" beans, so called because they still retain the outer skin-covering referred to, run into the first of a series of fermenting and washing tanks, where by lying in water or moistening they are fermented and then washed to remove the saccharine matter adhering to the parchment.
After the washing, the beans undergo the drying process—by exposure to the sun or by artificial heat, according to circumstances.
This is the last stage of the beans as "parchment coffee." The next step is hulling and peeling, but before this is undertaken the bean is allowed to remain in its parchment for several weeks, as this "curing" improves its quality and makes it retain its color better. The longer it is left—even for months or years—the more, as a rule, it will improve, but as lengthy curing makes it very difficult to remove the silver-skin, the bean is never left in the parchment longer than is absolutely necessary.