Old School Coffee Processing - Days Later

Many days of drying the .96 lbs of "Parchment" phase beans and a little help with manual drying due to the lack of sun....we were ready to remove the parchment from the beans. At this point, the parchment is very hard and the bean has shrank inside. Many people use a mortar and pestle to crush the outer parchment and remove the actual bean. The picture above is after we crushed a few of them so that you could see what it starts to look like.

This next picture is what the actual coffee bean looks like. This of course still needs to dry for a little while and these beans have not been polished at all! We were doing this by hand and not by machine last night, so there was no polishing and making them pretty yet.

This is one of the small piles of parchment that we pulled away from the beans. It is strong, just like that piece of popcorn hull that gets stuck in your teeth. It is very hard and durable, hence the use of a mortar and pestle to break it open.
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Recap:

• Picked 2 lbs. red cherries
• Took red outer shells off
• Lightly rinsed
• Dried for many days
• Remove another layer called parchment
• Dry remaining beans
• Polish

End result....  7 ounces of green coffee beans!!!!