.svg "Kett")
Your daily morning cup of coffee may get you up and moving. Still, it also symbolizes the end result of a long growing and processing operation from bean to brew—and a whole industry centered around delivering 1 billion people more than 2.25 billion cups of coffee every day. That calls for a whole lot of coffee beans, meaning coffee farmers stay busy balancing tight profit margins and keeping up with demand.
During each stage of the coffee growing and processing supply chain, the moisture content of coffee plants and beans must be carefully monitored to ensure the level of moisture continuously decreases from one phase to the next to prevent moldy or defective crops.
Correct drying is essential to coffee growing and processing to ensure quality and prevent losses. As a result, moisture meters, like Kett’s PM650 Instant Grain and Seed Moisture Meter are integral to coffee growing and processing. Here’s a look at how these laboratory-quality instruments impact coffee production and how they can help protect farmers and roasters from lost crops and damaging losses.
The Too-Tight Profit Margin of Coffee Crops
Currently, the coffee industry is facing a serious issue when it comes to supply, demand, and farmer’s earnings. As it stands now, too many farmers actually get paid less for their crops than what it costs to grow and harvest them—and rising inflation rates have only exacerbated this problem.
Coffee buyers, roasters, and brand distributors everywhere are feeling the pinch of inflation, especially when it comes to the smaller brands. However, they are not impacted nearly the same way that farmers are, as farmers don’t have the same profit margins that their partners further down the supply chain do.
Farmers often must hire additional workers during harvest time, they have to pay for fuel to transport beans, and almost every facet of their growing and harvesting process is affected by inflation. Some studies reflect that today’s coffee farmers end up with about 1 percent of the price of coffee at retail. This means that for a $4 cup of coffee, farmers get about $0.04. They need access to quality moisture assessment instruments to help optimize their crop yields and limit potential losses, as every extra expense or profit loss cuts into their already tight—or even nonexistent—profit margins.
Arguments abound for fairer prices for coffee crops—this is an inescapable part of the conversation about establishing an enduring, sustainable coffee supply chain that supports its farmers in the long term. But as a portion of the coffee industry seeks to find ways to support growers, we can start to understand why every bean matters at each stage of growing and processing. After all, this means that fair-trade coffee brands and distributors seeking strategies to pay farmers better also have little margin for error or crop loss.
Moisture Meters and Coffee Growing & Processing
While the general public may be familiar with the term “coffee beans,” those ingrained in the industry know that coffee beans are cherries, which must be harvested from mature coffee bushes. In many instances, these cherries are hand-harvested, as they ripen at different rates and must be picked from the branches up to three times per season to clear the plants of their cherries. On some larger farms, cherries are machine-harvested.
Once coffee cherries are harvested, they must go through cleaning and drying to extract the actual bean, via either the wet or dry methods.
Through either extraction process, garnering coffee beans looks somewhat similar. With the dry method, coffee cherries are cleaned, then dried either by the sun or via mechanical hot air dryers and finally hulled to end up with a dried green coffee bean.
When using the wet method, only ripe coffee cherries are sorted and cleaned, then de-pulped of the skin and fruit that surrounds the coffee beans, then these freshly de-pulped beans are soaked and “fermented” in clean water to remove any final traces of the fruity pulp surrounding the beans. Once cleaned, these beans are sun-dried or dried mechanically until they reach their parchment phase, during which the beans still have a silvery, paper-like outer covering that is finally hulled, leaving the beans ready for the next stage of processing.
No matter which methods coffee growers use to harvest and extract their beans, the drying process remains the same—and is integral to the overall success of the crop. Coffee beans must be dried to a moisture content of 11 to 12 percent or less, which, in the sun generally takes between 15 to 20 days, or as long as 4 weeks depending on the weather.
Once coffee beans reach their optimum moisture levels, they must be stored without any excess moisture, which can lead to moldy crops and undesirable, musty and moldy flavors. Kett’s PM650 Instant Grain and Seed Moisture Meter is non-destructive and easy to use to assess these moisture levels.
This PM650 Moisture Meter can take highly accurate readings with built-in, factory-calibrations to take moisture readings in the field without the need for additional processing like husking and grinding, which can take quite a bit of time. For busy farmers, this dramatically reduces the time needed to prepare samples for each moisture test. The Instant Grain and Seed Moisture Meter includes multiple preset factory calibrations that take accurate readings of moisture levels throughout the coffee processing stages, including:
- Raw coffee for dried coffee cherries
- Green coffee bean moisture levels
- Green coffee bean moisture levels for Arabica coffee
- Green coffee bean moisture levels for Robusta coffee
- Roasted coffee bean moisture levels
- Parchment coffee moisture levels for Arabica coffee
- Parchment coffee moisture levels for Robusta coffee
After drying, coffee is milled, roasted, ground, and packaged—and moisture levels are just as important during all of these phases as well. For example, too much exposure to the natural humidity of the air will turn ground coffee into a solid lump. Instruments like Kett’s KJT130 Handheld Near-Infrared Moisture Meter can help coffee producers keep a close watch on moisture levels for processed and packaged coffee grounds right inside their packaging plants to ensure a high-quality product with great tastes for freshly brewed coffee consumers are bound to love. The RX30 Inline Moisture Meter is also a smart choice for coffee processing, as it allows for instant moisture content readings to measure moisture levels of incoming fresh ground coffee or roasted beans.
The journey from plant to bean to brew is a long one, and achieving proper moisture levels is essential at every stage for the perfect pour every time. With the right moisture instruments at your disposal, your team can easily and accurately assess moisture levels for each crop and roast—all with very little training and very little preparation time.
Are you ready to learn more about how Kett can support your coffee processing operations? Contact us today!
