Coffee Processing

Harvesting
Did you know it takes 2,000 coffee cherries to produce one pound of coffee? Coffee trees can take as long as five years to begin yielding harvestable fruit and special care is needed each step along the way. So you can see why it’s such a desirable commodity. After three or four years, coffee trees bear fruit in lines or clusters along the branches of the trees. Referred to as a berry or cherry, this fruit turns red when it is ready to be harvested. Coffee beans are actually the seeds of these ripened cherries. Once picked, ripe coffee cherries must be processed within 24 hours to preserve their highest quality and avoid spoilage.

Roasting
It takes a blend of coffee beans to achieve the complexity necessary for great coffee. Many blends will contain three to seven different types of beans to develop the desired flavor profile. After the right blend of quality beans are obtained, the most important phase of the production of coffee begins: blending and roasting. It’s the process of roasting that yields the majority of the sensory attributes that we associate with coffee. It is during roasting that the sugars and other carbohydrates transform to develop the flavor and aroma characteristics.

Lighter roasts typically produce a sharper, more lively taste than do darker roasts. Darker roasts, in contrast, have a fuller flavor, approaching a bittersweet tang. That’s why we offer NESCAFÉ® TASTER'S CHOICE® Original Blend, a masterful blend of the choicest beans for a milder, yet full-bodied taste, and NESCAFÉ TASTER'S CHOICE Gourmet Roast, a premium blend of beans darkly roasted for a rich and sophisticated, full-flavored taste.

NESCAFÉ TASTER’S CHOICE Instant Coffee
What happens to coffee that makes it "instant?" Many people are unaware that instant coffee is prepared the same way as roast and ground coffee, but with an added step at the end of the process. After selecting premium blends of coffee beans and roasting them to perfection, the coffee beans are ground and brewed in what is the equivalent of a huge percolator. The resulting brew is a high quality coffee which then gets freeze dried to preserve and fresh lock the rich roast flavor and aroma of NESCAFÉ TASTER'S CHOICE coffee. Anyone that's enjoyed a great tasting cup of NESCAFÉ TASTER'S CHOICE can tell you that it is as good as a cup of brewed coffee. It's just much quicker and it is made fresh in your cup every time.