Harvest Calendar

Coffee is a seasonal product, normally with one harvest per year. As a consumer, Its useful to understand the crop cycles at different origins because you can understand when you are likely to be able to get fresh new crop coffee. Within the industry a harvest calendar is important to plan travel, buying and general movement of green (unroasted) coffee.

Green coffee can last over 12 months and still taste to its potential. However some coffees will start to show age as they approach 12 months after harvest, or possibly sooner. A coffee showing its age will lose its sweetness and acidity and start to taste flat or even woody. Coffees that tend to have the longest life as green coffee are higher density coffees that are well processed and are shipped to consuming countries in air tight or vacuum packed bags.

The coffee harvest calendar should be viewed as a general guide only. There is regional variations within countries. Climate change is changing harvest times by altering dry and wet seasons and changing the time of flowering. In some regions the coffee harvest may occur more than once a year, or even require picking of coffee cherries through large parts of the year.

The main stages in a coffee crop cycle are the following.

Flowering

After a dry period of 3-4 months, the flower buds on the coffee trees bloom 10 days after the first rains of the wet season. Coffee trees are self-pollinating - the pollen from the flowers can fertilise an ovule of the same plant - the ovule will develop into the seeds in the coffee cherry. The ability of the coffee tree to self pollinate has benefits -it increases the ease of fruit production. However it also results in a lack of genetic diversity in the species.

Fruit Development

The fruit (commonly called a coffee cherry) develops from a small green ball to a ripe red or yellow cherry over a period of approximately 8 months. This time period can vary depending on location, altitude, climate and a particular coffee varieties nature.

Harvest

After the cherry is fully developed and has reached a ripe state indicated by its colour (normally red), the cherry can be harvested and processed. Ideally hand picking is used to selectively pick only the ripe fruit. Because the cherries are likely not to all ripen at the same time, several passes of hand picking are ideal to ensure only ripe fruit is picked. At some origins (such as Brazil) machine picking is used which while more time efficient increases the likelihood of picking unripe cherries. A less ripe cherry can lead to a lower cup quality of the coffee.

After the coffee cherry is harvested it is processed to extract the coffee seed (bean) from the cherry. It is dried to approximately 12% moisture content so it is stable and to prevent the development of mould or fungus.

Shipping

Finally the coffee is loaded into a container and shipped from origin to its destination.

We have arranged the harvest calendar differently to most:

• showing the cycle of flowering to harvest and shipping linearly left to right from start to finish
• arranging the countries vertically by latitude (Northernmost at top to Southermost at bottom).

This makes it clear to see trends in harvest times between different origin countries.

One way to easily remember harvest dates is to remember the harvest dates in Ethiopia and then understand the trends as we move North or South from the equator. In Ethiopia, coffee is harvested in the dry season from November to February. Moving North, the harvest occurs slightly later - from December to March in Guatemala. Moving South, the harvest occurs earlier - from June to September in Brazil.

 

We buy our coffees seasonally throughout the year to keep them fresh and current. Have a look at all of our coffees here.

 

References

1. Aaron P. Davis, Tim Wilkinson et al., Coffee Atlas of Ethiopia, 1st Ed, London: Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, 2018
2. David Rabbich, Smallholder coffee tree management:Part 3 - Harvesting and Processing, drwakefield.com, https://drwakefield.com/news-and-views/smallholder-coffee-tree-management-part-3-harvesting-and-regeneration/ (accessed May 13 2022)