From Crop to Cup: How to Make your Own Cup of Coffee

1. The first step to making coffee is picking coffee cherries and peeling the skin. You want to make sure the cherries are not still green, but are not too ripe. What you want is the soft white bean inside the cherry. That’s your eventual coffee product.

2. Shuck the Bean. The next step was to shuck the hardened shell to reveal a soft green coffee bean inside. At this stage you could roast it right away or let it age. Fun Fact: Historically coffee was shipped by the barrel to Europe. When shipping technology advanced, and the journey was shortened consumers could taste the difference. Aging techniques were developed to compensate for quicker delivery time.

3. Peel and Dry The Cherries. You peel the red cherry husk to reveal the soft moist beans underneath. Let them harden in the sun for a day. You can choose to let them dry with a variety of additives that will affect the eventual flavor of the coffee. In Ethiopia for example, it is popular to dry them alongside berries.

4. Roast. When you are ready to roast the beans, make sure your pan is searing hot. I learned a technique in Ethiopia to wet your hands with water, pick up the coffee beans and coat them, pour some more water in the pan, (no more than 2 tablespoons), and throw in the beans until they are roasted.

5. Grind, depending on the method you can go modern with an electric grinder, but if your in a land where coffee is growing, you might be more a kin to the traditional route with mortar and pestle. 

6. Filter and enjoy!