What is a coffee cherry? The fruit your coffee beans come from

What are the parts of a coffee cherry?

From the outside in, a coffee cherry has a skin, pulp, mucilage, parchment, silverskin and the seed. Perfect Daily Grind uses the botanical names for each.

The silverskin is the part you might see at home. Perfect Daily Grind says it comes off during roasting as chaff. Those are the papery flakes that collect in a roaster.

What color is a ripe coffee cherry?

Most ripe coffee cherries are deep red. The National Coffee Association describes ripe cherries as a deep red or purplish color.

Some varieties ripen to other colors. Perfect Daily Grind says the skin is green until it ripens to red, yellow, orange or even pink, depending on the variety.

Cherries on one branch do not all ripen at once. The NCA says pickers doing selective harvesting rotate among the trees every 8 to 10 days, picking only the ripe fruit.

How long does a coffee tree take to fruit?

A new coffee tree takes about 3 to 4 years to bear fruit, according to the National Coffee Association. The exact time depends on the variety.

Wikipedia's arabica article says a tree takes about seven years to mature fully. So a farm planting new trees waits years before the first real crop.

What is a peaberry?

A peaberry is a cherry with one round seed instead of two flat-sided ones. How common they are depends on the source.

Wikipedia's coffee bean article says peaberries make up about 10% to 15% of all coffee beans. Perfect Daily Grind says they occur in about 5% of cherries, often on parts of the plant exposed to harsh weather.

How does the cherry affect the flavor of your coffee?

The cherry's fruit layers shape flavor through processing, and the sugars in the mucilage are the main reason. Perfect Daily Grind says those layers are full of sugars that matter during fermentation.

There are three main ways to deal with the fruit:

• Washed: the fruit is removed before drying. Perfect Daily Grind says this tends to give cleaner, more acidic cups.
• Natural: the whole cherry dries around the seed. More sugar stays with the bean, which often reads as fruit and body.
• Honey: the skin comes off, but some mucilage stays on during drying.

Wikipedia says about 90% of Brazilian arabica is dried as naturals. The discarded skins are not always wasted. Perfect Daily Grind notes they are dried to make cascara, a tea-like drink.

Does processing change how you grind?

Not directly. Processing changes flavor, but your grind setting is driven mainly by brew method, roast level and bean density.

Counter Culture's grind guide points to roast and density, not process, as the things that move the setting. Denser, higher-grown beans need a finer grind, and darker roasts need a coarser one. Start from a grind size chart for your method, then taste and adjust.

Once the cherry becomes green coffee and then roasted beans, the fruit's job is done. What matters at home is how evenly your grinder breaks up the seed.