Engineering Properties of Coffee Beans from Various Colors of Coffee Cherries

Abstract

Abstract Harvesting practices in most coffee farms in Indonesia, due to some reasons, have resulted not only red coffee cherries but also green, yellow and deep red cherries. This is suspected to be the cause of low quality coffee beans encountered by traders. This research aimed to characterize some engineering properties of coffee beans produced from wet process in respect to different colors of coffee cherries, and to especially highlight engineering properties of beans from green and deep red cherries. Non Factorial Simple Random Sampling Experimental Design was used for experiment and then ANOVA and DMRT 5% of SPSS statistical package programs were employed to analyze the experimental data. The result of experiments indicated that some engineering properties varied among the beans from different colors of coffee cherries. The length, frontal area, weight of 1000 beans, porosity, density and true density of beans processed from green cherries, and weight of 1000 beans and angle of repose of beans produced from deep red cherries were significantly different from those of beans resulted from the other cherries. This finding suggested that the first 6 and the second 2 engineering properties might be elaborated to separate respectively coffee beans of green cherries and coffee beans of deep red cherries, from the other beans.