Harvesting

Ripe coffee berries are handpicked by the lambadis (migrant tribals), as well as the local community, once a year from December to March. Handpicking is done to ensure only ripe rich flavoured berries are picked.
The women folk do the picking and the men are engaged for pulping, drying and curing operations.
There are two post harvest processing methods they are:

Dry process - the cherry which is not suited for pulping or which cannot be pulped for various reasons is dried under the sun and then processed in the mill and graded.

Wet process - the cherry is pulped, where the pulp around the bean is mechanically squeezed out for which pure water from mountain stream is used.

An alternative to late monsoons is the artificial irrigation mainly used for the Arabica species.
The skin of the cherry is removed, the cherry is soaked in fermenting tanks or vats and the mucilage is softened and dissolved. The period of fermentation depends on the ambient temperature and the relative humidity. The coffee is then washed to facilitate total removal of mucilage and subsequently the clean bean with its parchment cover is thinly spread out on barbecued brick to dry. This drying process removes the moisture content of the bean to the required percentage, which is 11% in the case of Robusta and 10.5% in the case of Arabica.