The perfect bean in every cup

MANILA, Philippines - At Nescafe strict standards are maintained when buying the coffee beans it uses in the instant coffee-making process: nothing less than the best beans ensure that every cup of Nescafé has 100-percent coffee taste and aroma. The first step in producing quality coffee begins in the careful and painstaking selection of the coffee berries. First of all, the coffee farmers themselves pick out only the red, ripe coffee cherries from the coffee trees grown in their fields. 

Coffee farmers pick out the best coffee berries by hand. Handpicking allows the careful selection of ripe red berries from the cluster and avoiding the selection of unripe green berries.

The coffee berries then go through a post-harvest treatment process in the farmers’ processing facility. Here, they are poured into a floatation tank of water to separate the “floaters” from the “sinkers.”

Floaters are insect-damaged while “sinkers” are good quality and intact ripe coffee berries that are free from defects.

The sinkers go through a drying process to prevent the growth of microorganisms during storage. The dried berries then undergo a de-hulling process. At this stage, the external hulls of the dried coffee berries are separated from the seed or “beans.” These beans are green in color, hence they are called Green Coffee Beans or GCBs. After the de-hulling, the green coffee beans are finally dried down to achieve just the right moisture content.

The de-hulled beans then go through a thorough sorting process to remove defective beans as well as other foreign matter. This process ensures that the coffee beans will produce only the best tasting coffee brew.

The GCBs are then brought by coffee farmers to any of the Nestlé Buying Stations in Davao City, Iloilo City, Dumaguete City San Francisco, Agusan del Sur, Tuguegarao, Solano, Nueva Viscaya and Silang, Cavite where they are then shipped to the Nestlé Coffee Factory in Cagayan de Oro. Here, they are graded according to defect count, cup taste, and moisture content.

The expert roasters of Nescafé are professionals who possess 70 years of accumulated knowledge in coffee-making. After roasting, the beans are then ground and brewed. This concentrated, fragrant and flavorful brew is then spray-dried through a nozzle from a high tower into a hot air chamber. This removes the water from the brew, leaving only dried coffee powder at the bottom of the chamber. The end-result is the high-quality Nescafé.