After the last coffee post, many were left asking: “Where do all the naked beans go?” They go to a happy place, where it’s always dry and warm: the estufa, or drying house.

Skinned beans are sticky and wet with pulp. We put them into specially made wheelbarrows with release latches at the bottom. When we lift the latch, wet coffee beans pour out of the bottom of the wheelbarrow in long, straight lines across the drying house floor. The drying house is like a big greenhouse (or natural tanning bed, if you prefer). Beans stay in here for 2-3 days, depending on the amount of sunlight outside. In the drying house, beans are raked at least ten times a day with big-toothed wooden rakes. Raking moves the beans around so they dry evenly.

After a coffee cherry is picked, every step of the sorting-drying-classifying process affects a bean’s potential. We’re a little like parents: Nature gives us a perfect little bean, and we try our best not to mess it up. If all goes well, we bring out a bean’s amazing natural flavors. If not, we muck it up. How we dry our beans is really important. First, the drying patio must have a clean, hard floor. (If beans dry on dirt they will taste like dirt.) Second, the drying patio must be covered. Rain on drying coffee beans is like water on the Wicked Witch of the West—it destroys them. Beans can’t stay too wet, because they will ferment. Over-fermentation gives coffee a musty, overripe, even sour taste. But beans can’t dry too much, because over-drying will loosen their husks and put them at risk of breaking. Broken beans mean an uneven roast, which means poorly flavored coffee.

We separate each day’s beans into drying lots, so we can tell which need to be removed from the patio first. Beans must reach 11% humidity before they can be safely stored. How do we measure humidity? We have a moisture meter, of course! This contraption comes in a slick aluminum briefcase (it kind of looks like the nuclear football). Our nuclear football carries a few power cords, a scale, a tupperware, and the moisture meter. Every day, a test sample of beans is dropped inside the meter and it moisture level of the coffee. Once a drying lot reaches 11%, we bag up those beans and send them into a coffee silo. There, the beans will rest for two months until it’s time to hull and classify them. More classification? Yes. But that’s Part 5 of the coffee bean’s life. (These beans sure have long lives, don’t they? And they haven’t even been roasted yet.)