Many factors contribute to high quality coffee; ideal growing conditions are one of them.

There are two methods of coffee processing. After picking, most high quality coffee growers utilize the washed method to remove the green coffee from the coffee cherry. From soaking, pulping, fermenting, rinsing, sun drying, hulling and grading, the washed method provides many opportunities to select for highest quality.

The other and more commonly used method is the natural (dry) method. Peet's sells both washed and natural coffees. In the natural method of processing, the coffee cherries are picked and then simply laid on the ground to dry in the sun. This slow drying of the fruit takes from three to four weeks; then the fruit is hulled off the green beans using grinding stones or more modern equipment.

Due to variations in weather and microorganisms that can grow in the pulp, the natural method tends to produce lower quality and less consistent tasting coffee. However, the finest natural method coffees are equal in quality to the finest washed coffees. Sumatra and Yemen are two countries that produce excellent natural method coffees.

Coffee Buying
Peet's roastmaster emeritus Jim Reynolds has been buying coffee for more than 30 years. He and Doug Welsh, Peet's coffee buyer, receive hundreds of solicited and unsolicited samples of green coffee from around the world. They taste the most promising samples, as well as other samples of interest, and select those that are best suited to Peet's roasting style.

After negotiating a price or bidding at auction, they receive an approval sample to ensure that the correct coffee is shipped to Peet's. When the shipment arrives, Jim and Doug cup random samples from it and compare them to the approval sample before accepting or refusing the coffee. They can terminate the transaction if the coffee shipped has been damaged, tainted, or is the wrong coffee.