Coffee beans are the seeds of the red fruits, known as coffee “cherries”. The cherries are ready for picking when they have turned a ripe red, and they are still immature when green. Inside each cherry, there are two beans, lying flat sides pressed together. (On rare occasions, there is only one bean. In such instances, it is usually larger and rounder in shape than normal beans. These are referred to as peaberry beans). The beans are surrounded by a parchment. If the fruit is ripe, a thin, gooey layer surrounds the parchment, called the mucilage. Both the pulp and the parchment need to be removed before the coffee can be roasted. There are two methods of doing this: dry processing and wet processing.