What is dry milling in coffee processing?

Dry milling is the final processing stage before green coffee is packed for export. The dry mill receives dried parchment (washed lots) or dried natural cherry and carries out the mechanical operations that transform it into clean, graded, export-ready green beans.

The sequence: hulling (removing parchment or dried cherry husk), optional polishing (removing silverskin for appearance), density sorting, screen sizing, colour sorting, grading, and packaging.

Every decision here - the precision of screen sizes used, the number of colour-sorting passes, whether hand sorting is included - determines the defect count and consistency of what you receive. A coffee that started as exceptional cherry can be let down by careless dry milling. When a specification mentions preparation standard or European Preparation, it's describing what happened at this stage.