We started planting in 2014. The trees in the ground today were nurtured from seedlings in our on-site nursery — Red and Yellow Catuai Arabica, originally sourced from Costa Rica via a government programme assessing coffee viability in Australia's tropics.
This post explains how we farm, harvest, and process coffee. Not the marketing version — the actual decisions and tradeoffs we manage every year. We update it after each season because what we do isn't fixed. We're still learning.
The land
Our farm sits outside Mareeba on the western side of the Atherton Tablelands, at around 600 metres above sea level and 17 degrees south latitude. The soil is a mix of red volcanic basalt and sandy loam — the volcanic material brings minerals and drainage, the sandy loam provides structure. We manage nutrition through tailored soil programmes rather than a standard fertiliser calendar. The trees tell you a lot if you're watching them closely enough.
Mareeba's climate is dry compared to the coast. The rain shadow off the ranges keeps harvest season clear — long, sunny days with consistent airflow, which matters a great deal for drying. The day-night temperature swing here does similar work to altitude at other origins. Warm days drive photosynthesis; cooler nights slow ripening and let flavour compounds and sugars develop over time.
The crop cycle
The year starts in October with dry stress — a deliberate reduction in irrigation to push the trees into simultaneous flowering. This is critical. If flowering is staggered, cherry development is staggered, and harvesting is a mess.
After flowering, fruit set. The cherries develop through the wet summer months — the trees doing the slow, invisible work of building structure and sugar inside each fruit. By May or June, the cherries are approaching ripeness. The decision of when to start harvest is one of the most consequential calls of the year. Too early and you lose sweetness; too late and you're picking overripe fruit that damages cup quality.
Harvest runs through June and into August. Immediately after harvest, processing begins. There's no buffer — coffee cherries are perishable, and deferring processing is not an option.
Harvesting
We harvest mechanically. In Australia, labour costs make hand-picking economically impossible at scale — and with the right infrastructure downstream, mechanical harvesting doesn't have to mean lower quality.
Mechanical harvesters strip the branches, collecting ripe, underripe, and overripe cherries together. The sorting happens afterwards. We've invested in advanced optical cherry colour sorters that separate cherries by ripeness with a precision that rivals selective hand-picking. Red cherries — at peak ripeness — are separated from greens and overripes before processing begins. This step has had a material impact on cup clarity and consistency.
We also float the cherries in water before processing. Defective, hollow, and insect-damaged cherries float; ripe, dense cherries sink. It's a low-tech step that eliminates a meaningful percentage of poor-quality fruit before anything else happens.
Processing: washed
Washed is our primary process and the method we've invested most in refining. Our wet mill was developed in collaboration with Colombian processing specialists Penagos and Estrada.
In the washed process, cherries undergo pre-pulping fermentation. Fermentation times vary batch by batch — we're not working from a fixed clock, we're monitoring the beans and the liquid for signals that tell us when fermentation is complete. After fermentation, pulping removes the outer skin. The beans still carry a layer of mucilage. We wash this off thoroughly before moving to drying.
The details here matter more than they might appear. Controlled fermentation — including inoculants and carefully managed environments — is where a lot of cup complexity is built. We don't publish our exact protocols, but we've moved well beyond the basics.
Processing: natural
In a natural-process lot, the whole cherry dries intact. Fermentation begins immediately and continues as the fruit dries around the bean — a slower, warmer, more intense process than washed fermentation. The result is typically fuller in body and higher in fruit sweetness.
Natural processing is more demanding to manage in our climate. Mareeba's heat and sun can push fermentation too fast if you're not attentive. We've expanded our natural programme as we've learned what the conditions require. The 2025 season includes natural lots processed using both classic methods and experimental longer fermentations.
Processing: honey
Honey sits between washed and natural. The cherry skin is removed — as in the washed process — but some or all of the mucilage is deliberately left on the bean during drying. How much mucilage remains determines the honey classification: yellow, red, or black. More mucilage means more sweetness and body but also more fermentation risk.
We produced honey-process lots at meaningful scale for the first time in 2025. The results have been encouraging — the mucilage layer contributes sweetness and texture without the intensity of a full natural.
Drying
All drying is mechanical in our core process — drum dryers that give us control and repeatability regardless of weather. We also sun-dry selected lots on raised beds when conditions allow. Raised-bed drying with good airflow is slower and produces different cup characteristics; we use it for lots where we want a more nuanced result.
After drying, the coffee rests in a temperature-controlled room. Resting allows moisture to equalise through the bean and flavours to settle and lock in. It's not glamorous but it matters — coffee rushed from the dryer to the roaster doesn't cup as well as coffee that's been allowed to stabilise.
Milling and quality assessment
After drying and resting, the coffee goes through secondary dry milling — removing the parchment layer and further refining the lot. We then cup every lot using standard SCA protocols. Based on our most recent harvest, around 80% of our lots scored between 81 and 87 points. We're working to push more of our production above 85.
Every bag of Jack Murat coffee is traceable to its specific plot, harvest date, and processing details. This isn't a marketing position — it's a practical consequence of how we manage the farm. Each lot is kept separate throughout processing, milling, and storage. That separation is what makes traceability possible.
Roasting
We roast at two locations: on-farm in Mareeba and in Sydney, using drum roasters at both sites. Roasting weekly, we can move from farm to cup in a matter of days — a freshness window that simply isn't possible with imported coffee. Our roasting is tailored lot by lot, not a single profile applied across the range.
The Mareeba roastery gives us the ability to roast within hours of processing in some cases. The Sydney roastery lets us serve customers across Australia's main population centres with minimal transit time.
What we're working on
The farm is not static. Current areas of active development include:
• Varietal trials: We're testing Marsellesa, NR25, Paraiso, and IPR 107 in the field, in partnership with Griffith University and plant breeder Dr Fawad. Each plot is monitored for cup quality, yield, and adaptation to Mareeba's soil and climate.
• Zero-waste processing: Most of our energy comes from solar. Pulp and skins are composted into mulch and returned to the paddocks. We're aiming to close the loop completely — no waste from any part of the cherry.
• Extended fermentation protocols: We're trialling different inoculants, fermentation duration, and controlled environments to build more complexity into our washed lots without sacrificing clarity.
• Farm management systems: We've moved away from spreadsheets and implemented a full farm management application. Picking rates, processing volumes, and fermentation logs are tracked in real time.
If you'd like to see the process in person, we run farm tours from March through September and host an annual immersion programme for roasters and coffee professionals. Details are on the website.
