Hacea's Green Coffee Column: October
Common Green Coffee Processing Techniques
LISTEN!
Topic: Most Common: Washed and Natural Coffee Processing Techniques.
Coffee Smarter Expert: Jared Hales, Hacea Coffee Source
Connect: www.haceacoffee.com • @haceacoffeesource on Instagram
Transcript below.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Processing style will impact flavors.
Processing is the fermentation and drying stage that occurs after the coffee cherry has been picked. It is that stage between the farm and being packed in sacks for shipping to their destinations from origin.
Fermentation is what makes coffee delicious. What a good line.
I drew this diagram of a coffee cherry to show layers of a coffee cherry…I’m not sure it helped. This is a peaberry. A normal coffee seed would have two halves. You’ll see this drawing again when we talk about Peaberries in November. Most common processing technique: Washed (aka parchment dried) - Outer cherry skin is removed, and the mucilage ferments in water and then rinsed away, leaving the bean to dry in the parchment.
Natural (aka fruit dried) is the oldest method. Cherries are picked and laid out to dry. The seeds (or beans) inside are still fermenting but without the aid of the water.
How the coffee is left to dry, in what location on what surface, will ultimately impact the final results of the green coffee bean.
Drying brings the moisture content of the seed from its natural state (about 65% water) down to about 10% moisture content.
Fermentation isn’t as simple as leaving the coffee to sit and “letting it get gross,” as I so eloquently put it. There are teams at the processing facility, sometimes part of the farm, that is responsible for monitoring the coffees, rotating the seeds, and ensuring the process is going smoothly and consistently throughout the batch.
Honey-Processed has no honey involved. The name refers to the look of the pulpy mucilage as it oozes away during fermentation as it lies out drying. Also, coincidentally, bees love this process.
Semi-Washed - uses some water to rinse the mucilage away, speeding up the fermentation process.
There are a lot of techniques, and you’ve probably heard some buzzwords, but washed and natural is where it starts.
Paying attention to these processing terms as a coffee roaster and a coffee drinker will enable you to start recognizing which processing techniques lead to flavors that appeal to you. It is one more piece of data to process in your coffee journey.
If you’re small, an import partner, like Hacea Coffee Source, can fill some holes for you. Hacea Coffee Source is developing a tool for sourcing by season and creating a target for coffee arrivals.
Contact Jared@haceacoffee.com directly to access the green coffee ordering tool!
Full interview dialogue below.
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INTERVIEW*
R!WC: Uh, what I'm noticing is there's white through the middle and then more white over here. It looks good...
Jared: Oh, your beard. I was like, What? On my camera?
R!WC: No-no! I'm just looking at myself. I'm not even listening to you. I'm just watching myself, waiting to talk again...Hey, Jared!
All right, everyone, Jared and I talk before these shows start, you know before we chat, and then we usually say something inappropriate, and then we get into the show. By we, I mean me.
Jared: It's a good segway to get out of the weeds.
R!WC: Welcome back, everyone. Welcome back, Jared, for another session of Hacea Coffee Source's Green Coffee Column.
If you're listening, you can find the article on RoastWestCoast.com.
You can find Jared and his business, Hacea Coffee Source—his business with his co-founder and brother Luke—at HaceaCoffee.com. They're green coffee importers out of Anaheim, California.
Jared: Thanks, Ryan
R!WC: You're welcome. You'll find a ton of information on their site, and they also host things like cuppings for burgeoning roasters and education sessions for people who love coffee. So check that out, HaceaCoffee.com.
Jared, you're always so generous with your time, and we are certainly grateful. What are we learning about today from the green coffee side of things?
Jared: So, I kind of wanted to dive into processing or at least start diving into coffee processing. What is it? Which is best, if any, and, you know, maybe open it up for possible deep dive into more specifics later.
But yeah, jumping into that, what is processing, right? It's a word that gets put on coffee bags. You'll see variety and processing, for example.
So processing basically is two things. It's the fermentation and drying of the coffee. This is at Origin level after the coffee gets picked, right?
R!WC: So it's not something that a roaster is going to do after they buy the green coffee. It's something that happens before, and they're deciding if that's the style of coffee they want.
Jared: Exactly. So, I'll kind of ease into that, but different processing [techniques] have a different tendency to taste a certain way, but breaking it down, really, it's fermentation and drying. That is what the processing technique kind of defines.
So all coffee has to be fermented, or I should say all coffee goes through some sort of fermentation before it is dried. It's what makes things taste delicious. It's the microorganisms eating sugars in the coffee and creating all sorts of byproducts like acids. Which, you know, it's [fermentation],
been used for making drinks since the dawn of time.
R!WC: I have to admit, I never think about it too hard cause it weirds me out when I start thinking about how things actually work. But the fact that it works is amazing, and it's benefited my life wonderfully.
Jared: And you know, I'm no expert on fermentation as like a chemical process. That would be like a chemist. The processing is really related to how the cherry, the coffee cherry, gets handled after it's picked off of the coffee plant.
So, the coffee cherry has a few layers to it. It's kind of complex, but basically, it has an outer skin. It has underneath the skin, it has like a pulpy layer, which we call mucilage. And underneath the mucilage, there's another layer called parchment. And parchment is essentially, it's kind of like a thin peanut shell that protects the seed.
These elements are important. When we talk about processing, probably the most common way to process coffee is what we call Washed-Processed coffee, also referred to as Parchment-Dried coffee.
What happens with these coffees is the outer skin is removed, and the pulp or the mucilage that's covering the parchment ferments in water.
After fermenting, the mucilage gets washed off, and the coffee goes to dry in the parchment. That's why some call it Parchment-Dried.
Another really common way of processing coffee would be what's called a Natural-Process. This can also be called Fruit-Dried coffee. This is the oldest method of processing coffee, where the cherries are literally picked—
R!WC: And I just want to clarify when you say it's being set out to dry, there are variations on how this works. Whether it's on the ground, literally on the ground, or on a raised bed, or outside, or covered.
And all of those variants will or can affect how the coffee is going to eventually taste.
Jared: Right. So these are details that we look for when we're buying coffee, for sure. There are definitely certain practices that tend to have better results than others. We try to know exactly how each coffee was processed and dried before purchasing.
R!WC: I only mentioned that because you had said that it can take several weeks to dry. I think when you first hear that term dry in, at least in this current age that we're living in, I think you people assume you throw [the beans] in a machine that is like a dryer, and that's not always the case.
Jared: There are machines. They can be used or not. So mechanically dried would be like a term, but yeah, drying is essentially bringing the moisture content of the seed from where it was when it was picked— probably around 65% water down to about 10% water.
How it's dried definitely has an impact, but in the natural process or fruit-dried, the seed remains inside of the coffee fruit the entire time during fermentation and drying.
Cup coffee with Jared at Hacea Coffee Source. Hacea regularly offers educational sessions on Tasting, Roasting, and Brewing coffee at their Anaheim, CA cupping studio. Click the button to check out their upcoming classes:
R!WC: Which would, in my brain, and I know we're not supposed to get into the weeds here too much of it, but by leaving that cherry on, and if it's sitting out for several weeks, that cherry is going to kind of get gross and rot off. But there's going to be a lot more sugar inside that cherry than there would be if it was pulled off, right?
Jared: Yeah, so you want to avoid it getting gross, right? Which is, which is why having best practices with how the coffee dries and how it's being rotated and sorted—that's all supercritical.
But yeah, you told me to be quick here. So if you want to talk for an hour, then.
R!WC: Nope. Uh, be quick. Back to you, sir.
Jared: So these two washed and natural processes are probably the most common processing techniques that you'll see. But there are a few others that are fairly common, like Honey-Process. Honey-Process actually has no honey involved. Really, it's about what it looks like when it's going through the fermentation step.
Similar to the Washed-Coffee, the outer skin from the cherry gets removed, and then that pulpy mucilage coffee—that again, that's where all the sugars are being held in the coffee—so that process is a little bit in between. It's almost like a hybrid between washed and natural, but no water is really involved.
Another common process would be a semi-wash, which is kind of similar to honey, but more or less water may be involved to remove some of that mucilage before the coffee dries. So it's kind of like semi-covered in mucilage or pulp when it's drying out.
These processes cover most of the coffees that are fermented and dried.
There are some other kind of one-offs that we don't really need to get into.
There are some variations in Indonesia. You might see coffees that say "wet-hulled." This is really common in Sumatra specifically. [This is] where the coffee may go through a wash process, but when it's halfway done drying in the parchment, they'll remove that parchment, they will hull it, and open up that green coffee to oxygen while it's still kind of wet.
My understanding is this was originally done just as a practical way of getting the coffee to dry out. Sumatra is really wet—tons of rainfall every year. So by opening up the seed and removing that parchment layer, it sped up the drying process, but the result is kind of almost like an aged taste, which, if you tasted that in other coffees, it might be a negative thing, but it's very distinct to Sumatran wet-hulled coffee.
It's to the point where some folks will ask us, like, "Hey, I'm looking for Sumatran Wet-Hulled Coffee!" And others may say, "Don't ever send me Sumatran Wet-Hulled Coffee. I don't want to taste it." So it's kind of a love or hate thing.
Aside from those, you're also hearing a lot of the buzzwords out there, like anaerobic, carbonic-macerated, and, you know, all these fancy descriptors for the fermentation. Which, again, I think would be a longer episode to dive into here.
R!WC: So to kind of recap, just this general overview, I know I pushed it into some tighter spaces there.
Jared: Essentially, processing is referring to how the coffee cherry is treated between picking and being ready to be sold as green coffee or packaged as green coffee. So how it's dried and the cherries removed and so on.
And there's a bunch of variations on that.
On a broad scale—washed and natural—there are all these different terms, but they're all kind of variations on the process. Each process, without getting too specific, has, like I was saying, kind of a unique character in how the coffee tends to taste.
And there's definitely no right or wrong answer on which process tastes better. It's just different and really up to the preference of, ultimately, the consumer.
R!WC: All of that sounds like a science experiment beyond my pay grade.
Jared, thank you so much for coming back and teaching me something once again.
Even when I've heard something before, I feel like I have to keep relearning it with coffee for some reason, just because there's so much content. There's so much information that it's hard to keep straight for me sometimes.
I think that's true for a lot of people who are learning. We're going to get back together again soon, talk a little bit more about green coffee, and maybe dive deeper into some of these processing methods.
Thanks for thanks for coming back.
Jared: For sure. Thank you, Ryan.
*This transcription has been edited for length and clarity. We use an automated audio transcriber. Then go through each line to make sure it makes sense and stays true to the voice of the speaker. It is a real pain in the behind.
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