Types of coffee processing

The coffee you may be drinking while reading this has gone through many steps to find its way to your cup. From its start as a humble seed, 5-6 years have transpired before any coffee cherries can be harvested for processing. Perhaps the caffeine has stimulated your thinking to wonder how coffee is processed post-harvesting to prepare the beans to be roasted and brewed? This brief overview will discuss the three ways that coffee is traditionally processed: washed, natural, and honey. There are other methods employed, but these three are the most common.

Washed Coffees

Washed coffees focus solely on the bean inside the coffee cherry that is picked from the plant. Washed coffees let you taste what’s on the inside, not the outside.

A natural or honey processed coffee requires a very flavorful coffee cherry, including the outer layers. In contrast, washed coffees depend heavily on the bean absorbing enough natural sugars and nutrients during its growing cycle. This makes many factors important when selecting this processing method, including the varietal, the soil, weather, ripeness, fermentation, washing, and drying are all key.

Washed coffees reflect both the science involved in growing coffee, as well as the expertise of the farmers who are an integral part of crafting its taste. With washed coffees, the country of origin and environmental conditions add to the flavor.

This means that the washed process highlights the true character of a single origin bean like no other process. It’s why so many specialty coffees are washed.

A downside of washed coffees is the high volume of water required to process enough beans for just one of cup – approximately 35-40 gallons. This number is not consistent across all growing regions but is an average.

Natural/Dry Processed Coffee

The natural process, also known as the dry process, has its origins in Ethiopia, the birthplace of coffee. In this process, the fruit remains on the bean, and dries naturally. Although it needs less investment in equipment and labor, it still requires certain climatic conditions to ensure the proper drying of the fruit and seed.

Over time, the natural process has become considered a lower-quality method that can lead to inconsistent flavors. This inconsistency is often the result of unripe fruit drying and turning brown alongside ripe fruits.

That said, this process has the potential to create extremely flavorful coffees, especially if consistency in choosing only the ripe fruit for processing is achieved. Many coffee producers believe natural coffees can match washed coffees for clarity and provides some more interesting tasting notes and characteristics as well. 

And a big plus is that the natural coffee is the most eco-friendly, primarily from the savings in water usage over washed methods.

Honey/Pulped Natural Coffee

When done right, honey processed coffee can literally taste like someone has put honey and brown sugar in your cup of coffee – although the name comes from how sticky the beans get during processing. In many ways, this type of coffee is halfway between a washed coffee and a natural process coffee. It’s fruity, but not in as exaggerated a way as some natural processed coffees. It often has a more rounded acidity than washed coffees, with intense sweetness and complex mouthfeel.

The honey process is strongly associated with Costa Rica including subcategories such as yellow, red, golden, black, and white honey. This reflects the ability that the honey process has in influencing the taste and overall profile of a coffee. It can become a highly scientific process by monitoring and controlling the level of mucilage (the fruity layer between the coffee cherry and the outer skin) which influences the sweetness and depth of body of the coffee. Typically, the more mucilage left on the bean, the sweeter the taste.

Deciding on what process to use

Most coffee producers want to produce the most profitable and best-tasting coffee they can, but their environment limits them. Coffee, more so than most foodstuff, has a very close bond to its surrounding environment.

Producers will often wait to see how much rain has fallen before deciding whether to produce washed, honey, or natural coffee. Heavy rain makes it harder to produce good natural process because coffee cherries can start splitting. If it hasn’t rained, conditions are great for honey process or natural process because no sugars will get washed away.

Producers often use refractometers to measure sugar content. This helps decide if the sugar content is high enough for natural processed or honey processed coffee.

Conclusion

Coffee processing rarely makes it into the headlines or café discussions, but it’s an integral part of crafting the flavor and character of your cup of coffee. So next time you pick up a honey processed Costa Rican or a natural processed Nicaraguan, you’ll know what to look forward to.

 

Even a drip coffee machine can brew a cup with café quality flavor. If you love a good cup of coffee, you’ll want to check out these essential tips for making the best possible coffee at home.

Paying attention to these techniques will improve the quality of your coffee whether you use a simple drip brewer or fancier methods of extracting those delicious flavors from your preferred grind.

1. Start with fresh, whole bean coffee

Good coffee beans are table stakes when making a great cup of coffee.

You may be buying pre-ground coffee for the convenience, but fresh whole bean coffee will retain the flavor profile of the coffee longer. And if you are buying coffee from the grocery store, you will most likely not find a date for when that coffee was roasted.  In fact, grocery store may have been on the shelf for months after it’s roast date. We recommend that you purchase only as much coffee as you can use in 2-3 weeks to have the freshest possible beans on hand.

2. Store your coffee beans properly

To keep the coffee you buy fresher longer, make sure you're storing it properly. The enemies of freshness are oxygen, light, heat, and moisture. To keep coffee fresh, store it in an opaque, airtight container at room temperature. We never recommend storing coffee in the refrigerator or freezer where it will absorb odors from other foods.

3. How you grind your coffee matters

For maximum flavor, always grind your coffee right before brewing

It is best to grind your coffee in batch sizes appropriate for what you plan to brew and consume vs. grinding and storing for later use.

Grind size for your appropriate brewing method is also an important factor in making a great cup of coffee. Grind too coarse and you will have a weak pot of coffee. Grind too fine and you will over-extract the coffee and it will taste bitter.

We recommend using a quality automatic burr grinder to produce a consistent grind. A blade grinder will work, but the inconsistent size of the coffee particles will have a negative effect on coffee flavor.  And blade grinders can burn the coffee due to high-speed rotation of the blades.

4.  Measure your coffee – don’t guess

Measuring by weight is better than measuring by volume.

The ratio of coffee per unit of water each time you brew is another key to a consistently good cup. Digital scales are rather inexpensive to use and will permit you to better control how much coffee and water is used each time.  And a bonus is that you will likely waste less coffee and get more cups from a bag.

For a medium strength cup, about 10 grams of coffee to 6 ounces of water (standard home coffee cup) is a good place to start. In the long run, you must decide what tastes best to you. Removing the variables by weighing your coffee and measuring your water makes it easier to find that taste you prefer.

5. Pre-infusion – what’s that about?

Most drip coffee makers skip this crucial step.

Most automatic coffee makers don't properly prepare the coffee grounds for full extraction. Manual pour over cones (which are not unlike automatic drip machines) call for a pre-infusion or the so-called "bloom." This preps the coffee by pouring hot water over the grounds to help release any remaining carbon dioxide gas left over from the roasting process. Skipping this step will allow the carbon dioxide to repel water during part of the brewing process, effectively making the brew weaker.  If you don’t own a coffee maker with a pre-infusion setting, here is a step you can take.

To manually pre-infuse your coffee, insert a filter into the hopper and add your coffee grounds. Then use a kettle to preheat roughly quarter-cup of water to 200 degrees Fahrenheit. Slowly pour the heated water over the grounds, making sure to thoroughly wet all of them. Let this sit for approximately 45 seconds before starting the coffee maker.

6. The right brewing temperature is important

Most drip machines don't reach optimal brewing temperature.

The Goldilocks zone for brewing coffee is between 195 and 205, degrees Fahrenheit. Most drip coffee makers do not reach this temperature and only newer models have an adjustment.  If you are in the market for a new brewer, check out these brewers certified by the Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) Best 2022 brewers.

7. Use the right water

The quality of the water you use is another often overlooked aspect of brewing coffee.

Using tap water that may not taste good will affect coffee flavor.  And hard water that's full of minerals won't bond well with the dissolved particulates from the coffee, leading to an under-extracted, weak coffee. Not only that, this higher mineral content is what also leads to buildups in your coffee maker, such as lime deposits. This will require you to descale your coffee maker more often.

Heavily filtered or distilled water can be just as destructive for your equipment. While it doesn't cause as much buildup, distilled waters lack of ions and mineral content will force the water to leach minerals out of the metal components and degrade the machine's performance over time.

Water marked as spring water is a good choice for coffee flavor and your brewer’s performance.

These steps may seem tedious and time consuming, but try a few pots of coffee this way and then decide if you think the better cup of coffee you are drinking is worth the effort.

Enjoy!

In the battle for your coffee dollar there are many suiters vying for your attention.  And no wonder. The number of Americans drinking a daily cup of coffee is at the highest level since 2012, with demand continuing to get a boost from at-home consumption (fueled a lot by the pandemic) and an appetite for gourmet coffee drinks. Recent industry studies show that around 2 of 3 Americans, aged 18 or over, said they had a cup of coffee the previous day. Clearly, we and our neighbors are in a love affair with coffee.

Among the Americans surveyed, at-home preparation continues to be the dominant spot for demand, with 79 percent of those surveyed saying they had had a cup of coffee at home the previous day. Coffee consumed at cafes and other out-of-home locations totaled 36 percent.

The cost of coffee then and now

Prior to the invention of the K-cup and the rise of Starbucks and other cafe’s, home brewing was even more prevalent. Think of it this way. If you asked someone over 50 what the price of coffee was when they were in their 20’s they would probably speak of it in price per pound. Back then, you bought a can of coffee for $4 or $5. Ask a millennial today and they are more likely to say $3 a cup or maybe $4-5 for specialty drinks. This lead me to thinking about something perhaps overlooked by many coffee drinkers who get their caffeine at home. I am speaking of the cost of that quick, “pop a pod” in the single serve machine on the kitchen counter. So I did some research to check it out.

I found that convenience comes with a cost.

Several studies show that when you calculate the cost of these single serve pods and compare them to a pound of coffee, you find that good quality single serve runs around $50 per pound (NY Times) while most specialty coffees average $20 or less per pound. Are K-cups convenient – yes. Pricey – YES and YES! The first capital yes has to do with the coffee itself. Typical studies show a K-cup costs average around 65 cents per cup to make. Yes, there are cheaper K-cups, but who wants to drink cheap coffee! Compare that with a $20 per pound, or less, for specialty coffee at around 44 cents per cup. That is a huge disparity for the convenience your Keurig or Nespresso provides.

Here’s a quick comparison of K-Cup Brewing versus regular Drip Brewing over the course of a year, using the standard recommendation of two tablespoons of ground coffee for making a six-ounce cup.

• 2 tablespoons ground coffee = 10 grams. A 1 lb. bag of coffee is 453 grams. 
• That means we get45 six-ounce cups out of that one bag (453/10).

If you drink a cup a day, you will go through a little over eight bags a year (365 days/45 cups), amounting to $160 spent on coffee (8 bags*$20 (the cost of the average 1 lb. specialty coffee).

Consuming the equivalent amount in K-Cups adds up to $400 a year (8 lbs*$50, the average price per pound of K-Cup coffee), over 2 1/2 times as much.

Realistically — most of us are probably drinking more coffee than that. The Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) reports that the average American consumes between 2-3 cups per day. So, conservatively doubling our 1 cup a day numbers to $320 per year for the Drip Brewing and $800 for the K-Cup Brewing, that’s an even bigger dent in the wallet.

The second capital yes has to do with the environment. While there is a move to create pods that are totally biodegradable or to employ reusable pod/filter combos, most K-cup consumption is from coffee pods in pre-filled plastic containers. Millions of these are disposed of in landfills every year. And to further emphasize the point about cost, here is a quote from John Sylvan, inventor of the Keurig and K-cup:

“I don’t have one. They’re kind of expensive to use,” Sylvan said of the K-Cup system he created. “Plus, it’s not like drip coffee is tough to make.”

Conclusion

If your bottom line is convenience, the pod seems like a logical choice. If you are more concerned about the higher cost or the environmental impact of that convenience, then you might want to consider another brewing method. And we didn’t even explore the better tasting coffee other brewing methods produce. A better cup of coffee can be had at a better price point and it's not that hard to make. But whatever method you choose to brew your coffee, I think it’s always good to look a little deeper into the choices we have. In the meantime, stay caffeinated and enjoy another cup!

We’ve recently received several questions asking about why coffees taste different. Here are some answers that should help unravel the complexities of what affects the taste of your coffee.

 

Ultimately, the flavor you find in the cup comes from a multitude of factors. Different species, varietals, cultivar’s all will taste different if every other aspect of their growth, processing and brewing method is identical. Basically, we are talking about different kinds of seeds. This may sound confusing but stay with me.

 

As with wine, the terroir or sum of the environmental factors where coffee is grown are hugely important in determining the taste of coffee. These differing elements affect how the plant grows, what nutrients it has available and ultimately, the varying quantities of sugars, proteins, lipids and organic acids that develop during growth. Whatever the environment coffee is grown in, once harvested, or picked, it’s a race against time to preserve that quality.

 

After harvesting, we come to the next step, processing. The coffee you drink every day is an extraction from the seeds of a coffee cherry. Each processing method varies the sensory profile of a coffee. You can just pick the cherry and let it dry whole (natural), you can take the skins and fruit off and dry it (pulped natural) or take the skins, fruit and pectin layer off and then dry it (washed). Each one impacts the flavor differently; this variation means we can start with the same seed, grown in the same area, with the same inputs while it is growing and get a different taste profile as a result of our processing method. The natural will be more fruit focused, the washed higher acidity and more complexity. Pulped natural can be in between them.

 

Once processing is complete, there is a huge possibility to have a negative impact on flavor, shipping and storage. Not done correctly, the coffee can get moldy or old, off flavors. Coffee must be handled with love and care throughout the whole supply chain.

 

The next step is turning the green coffee beans into brown coffee beans, roasting. We can take the same coffee and roast it lighter (brighter, higher acidity), darker (bigger body, higher bitterness), medium (marriage of both). We can even roast to the same relative roast “color”, and it can taste different. From here, storage and transportation come into play again. Was the coffee packaged soon after roasting to preserve flavor and protect from other flavors and odors getting into it? Was the coffee purchased and/or brewed close to the time of roasting? 

The final step – brewing. As you can imagine by now, yes, taking the same coffee and brewing it on different devices, can alter the sensory profile of a given coffee. Some coffees shine on some brew methods better than others, some shine on all.

 

Next time we will explore some of the most popular brewing methods.