Coffee Processing & How It Affects Flavour

Coffee processing and how it affects flavour

Hey everyone! I thought I’d write a little post about coffee processing and how it affects flavour.

I’m going to talk about the main processes used to dry the coffee beans, after harvest and why this is so important to the final cup taste. Of course, with everything, there will be exceptions to the rules and I can’t express the number of variables involved in coffee production which will ultimately impact flavour but this gives you some idea of how things should generally be, for a very small part of the chain.

So let’s go basic for a minute, I’m good at that! Coffee essentially is the seed of a cherry-like fruit that grows on trees/bushes between the tropics of Capricorn and Cancer all around the world.

There are 2 main types of coffee, robusta and arabica, I only buy the latter cause that’s where the flavour is and I’ve got no love for robusta, sorry to those who do, it’s personal.

There are a huge number of different varieties of arabica coffee plant over 150, and with cross-breeding and new discoveries, this number increases all the time.

How and where the plants grow will ultimately impact how the beans will taste, altitude, soil type, climate, all play a role. How ripe were the cherries? Were they mechanically stripped or carefully handpicked? So many things all considered even before we get to the drying process!

So let’s talk about that, and honestly, this is probably where I found my absolute love for coffee and is pretty much why our coffee offering is what it is.

Process! Once the coffee cherries have been harvested they need to be dried or they will rot when placed in bags to be shipped around the world.

Producers generally have a few options when it comes to drying, wash, natural or honey! I know there are additional techniques but for this let’s keep it simple and stick to the main three.

So what do the terms mean?

If a coffee is washed, it has the cherry-like fruit mashed off the beans, they’re then soaked to wash away the remaining sticky mucilage and then dried on patios, raised beds, or mechanical dryers to name a few, all of which make a difference.

By drying the coffee this way results in a cleaner cup, with less red berry flavours, I find they lean more to citrus flavours depending on roast style. If you look at a roasted washed coffee bean it normally has a white line through its centre.

Natural? Well instead of removing the fruit flesh at the start of the process the cherries are dried with it still on and it’s removed at the end. As you can imagine because the extended contact time between seed and flesh, whilst drying, it leads to loads of those natural fruit flavours going into the coffee. You often get boozy notes like liqueur chocolate where the sugars have fermented and the alcohol flavour remains. These are my favourite type of beans, the funkier and unusual the better! But not twiglets! Yuk!

If you look at a roasted naturally processed coffee you will normally find a dark line through its centre.

Finally the honey process! This is kind of a halfway house type of process, part washed, part natural. The fruit is mashed off the beans but the sticky mucilage or ‘miel’ is left on, which leads to flavours of both the washed and natural process. Honestly, I still struggle with honeyed coffees, I just can’t seem to get a consistency of flavour when roasting them, but it doesn’t stop me from trying, but I’m yet to find anything that I’m happy to release. Maybe soon!

So what’s this got to do with anything anyway? Everything! The reason I wanted to bring the process up is because it’s pretty much what makes Strangers Coffee, us. Instead of largely buying washed coffee, which is the mainstay of most roasters. We tend to buy unusual, naturally processed lots from our favourite countries and taste a lot of up and coming origins.

For years natural processed coffee was almost frowned upon, the ugly duckling, the outsider of the coffee world, but there have been enormous investments in time and research over the years, refining the natural process making it better and better. More and more countries are trying it too, each year, 2021 we cupped our first Peru naturals, OK they weren’t quite there but I’m hopeful they’ll keep working to get it right in coming years.

Because these types of coffee are our passion, we will quest to find the best examples to showcase in our line up, and hope our customers look to us for that fruity, funky cup of joe rather than the norm.

Of course, coffee is crazy complex, this just gives a little glimmer of one small part of a big process, but it plays a huge role on a cup of coffees final flavour.

Until next time thanks for reading and I hope to bring you some more posts real soon.✌️