Evolution of processing methods of coffee beans in Brazil

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First of all, the earliest and most primitive is the method of tanning.

Coffee originated in the Cafa forest in Ethiopia. At first, coffee collectors did not pick fresh coffee fruit directly from trees, but let the sun dehydrate ripe coffee fruit on the branches. wait for the fruit to become withered and purplish black, and then pick it for storage. When you want to drink, mash it, and then take out the coffee beans inside. This is different from today's sun drying method, which is to pick the coffee fruit from the tree when it is fresh, go into the sink to remove the floating beans, and then put the remaining coffee fruit on an elevated net bed to dry and dehydrate.

African elevated net bed to dry coffee fruit

Later, coffee was sold to Europe by Arabs and immediately became popular with Europeans. At the end of the 17th century, the Dutch East India Company successfully planted coffee trees on the island of Java and invented water washing in the mid-18th century. The washing method is to peel the coffee fruit, and then soak the seed shell together with the sticky pectin on the outside in water, so that the sticky pectin layer outside the seed shell can fall off very easily after fermentation.

Washed coffee fruit

However, the biggest disadvantage of water washing method is that it consumes too much water, which increases the production cost in some coffee growing areas with insufficient water resources.

At the end of the last century, Brazil, the largest coffee producer, invented the semi-washing method (also known as half-sun method), which greatly reduced the consumption of water resources in the process of raw bean treatment. Why is it called semi-washing, which shortens the time of soaking the coffee fruit in water to an hour, so that the pectin outside the seed shell has not yet completely fallen off, and then it will be removed for natural drying and dehydration. This saves water and time compared with the traditional washing method, and increases the sweetness and thickness of the coffee.

Later, the semi-washing method was gradually introduced into Central American countries, but unlike the dry climate of Brazil, most Central American countries have a humid climate, so the coffee fruits are peeled and washed for a short time and then dried, which is easy to cause the smell of sour rot because of the wet weather. As a result, Panama and Costa Rica began to improve the semi-washing method in Brazil and began to use honey treatment at the beginning of this century.

Honey treatment is to remove the pericarp and part of the pectin, without washing, directly put on the African elevated net bed for drying. According to the proportion of retained pectin, those with more pectin are called black honey treatment (almost all of the pectin is retained), and those with less pectin are called yellow honey treatment (less than half of the pectin) and red honey treatment (retain at least 80% of the pectin).

Coffee and raw beans dried with pectin

So far, the four treatments of raw coffee beans that we often come into contact with today are complete. We can see that the route of its evolution is also a process of gradual improvement: first, the traditional sun treatment, to water washing, then to semi-washing (also known as half-sun), and then honey treatment.

In fact, there are still many ways to treat raw coffee beans. For example, the treatment method used in Kenya, which is an important producing area of fine coffee, is called double fermentation washing, and red wine treatment and even cola treatment have appeared in some countries.