How do you distinguish between yellow honey, red honey and black honey? why is there black honey, red honey, yellow honey?

For professional baristas, please follow the coffee workshop (Wechat official account cafe_style)

Yellow honey, red honey, black honey treatment, where is the difference?

When you want to buy honey-treated coffee, you usually have the choice of yellow honey, red honey and black honey. You may have heard of these honey treatments to retain the percentage of pectin layer, and what does this mean?

Coffee farmers will classify coffee, some will retain less pectin layer so that they can be exposed faster, while others will retain more pectin layer and require longer exposure time. Yellow honey (about 25% of the pectin layer) in order to finish faster during exposure, it must be carried out in the least shaded environment (clouds, shade trees) to get a yellow appearance. Red honey (which retains about 50% of the pectin layer) takes longer and needs some shelter to expose itself. Black honey (which retains about 100% of the pectin layer) is usually covered in order to extend the exposure time.

Which is better, yellow honey, red honey or black honey?

It may be that black honey is better, the flavor of honey treatment will bring more fine and deep influence because of the residual sugar in pectin layer, and the more residual pectin layer, the stronger the flavor. (this is the view of the author of this article. Coffee seedlings think that each treatment has its own flavor, which varies from person to person. )

However, for coffee producers, they have to face another commercial consideration. Although the benefit of black honey treatment is that better quality and better price coffee can be produced, the risk and cost will also be greatly increased. So that it may affect the willingness of farmers to use black honey treatment. The longer the coffee is exposed to the sun, the more likely it is to breed bacteria during fermentation, resulting in defective moldy beans. The beans need to be flipped more frequently and take up more exposure space, up to twice as much as yellow honey treatment. Not only to make high-quality coffee, but also to let coffee farmers produce the most profitable coffee.