African style elevated solar method, fine coffee is loving the new processing model

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

In the past, tanning was only a special treatment of second-class coffee beans, but with the evolution of time, it began to have new development and gradually become the favorite of many boutique coffee.

First of all, let's briefly talk about the process of traditional sunbathing. Traditionally, coffee cherries are sunburned on an asphalt or cement terrace, or directly on the floor, and when the water content is reduced to about 15%, it is moved to the machine for final drying.

However, whether on the balcony or on the ground, there is a problem of poor convection, so it is easy to cause corruption. Especially when laying on the ground, often because of people, animal trampling, dust and animal manure and other problems, in addition to the quality is more difficult to control, the flavor is also easier to have miscellaneous smell, so in the past only the second-class coffee beans were treated by the sun. In addition, unlike water washing, the sun method can distinguish defective or unripe beans by buoyancy, but can only be picked out by the naked eye, so this is why the highest sun grade in the past was only G3.

However, the newly improved solarization method, that is, the African viaduct, although the cost is higher, but it allows coffee beans to maintain breathable space and adequate air flow. So as long as it is fixed and turned, the quality of fermentation is much more stable than before. At the same time, the elevated shed also means that the quality of coffee beans will not be affected by factors such as ground dust, animal manure, ground moisture and so on. In fact, the treatment of exquisite sunburn takes a lot of manpower! From selecting, turning over, changing the position of beans up and down, focusing on the speed of drying to picking out uneven beans, there is no one without manpower. In addition, fine sun also has a lot of details and techniques to pay attention to, such as when the moisture is about 25%, to avoid drying too fast, it will be covered with cotton cloth, so that coffee beans can still be breathable. And if it rains, cover it with plastic cloth instead (little knowledge: coffee beans can't be covered with burlap! This will add an extra flavor to the coffee.. The smell of sackcloth.

Why didn't you use the African viaduct in the past? Because of the lack of knowledge of fermentation technology in the past, the sun method is only used to deal with rotten beans, and over time, people have a bad impression of the sun beans, and the more they are not willing to spend money on the equipment adjustment of the sun method, resulting in a stereotype of the sun method. Fortunately, the new forces in recent years are willing to try various ways to make the tanning method turn around again.

In fact, a good sun method can retain the most primitive and natural flavor of coffee beans, so the emergence of improved viaducts has made the sun method a new choice for fine coffee, and some processing plants even use a mixture of dry and wet fermentation. Sun-cured coffee beans are getting better and better evaluation, and they are also used as competition beans in many international competitions. In the 2013-2015 Coffee Review, the top 10 all have the track of African-style exquisite sunburn.

Would you like to try some sun-dried beans with full flavor?