Dry Proces Coffee Bean Solar process explain the characteristics of Solar Coffee Bean

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Coffee beans in the sun Natural Processed/Sundried/Dry process.

By convention, before starting to look at the treatment, all readers need to have a basic understanding of the structure of the coffee fruit in order to know: which part has what effect? Which part is either removed or retained at which stage of the process? Wait for information.

First of all, botanically speaking, coffee beans are not "beans". The fruit of coffee belongs to fruit. Indeed, it looks like beans, but from the fruit shape of the coffee plant, the coffee fruit is more like a peach than a bean. What we usually call "coffee beans" is coffee as the seed of a plant.

Please compare the above three pictures carefully and ask Baidu encyclopedia if necessary.

In other words, we usually see coffee beans, there are four layers of substances on the outside: silver skin, endocarp / raw bean shell, mesocarp / pulp & colloid, exocarp / red or yellow peel.

Why do people mistakenly call coffee a bean regardless of nationality? Mainly because people tend to ignore the pulp part of the coffee fruit, the pulp of the coffee fruit is too thin, the following is the cross section of the coffee fruit and peach.

When we eat peaches in our lives, we eat its flesh; we enjoy coffee, but we drink its seeds after roasting, grinding and soaking water, and give up all the other peels and flesh. Coupled with the fact that coffee seeds look like beans, people naturally call them coffee beans. In the later description, in order to be simple and easy to understand, we still use the title of coffee beans, but we need to know that coffee beans are not beans.

What is the significance of the existence of treatment? Coffee fruits grow on trees, and when coffee farmers pick them, they look like this.

At this time, the coffee fruit is still a fruit body, the water content is still quite high, coupled with the sugar contained in the coffee pulp, if it is piled together for a long time, it can easily lead to fermentation, mildew, produce a variety of bad taste, and even food safety problems.

Therefore, people have to find ways to convert coffee fruits that are not suitable for long-distance transportation and inventory into something stable and not easy to deteriorate.

As the name implies, the sun drying method is to reduce the water content of coffee by drying more. Tanning is the oldest of all coffee treatments, and the idea of tanning has been passed down since coffee entered mass production. Today, a considerable part of the world's coffee production still uses the sun method.

Sun exposure is also a very "cheap", very "simple", and relatively "inferior" treatment. Remember when we talked about washing that washing is generally considered to be a better treatment than coffee beans in the sun? Solarization doesn't need too many machines, let alone water. The vast majority of commercial-grade coffee beans in the world market are sun-dried beans, often with serious flavor defects, such as soil, onion and fermented flavor. The purchase price of sun-dried beans is often very low, so coffee farmers have no incentive to improve their sun exposure, and coffee farmers in some areas even put their coffee fruits directly on the soil to dry. Therefore, generally speaking, the quality of coffee beans in the sun is low, the flavor is poor, and there are many broken grains. But as a major contributor to the coffee industry, it is more important than any other treatment.

Having said that, some friends who don't know how to bask in coffee beans must be a little dizzy, so let's take a look at the steps.

When it comes to the sun drying of coffee beans, the first color I can think of is the golden color of the sun. Just like the "water" of the water washing method, the "sun" of the sun method is the most important factor in the whole process.

a. Pick

b. Screening

You can see that the ripening degree of the coffee fruit picked above is not the same. Workers pour the coffee fruit into a large pool. The immature coffee fruit floats on the water because of its low density, while the ripe coffee fruit sinks to the bottom. Workers fished out the immature fruit and disposed of it. In individual places where there is an extreme shortage of water, coffee is screened through a sieve rather than a bucket. The rest of the coffee fruit is taken to the next stage.

c. Dry in the sun

The biggest difference between the sun-drying method and the water-washing method is that the water-washing method removes all the outer layers of raw coffee beans before drying, while the sun-drying method does not remove any coffee fruit structure. it will take more than 20 days to spread the whole fruit directly on the cement floor or on a ventilated net bed, and the specific time is entirely based on the environmental characteristics of the place of origin.

As pictured above, the coffee fruit is tanned purplish black and the surface is wrinkled by dehydration. It can be said that the sun drying of coffee is very much like air-dried raisins. Of course, the core of the grape is very small, while the core of coffee is very large. We eat the dried flesh of raisins. As for the pulp of "dried coffee", we will take it off later in the process.

d. Peeling

Unlike the water washing method, in the sun method, after the coffee fruit is dried, the outer skin of the coffee fruit is easily removed, rather than the coffee pectin is removed by "fermentation" like water washing.

In the image above, the cross section of a sun-cured coffee fruit is above, and the cross section of a freshly picked coffee fruit is below.

All the coffee fruits in the sun method are shelled by a special shelling machine, which has a slightly larger caliber than the washing method, because the volume of the coffee fruit is larger than that of shell beans, and the thick skin is peeled off at one time. In some areas, coffee peel will not be abandoned, but will be collected and washed to make "coffee peel tea". Yemeni and Ethiopians have a long history of drinking this kind of tea.

Sun beans peeled off can be bagged and ready to be shipped to various coffee consuming countries.

The idea of washing is to eliminate any external factors that can affect the flavor of raw beans and then dry them.

The idea of the sun is to leave all the external factors that can affect the flavor of raw beans and dry them together.

Pros and cons? The difference? Where?

First of all, talking about the advantages, the sun method preserves the flesh and raw beans, which can have some fascinating effects on the raw beans. It is generally believed that the fermentation of the pulp can give coffee beans and fruit, as well as attractive wine and fermented aromas. The really excellent sun treatment has extremely sweet taste, thick taste and complex aroma, while the water washing rule highlights a clean and bright (acidity). I think that compared with the top sun and top water washing, the sun is better.

But if the sun is so strong, why do we see more water washing than sun exposure in the boutique coffee industry? In terms of the coffee industry as a whole, the quality of tanning is inferior to that of washing. As a kind of fruit, the water content of coffee fruit is quite high. If the coffee fruit is placed in one place for more than 20 days, the fermentation reaction will occur naturally, and the reaction degree is normal. If the fermentation is excessive, it is easy to cause decay. If the coffee fruit is too thick and airtight somewhere, the decay will be even more serious. If you want to get through this step without going wrong, you need a lot of manpower to stir the coffee pile frequently to ensure ventilation. In addition, there are very few screening elements in the sun method, only a rough screening after picking, and then all the way to the coffee sack, the defect rate of the sun is several orders of magnitude higher than that of washing. Coffee farmers who are bent on making good coffee may do several fine screening. But for farmers who haven't even had coffee, is it important to support their families? Or is it important for an illusory "boutique coffee"? Often, coffee farmers who use tanning do not give so much care to coffee beans, mostly because of economic considerations. If you want to do a good job in the sun, you need a lot of experience, as well as a lot of money, equipment, and manpower. All in all, the cost of making an "excellent" sun is even higher than that of washing, so there are fewer good sun beans on the market.

If the fermentation is not appropriate, the coffee fruit is not sufficiently turned, ventilated and evenly dried, and the result will be catastrophic. Anything that is overfermented will not taste good. We commonly call it "moldy". The coffee flavor with bad sun exposure has a strong flavor of fermented bean curd, fishy smell, and what some coffee glutton call "chicken shit". For details, see the coffee flavor wheel.

Tanning is not available everywhere, and it must be a bad choice for areas where there is a lot of rain and humidity. If the coffee fruit can not be completely dried within a month, no matter how well breathed and how often the coffee is turned, the coffee will begin to rot and grow moldy. The most typical area that is not suitable for sun exposure is Central America, where the humidity is too high to be suitable for sun exposure.

The quality of the raw coffee beans by the sun drying method is uneven and stable, and all the factors that can affect the flavor of the raw beans are retained. In the drying process, any small negligence can make a part of the coffee fruit out of condition, and the same batch of raw coffee beans may be of good quality and bad in part. Similarly, there is a great difference between well-managed sun exposure and ordinary extensive sun exposure, which makes it very difficult for us ordinary consumers to choose. Every time I buy sun beans, I am psychologically prepared. It is possible that this packet of beans is not delicious, or it is possible that this packet of beans is extremely sweet. Unlike the relatively stable products of washed beans, wanting to buy good sun-dried beans is a "face-watching" metaphysical process. I hope that as consumers, you should also pay attention to it.

In short, the coffee bean sun drying method is a great fluctuation in the quality of the whole industry, good can be good, bad can be moldy, do not ask us how to know, it is a lesson of blood and tears.

Countries that use tanning on a large scale now are: Brazil, Ethiopia, Yemen, India.

If you have the opportunity, please compare it with the washed coffee. You will find many differences. Different producing areas and countries have different charm under the interpretation of different treatments.