What is the difference between solarization and half-solarization, washing and honey treatment? Characteristics of flavor and taste of sun-cured coffee beans?

The sun method, as the name implies, is to spread the harvested coffee berries on the ground (dedicated drying net or terrace), use sunlight exposure (about 2-3 weeks), remove the moisture from the coffee fruit until the moisture content reaches the target value, and then use the machine to remove the dried shell to get the coffee beans we want. The biggest advantage of solarization is that it does not depend on water resources, as long as there is enough light, so it is the oldest and cheapest treatment.

Because the sun treatment does not have too high technical content, basically every small farmer in each household can treat it by himself, and there are also some special treatment stations to collect coffee fruits picked nearby for centralized treatment. Therefore, the quality difference of the sun treatment is very large, some quality-oriented processing stations will invest a lot of money and energy to process each batch of sun-dried beans, which in the coffee fresh fruit began to screen out immature fruit, over-ripe fruit, defective fruit and some gravel debris, which will affect the overall flavor of the coffee sun treatment.

When drying, the coffee will be spread on an elevated drying bed to keep it away from the ground, so as not to be infected by insects, dust and bacteria. Moreover, during the drying period, there will be special personnel to check the drying degree of coffee fruits and pick out moth fruits, crack fruits and moldy fruits to avoid these fruits affecting the fermentation and drying degree of other coffee fruits. Producers who generally have higher quality requirements for sun-dried green beans adopt this delicate treatment to ensure the flavor performance of coffee. Sun-dried red cherry coffee beans sold in front street, for example, have obvious tropical fruit flavor, full fermentation and sweet feeling.

The biggest difference between the sun method and the water washing method is that the washing method removes all the outer layers of the coffee beans and then dries them, while the sun method does not remove any coffee fruit structure and directly lays the whole fruit on the concrete floor or on the ventilated net bed to dry. Because of the pulp drying, coffee beans have more time to contact the sugars in the pulp, allowing more substances to penetrate into the seeds, resulting in higher sweetness, body and fruit flavor (such as passion fruit, strawberry and hot fruit flavor), taste more intense.

In addition to washing and sunning, different regions have invented post-processing methods in between, such as Brazil's semi-sun.

In 1990, Brazil's coffee research institute developed a semi-solarization method, also known as Pulped Natural, based on the characteristics of the local dry climate. Before drying, remove the pulp peel, leaving only a thin pectin layer exposed to sunlight for 1~3 days, then dry it to 12% moisture content by machine, and then put it into storage containers to ripen. Semi-sun not only saves water resources, but also shortens the processing time, reduces the negative flavor brought by the processing process, and greatly improves the quality of Brazil beans. The Brazilian ration beans launched by Front Street are coffee beans selected from the Xilado region. This semi-sun treatment method presents the classic Brazilian chocolate, caramel, cream, peanut flavor and high full-bodied taste.

In addition to semi-sun treatment in Brazil, honey treatment has become very popular in recent years. Producers who use honey treatment first pour fresh coffee into a tank to remove immature fruit and impurities through flotation, and then use a peeling machine to peel off the outermost layer of the fruit. Different from the washing method, fresh coffee fruit is not washed with plenty of water after peeling off the peel to remove pectin, but retains pectin and dries it. Because pectin has sugar, the state is sticky, it is easy to think of honey, so it is named honey treatment. Compared to the water washing method, honey treatment does not require a large amount of fresh water and related equipment, and reduces the negative flavor of blemishes caused by prolonged exposure to sunlight compared to the sun method. Coffee treated with honey generally presents a full tropical fruit flavor and fermented sweetness on the cup test, with a fresh overall taste and clean acidity.

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