Costa Rica honey processing What is honey processing How to distinguish characteristics What is honey processing

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Costa Rican coffee always prides itself on its honey-treated coffee, and its degree of fermentation makes it a perfect balance between clarity and complexity. If anyone says that Costa Rican honey-treated beans are the best honey-processed beans in the world, I believe many people will nod and agree.

What is honey treatment?

Coffee beans are not really beans, but the seeds of coffee fruit, while coffee is a red fruit when ripe, and may have a yellow and orange appearance depending on the variety.

However, before the coffee beans are roasted, there are still several layers of matter to be removed from the outer layer of the fruit, and then the coffee beans will be dried to a moisture content of about 11%. There are two common treatments: washing with water to remove the pectin layer. and the sun treatment of directly exposing the fruit and removing the outer layer.

Honey treatment is somewhere in between, the outer layer of the fruit will be partially removed, and part of the pectin layer will be retained and dried.

Honey treatment is time-consuming and the construction method is exquisite.

The characteristics of honey-treated coffee depend to a high extent on the setting of the pulp scraping machine. the more pulp you retain, the more obvious the characteristics of honey treatment. But to produce honey to treat coffee, the farm needs to take some risks, especially black honey, because the more pulp it retains, the higher the risk of overfermentation. It may be the microclimatic conditions (sunshine / rainfall probability / air humidity) where the processing plant is located, or the ability of the processor, or it may also be the preference of the processor, so even coffee, also known as "Honey Coffee", actually has varying degrees of honey treatment characteristics. So a good honey-treated coffee will not be cheap!

What is the difference between yellow honey, red honey and black honey?

We have a preliminary understanding of honey treatment, and then look at different honey-treated coffee. These treatments written on the packaging may be rare, but there is an opportunity to see some producers or exporters mark such as white honey, yellow honey, gold honey, red honey and black honey.

To put it simply, white honey and yellow honey retain less pectin, while gold honey, red honey and black honey retain more pectin, which will give the coffee a fuller taste.

To put it in more detail, honey treatment is affected by humidity, temperature and oxidation of sugar, which do not have a certain formula. The closest statements can be roughly divided into the following categories:

White honey and yellow honey

White honey coffee tends to be washed by machine and retains a minimum pectin layer. Yellow honey coffee tends to be semi-washed and retains a slightly higher proportion of pectin.

Although the definition of honey-treated coffee produced by each farm may be slightly different, this information is practical, and understanding the differences in treatment when buying and selling these coffees helps to communicate the cognitive gap.

Golden honey, red honey and black honey

The difference between these three kinds of honey-treated coffee lies in the difference between pectin retention and drying time. Higher humidity and longer treatment time will produce black honey, lower humidity will produce red honey, followed by golden honey.

Golden honey will dry in sunny, warm and low humidity conditions, which will speed up the drying time. However, red honey dries in cooler places to slow down the drying time, which increases the time for coffee beans to be exposed to moisture. Black honey dries longer and dries in a cooler place.

Why produce these darker honey-treated coffee?

The darker the appearance of beans, the more processing procedures. Coffee treated with black honey needs to be constantly monitored in order to avoid excessive fermentation and mildew in the process. This treatment has a higher risk of losing the freshness of raw beans. Similarly, black honey-treated coffee needs to be roasted as soon as possible, especially if you want to drink this coffee with a honey-sweet flavor.

If black honey is so troublesome, why do it? Because black honey coffee is delicious to make and concentrate, it tastes like someone has added a tablespoon of honey to your coffee. On the contrary, white honey and yellow honey coffee have a clearer taste and are suitable for hand brewing.

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