Choose the most suitable treatment according to the taste! Effect of Post-treatment on Coffee Flavor

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July and August are the time when the most high-quality new beans are on the shelves. Different producing areas, different treatments and different varieties all have a unique taste of coffee. In the face of these various proper terms, how to choose the coffee flavor that best suits you? Let the editor tell you:

Let's talk about the solution first. Water washing, sun exposure and honey treatment are the three most common post-treatment methods, which are very important to affect the flavor of coffee. After picking the coffee berries from the coffee tree, the farmer must remove the peel, pulp and pectin from the beans in order to get the coffee raw beans, which is the post-harvest treatment of the coffee.

⚫ washing method:

As the name implies, it is to remove the peel and pulp in water. Although the pectin is sticky and slippery, it can still be washed off after fermentation and decomposition by yeast. At this time, there is a layer of parchment on the outside of the coffee (now known as shell beans). After drying in the sun or wind, store and rest, and wait for the machine to remove the hard dry parchment layer before export, which is the raw beans washed. Taste clean and fine, very few immature beans, high consistency, usually showing a bright and lively sweet and sour feeling, fragrant flowers and fruits, scented tea aromas, smooth and refreshing.

⚫ tanning method:

In sunny and dry areas, farmers pick coffee berries, spread them directly on cement or scaffolding, turn them over and over again, and use the sun to slowly dry the berries. The time ranges from weeks to months, and when the peel, pulp, pectin and parchment are all dried together, the peel will be peeled off. The traditional sun drying method does not exceed water, retaining the taste of all the coffee, coupled with the long-term drying process, the wine sauce flavor of the fermented pulp is also melted into the beans, which will develop a rich, thick taste, sweet tropical fruit and full flavor of coffee.

⚫ honey treatment method:

To reduce the waste of water resources! It takes more than 40 liters of water to produce a kilogram of raw beans by washing. In order to improve this, the honey treatment uses a machine to scrape off the peel and pulp, and the rest of the pulp and pectin are decomposed and washed by fermentation. Because there is more pulp for fermentation than washing, the surface of the treated beans will have a light yellow, like wrapped in a layer of honey, so it is called honey treatment. With the bean surface color from light to deep, subdivided into white honey, yellow honey, orange honey, red honey, black honey and so on. The taste of honey-treated beans is more solid than that of water-washing treatment, with a touch of fermented aroma and sweet and sour taste.

In addition to the above three treatments, there is also biological intestinal treatment, also known as cat poop coffee beans: digest the flesh using the animal's intestines and then remove the beans from the civet poop. Wild civet coffee beans are almost extinct, and farmed civets are quite cruel and countless fake.

In recent years, the popular method of anaerobic fermentation is to produce coffee beans with unique aroma by using different yeast strains to control fermentation temperature and time in the process of post-treatment. As the fermentation process is not easy to accurately control, and requires investment equipment, so the price is very expensive and the output is rare, which is mostly used for competition.

To sum up, if you like coffee with refreshing taste and meticulous aroma, you can start with washing beans. Like full-bodied, tropical fruit aromas and fermented wine flavor, sun treatment is bound to bring surprises.

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