Why is black coffee also sweet? is coffee sweet with honey treatment? what is coffee honey treatment?

Professional coffee knowledge exchange more coffee bean information please follow the coffee workshop (Wechat official account cafe_style)

Why can black coffee be naturally sweet?

Common sense of life tells us that fruits are sweet and vegetables are not sweet. Among the sweet fruits, they are divided into sweeter ones and less sweet ones. In the same kind of fruit, it is divided into the special sweetness of a certain producing area and the ordinary sweetness of a certain producing area.

Where are the factors that cause plants to be sweet? Is it fertilizer that gives sugar to coffee plants? Or is it so sweet because it's injected with sugar? Does agronomic technology affect sweetness? Will microclimatic factors affect sugar accumulation? How can I grow coffee sweeter?

Today, we will start from the first cause of sugar production, that is, the growth period of plants, to reveal the cause of the formation of carbohydrate molecules in coffee.

Carbohydrates in raw coffee beans account for 50% of the total weight of coffee, including sucrose, glucose, pectose, mannose, galactose, rhamnose, xylose and other natural carbohydrates.

The coffee beans we drink are seeds taken from the fruit of coffee. Sucrose in coffee fruit mainly appeared in pericarp and seed, and the content of sucrose in pericarp was the highest.

Although the seeds (that is, raw coffee beans) are not as sweet as the pericarp, the carbohydrate molecules in the pericarp will infiltrate into the coffee seeds to varying degrees with the coffee processing methods (such as washing, sun exposure, and dense treatment), affecting the final sweetness.

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.

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

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.

The honey treatment rule is between the sun drying method and the water washing method, which directly retains the pectin layer and exposure after sieving the coffee pulp.

The so-called "honey" is the pectin of coffee. This layer of pectin is rich in sugar because of its high sweetness, and after exposure and enzyme, this layer of pectin, which is as sticky as honey and as sweet as sugar, is closely integrated with the coffee fruit, thus forming a mellow and mellow honey-treated coffee.

First of all, coffee farmers should select ripe coffee cherries (red fruits) from coffee trees, and then screen out the outer pulp. As mentioned earlier, the pectin layer retains a high proportion of sugar and acid, which is the key to honey treatment.

END