What is the difference between the flavor characteristics of anaerobic solarization and solarization?

Anaerobic coffee beans have become popular in recent years in pursuit of higher sweetness, such as Colombia moonlit coffee beans on Front Street, which have been anaerobically solarized. Hand-brewed coffee shows a strong fruity and fermented sense, soft acid, sweet feeling obvious, deeply loved by everyone.

What is solarization?

Friends who have studied coffee processing methods should know that the coffee beans we taste and drink are the seeds inside the fruit. After coffee cherries are picked, they need to be peeled and dried in a series of steps to get the coffee beans we want. Solarization is the oldest traditional treatment and the most common treatment of green beans, which is still used in many countries today.

The so-called solarization is to spread the picked fresh coffee fruit in the sun, evaporate the pulp moisture outside the beans through sunlight, and when the target moisture content is reached, the coffee beans with sheepskin can be taken out through machine crushing. Since solar treatment is not too high technical content, basically every small farmer in each household can handle it by himself. The entire drying process uses only sunny sunlight, so the cost of production is relatively low, and it is most common in coffee producing areas at high altitudes.

In the pursuit of refined flavor, coffee cherries will be floated first, removing immature fruits and gravel debris, and then spread on an elevated drying bed to dry, the purpose is to stay away from the ground, lest coffee cherries be infected by reptiles, dust and bacteria. During the sun drying period, there will be special personnel to check the dryness of coffee fruits and pick out moth fruits, crack fruits and moldy fruits to avoid these bad fruits affecting other coffee.

Because the inner beans of sun-dried coffee are wrapped in pulp for drying, the fermentation time of coffee fruit is longer, and the reaction degree between strains and pulp is higher. When fruit begins to ferment, microorganisms produce more volatile compounds, especially esters. These aromatic substances provide more floral and tropical fruit fermentation aromas to the ripe coffee beans, such as furans, which make the sun coffee taste wider and sweeter. For example, Yega Sherry Red Cherry Coffee, Huaqui Coffee, Panama Red Rose Summer Coffee and so on the front street bean list are all treated with exquisite sunlight.

What is anaerobic solarization?

Simply put, anaerobic solarization is a post-treatment method that uses modern technology to ferment coffee fruits for a period of time in an anaerobic environment on the basis of solarization. Anaerobic solarization allows freshly picked coffee fruits to be fermented at low temperatures in sealed vats. Under anaerobic conditions, pectin decomposition rate decreases, while the ph value drops at a slower rate, extending the fermentation time of coffee, thus developing more sweet taste. The temperature must be strictly controlled throughout the anaerobic environment, averaging 10 to 15 degrees Celsius.

After more than three days of anaerobic fermentation, the coffee fruits in the barrel are sun-dried, and finally the dried coffee fruits are removed from excess parts and coffee beans are taken out. Colombia moonlit coffee beans on Front Street, for example, are treated with anaerobic sunlight. This moonlit coffee bean gets a richer ripe fruit sour and fermented aroma due to anaerobic sunlight. In order to preserve the fermentation of the beans while showing the full body and sweet taste of the flavor, the front street roasters adopt a medium roasting method considering that the coffee beans are anaerobically treated by sunlight.

After baking, the front street immediately carried out cup test, this flower moonlight coffee beans in the grinding process can smell obvious berry, ripe fruit flavor, after injecting hot water wet fragrance is strawberry jam like rich flavor, the entrance is cranberry, strawberry jam sour and sour, plus strong fermentation feeling, just eat wine heart chocolate, swallow still have a faint flower fragrance in the mouth. If you want to taste the poetic fragrance of the moonlit night, there are still details to pay attention to.

How to make anaerobic sunburned coffee?

As anaerobically treated coffee beans ferment in confined spaces for long periods of time, the tightness of the bean cell walls decreases. Also very hard beans grown at high altitudes in Central America, anaerobic coffee beans become less compact in cell structure and looser in internal structure after roasting. Therefore, when brewing, the water flow is easier to pass through, the contact time of powder water becomes shorter, and the coffee is easy to be extracted enough to cause no taste. Front Street will make adjustments in grinding and water injection techniques.

The grinding degree of Qianjie will be adjusted using a tool-China No.20 0.85mm standard sieve. The sieving rate of 75~80% is always used for medium and light roasted coffee beans, while 70~75% is used for medium and deep roasted coffee beans. Here, Colombia moonlit coffee beans adopt anaerobic fermentation method, coffee beans become loose texture, water absorption effect is better, water flow through coffee powder time is shorter, so it is easy to lead to insufficient extraction, so the front street will adjust the grinding degree a little, the store uses EK 43s bean grinder scale is 9.2-9.5.

Water temperature and grinding degree play a similar role, the higher the water temperature, the higher the coffee extraction efficiency, the easier to release various substances, the higher the concentration. If you use boiling hot water to brew, it is easy to extract unpleasant bitter substances. Therefore, it is recommended to use 87~90℃ for medium and deep roast coffee beans, while light roast coffee needs higher water temperature to stimulate aroma, so it is used at 91~93℃. Front Street suggests that we use 90℃ to brew flower moonlight night, this coffee tends to sour and sour balance, round tonality, if too high temperature water, easy to release heavy bitter feeling, thus covering all kinds of fruit fragrance.

The amount of brewing powder is still 15g, the ratio of powder to water is 1:15, and the moderate concentration is more conducive to feeling the various flavors of the coffee on the moonlit night.

Three-stage water injection:

Put the folded filter paper into the filter cup first, and wet it with water to fit it better. Prepare hot water and a thermometer to measure. At the same time, pour 15 grams of ground coffee into the filter cup and reset the weight of the electronic scale.

30g water is injected into the first stage for stewing for 30s. The timing starts at the same time of water injection. The injection of small water flow at the center point of the whole process starts to circle outward. Note that the whole powder layer needs to be wetted. At this point you can see the coffee powder forming a bulge in the exhaust.

After 30 seconds, the same steady water flow is injected into the second section of 100g water, the purpose is to raise the whole powder layer, the water column needs to be injected vertically evenly, at this time, the chronometer scale shows 130g, about 55 seconds. When the liquid level drops to the position where the powder bed is about to be exposed, start to use small water flow around the small circle to inject 95 grams into the third section, try to control the water flow not to be too large, and try not to exceed the powder wall formed by the accumulation of the second section. It is easy to let the water flow down along the filter paper, resulting in insufficient extraction.

The final water injection was 225 grams, and the drip completion time was about 1 minute and 50 seconds. After removing the filter cup, shake the coffee in the sharing pot evenly and start tasting. Hand brewed floral night coffee flavor: the first blow on the strawberry jam sweet and ripe berry fermentation, after the mouth cranberry acidity and berry juice distributed in every corner of the mouth, followed by the wine heart chocolate-like aftertaste in the nasal presentation.

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