What are the characteristics of the world's top ten coffee beans treated with Costa Rica honey? How to make black honey kadura from Tarazhu Pilon Processing Plant taste good?

"Sweetness" is an excellent characteristic that can add points to beans. When Qianjie sells coffee beans, friends often ask for "beans with higher sweetness." When it comes to coffee with high sweetness, Qianjie believes that the first thing that many people think of is Costa Rica's honey processed coffee! As the birthplace of honey processing, the honey processed coffee produced there has a very outstanding sweetness. Then, with honey processed coffee, Costa Rica has established a solid position in the world's coffee market.

It just happened that Qianjie recently picked up a black honey processed kadura from the Pilon Processing Plant in Costa Rica, so today I want to experience with you how sweet honey processing brings to coffee.

Pilon Processing Plant Pilon Processing Plant is located in Costa Rica's famous Tarazhu production area and is jointly operated by Edgar Urena, Efrain Mendez and their family members. Here, Qianjie will first introduce Tarazhu briefly. The Tarazhu production area is located in the volcanic area and is an excellent place for growing coffee in Costa Rica.

Not only does it have a humid climate and fertile volcanic soil, but it also has a high altitude. It also has dense forests that provide a natural shade environment for coffee. It can really be said to be a unique coffee growing environment. The Pilon Processing Plant is located on the border of Leon Cortez Town, Taraju, and the coffee planting altitude is about 1,700 - 1,800 meters. In Costa Rica's coffee grading, the coffee produced at this altitude ranks among the highest SHB (extremely hard beans) in the country. As you can imagine, the potential of the coffee produced by the Pilon processing plant cannot be underestimated. (At the 2018 World Coffee Brewing Competition, a Japanese player demonstrated this point well. He carried coffee from the Pilon processing plant and successfully won the championship.)

The coffee that Kadura wants on Front Street this time is the black honey processed Kadura from the Pilon Processing Plant. Recently, this variety has been often shared on Front Street, so I believe everyone will no longer be unfamiliar with it. It is a derivative of the ancient bourbon variety. descendants, because of its high yield, excellent flavor performance, and easy to grow, it has become a popular star variety in Central American coffee producing areas. Kadura was discovered in a plantation in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais in the early 20th century. The bourbon grown had mutations in a set of genes, which caused the plant to become smaller.

Due to its small size, the locals named this new variety after "Caturra", which means "small" in Guarani. It is transliterated, Kadura. The reason for Kadura's high yield is also that the tree shape is small. It can be densely planted at twice the density of other varieties. Such a size is also very convenient for people to harvest and manage. At the same time, it can be exposed to the sun. It is not as delicate as other Arabica varieties that require shade trees to block out a lot of sunlight, so it is also called "sun exposure coffee." Coupled with its excellent flavor performance, it immediately became one of the main cultivated varieties in Central American countries after its release. For example, many beans in Front Street's bean list are Kadura varieties, such as Front Street Panamama Flower Butterfly, Duncan Manor Kadura, and this time the black honey processed Kadura from the Pilon Processing Plant.

Everyone may be very familiar with honey processing, but if it is black honey processing, many friends may feel unfamiliar. So next, Qianjie will share with us what kind of treatment method black honey processing is.

Black honey processing Before the street, let me first briefly introduce honey processing. Honey processing is improved from Brazil's peeling and sun processing process. It is a treatment method that can shorten the drying time of coffee while saving water resources. When using honey treatment, the coffee farmers 'association first pours the fresh coffee fruit into the sink for flotation, sifts to remove some flaws and bad fruits with insufficient maturity, and then uses special equipment to peel off the coffee peel and pulp, and the pectic beans are subjected to "dry fermentation" for a period of time. After fermentation is completed, they can be transferred to a drying bed for drying. When dried to a certain moisture content, the beans can be shelled or transferred to a warehouse for storage and waiting for export.

The "honey" in honey processing actually refers to the sticky state of the sugar substances in pectin after fermentation. It seems easy to think of honey, so this treatment is named "honey processing."

Honey processing can be said to be a general term, because according to different pectin retention amounts, honey processing has differences between white honey, yellow honey, red honey and black honey.

In the peeling process of honey processing, farmers can freely adjust the amount of pectin retained according to the desired degree of fermentation. Because pectin is rich in sugar, the more pectin is retained, the darker the color of the coffee beans will be after drying. White, yellow, red, and black are honey treatments named according to the color of the coffee beans that are finally dried according to different degree of pectin retention. Black honey has the highest glue retention amount among the four, almost no pectin is removed, and it takes the longest drying time. It generally takes more than 14 days to dry. During the drying process, in order to avoid drying too quickly and insufficient sugar conversion, farmers will use a cover to properly block out the sun, so as to allow the substance to have a longer conversion time and ensure that sugar can be better absorbed by beans. Because of this, the coffee processed by black honey has a very rich flavor and is therefore very rich in sweetness.

Qianjie observed the black honey kadura raw beans from this Pilon processing plant and found that due to the large amount of pectin retained and inconsistent, the raw beans would have obvious unevenness in color, and then they could smell it. Strong fermentation aroma.

In order to show all the characteristics of this black honey processed bean and highlight the sweetness of the coffee, Qianjie decided to use a medium to light roasting and then conduct a cup test and taste as soon as possible.

Costa Rica·Pilon Processing Plant Black Honey Processing Cadura Production Area: Costa Rica Tarazhu Production Area: Pilon Processing Plant Altitude: 1800 meters Processing Method: Black honey processing Variety: Kaduai Flavor: Grapes, berries, Flowers, slight fermentation

In terms of dry aroma, after grinding, we can smell the obvious sweet aroma of berries and grapes, with a light floral aroma and a slight fermentation feeling. The aroma is rich and solid, and it smells very comfortable.

During tasting, Qianjie felt the elegant sweet and sour fruits in the coffee through sipping. At high temperatures, it had the tonality of grapes, green grapes, and berries, as well as the subtle fragrance of flowers and a faint sense of fermentation. As the temperature drops slightly, we can taste some delicate acidity like apricots and the sweetness of cream. The finish is like fruit wine, the overall taste is clean and the aftertaste is long.

- END -

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473