Boutique Coffee Science explains in detail the treatment methods of coffee beans, solarization method.

The coffee beans after harvest must enter the treatment program immediately, otherwise they will begin to ferment, making the coffee beans have a bad smell. There are two methods of treatment: "solarization" and "washing", which will cause different flavors.

Sun-dried beans have a complete natural mellow flavor, gentle aroma and more gum; washing rules have a good mellow taste, high aroma and lively sour taste. Mellow taste is an important condition of espresso, which will produce a mellow and smooth feeling as strong as wine. Espresso lovers can increase the weight of sun-dried beans; water-washed beans are as clean as clear wind chimes because of less miscellaneous smell. In addition, washed beans have a good sour taste, which is the main source of sweetness in espresso.

Solarization method

The sun drying method is also called "natural drying method" because it uses natural sunlight to dry the fruits and raw beans of coffee. Due to the use of artificial and natural treatment methods in the process, the sun-cured beans look irregular and unflattering in appearance.

1. Choose beans: put the harvested fruit in the water tank, and the ripe fruit will sink, while the immature and overripe fruit will float up and can be removed.

2. Drying: put the selected ripe fruit in the square for 5-6 days until it is fully dry. At this time, the fruit becomes dark brown and the moisture content is 13%.

3. Shelling: after drying, the peel becomes fragile and easy to fall off, so it can be removed by machine. Farms run by enterprises usually have their own shelling factories, while small farms are processed by processing centers.

4. Selection and grading: delicate farms will identify defective beans manually or by machine, pick them out and throw them away. Manual selection usually uses a transmission belt about 1 meter wide, with several female workers sitting on both sides visually picking out bad beans, and some good farms are even selected several times until defective beans are not seen. Machine selection rules use computers to identify defective beans, followed by a grading process that divides coffee beans into several quality grades according to established standards. Good coffee enters the selected coffee market, while bad coffee flows into the commercial coffee market.

5. Polishing: the exocarp and endocarp can only be removed by shelling. At this time, the silver film is still wrapped in the outer layer of the seed, and the film must be ground by machine. Then, pack the coffee beans into a bag of 60KG. The weight of bags varies slightly from region to region. Most of them use sacks.