The difference between "washing" and "Solar" Coffee beans

When you buy coffee beans, you can always hear the words "water washing", "sun exposure", "half water washing", "half sun drying", "honey treatment" and so on. Today, let's talk about the difference between "washing" and "sunbathing" beans. What effect does it have on the flavor of coffee beans?

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:

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 unripe and overripe fruit will float up and can be removed.

2, dry:

Put the selected ripe fruit in the square and expose it 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, and 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:

Exquisite farms 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, polish:

The exocarp and endocarp can only be removed by shelling treatment. At this time, the silver film is still wrapped in the outer layer of the seed, and the film has to be ground off 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.

Washing method:

1. Choose beans:

Put the harvested fruit in a water tank and soak for about 24 hours. At this time, ripe fruit will sink, while immature and overripe fruit will float up and can be removed.

2. Remove the pulp:

Use a machine to remove the peel and pulp, leaving only coffee beans wrapped in endocarp. At this time, there is a layer of mucous membrane on the outside of the beans, and the process of washing is to wash this layer of mucous membrane.

3, hair alcohol:

The adhesion of the mucous membrane is very strong and is not easy to remove. It must be placed in the slot for about 18-36 hours to make it alcohol and decompose the mucous membrane. There are two methods of fermentation, namely wet hair alcohol and dry hair alcohol, as the name implies, the former adds water, the latter does not add water. In the process of producing alcohol, the seeds and internal pulp will produce special changes, which is one of the steps that most affect the flavor of coffee. Some farms add hot water or alkanolins to speed up the production of alcohol, which has a negative impact on quality and is not popular with selected coffee lovers.

4, washing:

Farms that use the washing method must build washing ponds and be able to introduce an endless supply of running water. During the treatment, the finished beans are put into the pool and passed back and forth, using the friction of beans and the power of running water to wash the coffee beans until smooth and clean.

5, dry:

After washing, at this time, the coffee beans are still wrapped in the pericarp with a moisture content of 50%. They must be dried to reduce the moisture content to 12%, otherwise they will continue to be mellow, moldy and rotten. The better treatment is to use sunlight to dry, although it will take 1-3 weeks, but the flavor is very good and very popular. In addition, machine drying is used in some places, which greatly shortens the processing time and makes the flavor not as good as that of sun-dried coffee.

6, shelling:

The dried beans can be stored in a warehouse or handed over to the factory for shelling to remove endocarp and silver film.

7, selection and grading:

Like tanning hair, washed coffee has a process of picking and grading, which is used to remove defective beans and ensure better quality, which is then handed over to exporters to sell around the world.