The Coffee Process: The New Naturals Project
Thursday, 2 April 2009
The vast majority of coffee produced in Guatemala is processed using the wet process method, where the beans go through a tank of water, then to a depulper to remove the fruit from the bean, and then to fermentation tanks to remove the outer coating. After a day of sitting in the fermentation tank they are sorted and moved to the patio to dry in the sun for a few days before going to the dry mill.
In Guatemala there is some dry processing, but it is mainly reserved for the lowest grade, under and overripe cherries. These are the naturals, the coffee rejects that float to the top of the first sorting tank. These are dried in the sun with the full cherry intact and sold for domestic coffee in Guatemala (it’s illegal to export terrible coffee from Guatemala). However, at FVH we’re starting on a new experiment, where dry processed coffee can be seen as an asset…
The New Naturals Project
Selecting Beans For The New Naturals
In collaboration with Edwin, Linus, and Chad, we started an experiment to see what the best of the best naturally dried coffee could produce. We’d heard that a Guatemalan can taste more like an African when dry processed. When selecting the coffee for this experiment, we wanted a defect free batch. To ensure this, we got the beans after they had been sorted in the water tank, where the densest and heaviest beans sink to the bottom. While this does a good job of removing bad beans, we wanted more. So after placing them on the drying patio, we sorted by hand each bean to make sure it was the exact ripeness.
Further sorting the coffee
We’re excited to taste this, as everything we’ve heard about this coffee is that it is completely different than a wet processed Guatemalan. Sweet Maria’s describes their dry processed Guatemalan as, “something between an Ethiopia coffee and a chocolate-covered fruit bomb. I evaluated this on a table of dry-process Yemen and Ethiopian coffees and the dry-fragrance alone dominated not just the table, but the entire room.” It will be a couple of months until we have the opportunity to taste the results of the experiment, as it has to be milled, bagged, exported, and roasted. We’ll keep everyone posted as more comes of this project.
Coffee fermenting and drying in the sun
No. 1 — July 15th, 2009 at 7:38 am
[...] in April, I wrote about The New Naturals Project, a project that we started with Edwin from Finca Vista Hermosa, Chad from Madcap, and Linus from [...]
No. 2 — August 6th, 2009 at 8:24 am
I just had a dry-processed Guat, and I have to agree with the notes above. It reminds me of FrankenBerry cereal. Real lush fruit, juicy dark berries, and a great clean chocolate taste. The aroma is captivating, both dry and wet. Easily the best cup of coffee I’ve had since my last run in with Beloya. Amazing, I hope we see more of these coffees around in the future. No, I pray so.