About Coffee - Processing

With regional characteristics aside, how farmers process the coffee after it is picked from the plant heavily affects what you get out of the cup. The coffee beans are inside a cherry when they come off the plant. Processing refers to the methods used to remove the skin and fruit that surround the bean.

Processing techniques can be grouped into three major groups:

Wet Process (Washed):

This technique involves the removal of skin around the fruit by a pulper after the coffee is picked. The bean (with fruit still attached) is left out to ferment overnight and then the fruit is washed off and the bean is dried. This technique tends to produce coffee that is cleaner, brighter, and more consistent than other techniques.

Dry Process (Unwashed):

This is the original method for processing coffee and involves more hands on work. Using the dry technique the coffee fruit is picked from the tree and directly dried in the sun without and peeling or stripping of skin/fruit. After some time the bean looks like a dark brown pod and is put through a dry mill (or hand pounded) which removes the dried skin/fruit. This technique produces coffee that is fruitier and heavier in body than other techniques.

Semidry (pulped natural):

In this hybrid method the skin is removed from the bean but the fruit pulp is still allowed to dry on the bean before being stripped off. This results in characteristics that are a compromise between wet and dry techniques. Many other slight variations on this technique occur from farm to farm. In Sumatra some (but not all) of the fruit is washed off after fermentation which results in the earthy/musty notes that can be very prominent in coffees from this country.