A coffee’s flavour doesn’t magically appear in your cup. It's the start before we source a specific bean and decide the roast profile, or before you or a barista dial in a brew. A processing method is one of the many characteristics we consider because it determines a huge part of what we are tasting. We hope this blog post gives you a better understanding of this sometimes overwhelming topic.
A lot of flavours are shaped at origin, by the farmers and the processing choices they make. From fermentation to drying, these steps quietly define whether you taste ripe stone fruit, floral notes, or something as surprising as lemongrass. And yet, processing is often the least understood part of the coffee journey. Because we keep hearing questions like “What does the process method actually mean?” or “Where does that lemongrass flavor come from?”, we felt it was time to take a closer look.
For a long time, coffee was simply washed or natural. But as specialty coffee keeps pushing forward, new technologies are changing the way farmers approach processing. More than ever, innovation at origin is evolving fast, and it’s reshaping everything. Washed coffees have their skin and pulp removed before the beans are washed, leaving a clean cup. These coffees are often tea-like, floral, and elegant. Natural processing involves drying whole cherries in the sun for about a month before the outer layers are removed. Because the pulp stays in contact with the bean, these coffees tend to be much fruitier. Anaerobic fermentation places the beans in sealed, oxygen-free tanks, allowing flavors to develop in a more controlled and intensified way, often resulting in expressive, wine-like, fruit-forward coffees. Honey processing has nothing to do with actual honey. After depulping, the sticky mucilage is left on the bean and dried in the sun. Think of it as a grey zone between washed and natural: juicy, but still clean.
Now, let’s dig a little deeper. Carbonic maceration is a technique borrowed from winemaking. Whole coffee cherries are placed in sealed tanks filled with carbon dioxide, triggering fermentation inside the cherry itself. This intensifies fruit notes, boosts sweetness, and creates a rich and complex mouthfeel. Co-fermentation is exactly what it sounds like: ingredients are added during fermentation to enhance flavors that aren’t naturally present in the coffee. Beans absorb aromatic compounds from materials like flowers, citrus peels, spices such as cardamom, or even mango pulp. It’s a wild approach that can produce flavors impossible to achieve with traditional methods.
Advanced process methods is a broad term for anything that sits outside the classic categories. Think yeast inoculation, lactic-, mosto-, or extended fermentation, or multi-step processes. Natural yeasts and bacteria convert the sugars in the coffee into flavor compounds. Farmers closely control variables like time, temperature, oxygen, Brix, pH, and pressure to steer flavor development. These methods leave nothing to chance and often become a farmer’s signature style, resulting in coffees that are expressive, complex, and instantly recognisable.
Great examples of farmers experimenting with coffee include Wilton Benitez, Nestor & Adrian Lasso, Jhoan Vergara, Diego Bermudez, Oscar Hernandez, and Jairo Archila. That’s quite a lineup of Colombian farmers, hehe! You could say that this wave of experimental processing has its roots in South America, which makes African coffees like Halo Beriti extra special to us.
Anyway, we could write books about this topic. Hopefully, we didn’t go too deep. Of course, there are many more processing methods out there, but covering these gives a good insight to get you started. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions after reading this. So, what do you think of all the innovation? Are you team Washed, team Natural, team Experimental or something else? Leave a comment to let us know!
On the photo's: Finca El Diviso