What does honey processed mean?

Hello coffee lover. What are you brewing this week?

I am travelling across Europe and I can’t wait to share coffee stories with you. Maybe in a couple of weeks, after I am back in Hyderabad.

Understanding the “process” label on coffee bags

I still remember looking at the coffee bags in my initial days of home brewing and wondering what the “honey processed” label meant. I thought the beans were marinated in honey. If nothing else, I expected the cup to have notes of honey.

Soon, I realized that’s not the case. I learnt about how coffee is processed. And it’s quite interesting.

Coffee processing and its effect on the taste

Coffee begins as a cherry-like fruit. Processing is how we get from that fresh fruit to the green beans (which then are roasted to become brown). Think of it like how wine-making transforms grapes into complex wines.

Look at the cross-section picture of the coffee fruit below. This will be a good reference when we talk about the different processing methods, especially the mucilage.

Natural

This is the most obvious and basic way in which the whole coffee fruit is dried. Mucilage and the pulp dry with the seed and latch onto it. This will develop complex flavours and make them sweeter. When these beans with a lot of content on them are roasted, they go through a nice Maillard reaction, which is a standard process in cooking, that results in unique flavours.

Washed

As you might have guessed already, the bean is washed before drying in the washed processing. However, they pick nicely ripe coffee fruits to maintain the sweetness. These are put in de-pulper machines, which leave the beans’ mucilage and remove up to the pulp layer. Then it is water-washed to remove everything else until the seed.

This is generally quicker than the other methods, but a lot of natural resources, like water, are wasted in this method.

These coffees are generally light-bodied and have more brightness.

Honey

Coming to my earlier disappointment, there is no honey involved.

Honey-processed coffee is a method that involves a combination of both the natural and washed methods. You can think of it as the best of both worlds.

They remove the pulp but not the mucilage from the coffee fruit. That mucilage is the honey!

The flavours that these cups give are unique. Cleaner bodies than naturals and more syrupy sweetness than the washed.

Not just these three, but these are the major ones. There is also a fermentation step that people do, which is a topic in itself.

Which one do you think you like?

Despite knowing all the theory and forming a bias for which one you will like, it’s a complete experience in itself, tasting them and figuring out which one you want.

I recommend you try them out and see.

You can go to the cafe and see if they have beans with different processes and order two cups.

Or, there are a few roasters that let you order a sample pack of three different, smaller coffee beans. You can choose different processes to try at home:

See you! ☕️👋