How to process raw coffee beans with honey? Differences in the treatment of Costa Rican coffee beans with white, yellow, red, gold and black honey

Honey treatment? Isn't that sweet? How much honey is added to the coffee beans processed with honey? If lose weight can't drink? Please don't worry. You may be familiar with sun coffee and washed coffee but are not very familiar with honey processing coffee beans, today the front street will break down different types of honey processing.

But he is the usual way of Costa Rican coffee. This method requires a great deal of precision and expert knowledge to use correctly. Note that honey processing does not come from genuine honey. The "honey" mentioned in this method is actually from the mucus layer of beans, which is usually sticky and sticky, so it will be called honey treatment.

How exactly did he do it?

Coffee beans are not beans at all. They are coffee cherry seeds. Yeah, that's right. Your favorite caffeinated drink comes from juicy red (and sometimes yellow or orange) fruit.

Before roasting the "coffee beans", you must remove the coffee berry layer and dry the coffee beans to a moisture content of about 11%. The two most common methods of removing cherries are 1) water removal (water wash treatment) and 2) allowing coffee to dry in sunlight before mechanical removal (natural/dry treatment).

However, honey processing is in the middle. You remove the skin but leave some flesh inside. When the beans dry, the "slime" is still present.

To process coffee in this way, the harvested cherries need to be beaten. This means separating the pulp from the beans. However, unlike the washing method, you must leave some mucus on the beans. After that, the beans are placed in bed and dried for 10-15 days.

The result of this process is that the acidity of the beans is higher than when using natural methods, but lower than when washing the beans. This unique balance makes this method very popular among coffee lovers, and you can see that this method is used to process many coffee beans from Central America, especially Costa Rica.

White honey:

Remove 80-90% of mucus

Beans are dried directly on elevated beds

Beans dry rapidly at high temperatures and parchment turns white

Yellow honey:

Remove 50% of mucus

Beans dry in low wind and moderate sunlight

Beans are raked 3 to 4 times a day and dried for up to a week

White honey coffee tends to be mechanically cleaned, leaving minimal mucus around the beans. Yellow honey coffee is usually washed, leaving more mucus around the forehead of the coffee bean.

Red honey:

80-90% of mucus remains on beans

Beans are dried on elevated beds in cloudy or cool conditions

Beans rake in the first morning and then only once or twice in the afternoon

Black honey:

Keep the mucus as close to intact as possible

Beans are dried in full shade on elevated beds

The beans do not move at all on the first day and then rake once a day; drying times can take up to three weeks.

Gold, red and black honey

The difference between the three is the amount of light the beans are exposed to and the drying time. More humidity and slower development can lead to black honey. A little less humidity will result in red, and even less will result in gold.

Gold honey will dry when it is warm, sunny and with little humidity. This helps it dry quickly. However, red honey is processed in more shade to slow drying times. This will increase the moisture to which the beans are exposed. Black honey takes longer and dries in more shade.

The darker the honey, the more work needs to be done. Black honey processed coffee requires continuous monitoring to avoid over-fermentation and mold. They are also generally more likely to lose their freshness. Green beans should be roasted as soon as they arrive to capture their sweet honey flavor.

Dark honey is popular in espresso coffee, and it tastes almost as if someone added a drop of honey to your cup. In contrast, white and yellow processed coffee tends to have a cleaner taste when prepared as filtered coffee.