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Yemen Mocha — The Process and Characteristics of Natural Coffee Processing

Published: 2026-01-27 Author: FrontStreet Coffee

Last Updated: 2026/01/27, Professional coffee knowledge exchange. For more coffee bean information, please follow Coffee Workshop (WeChat official account cafe_style). After coffee cherries are harvested, they must undergo a series of complex processing procedures before becoming the roasted coffee beans you see. Many people have drunk coffee but are unclear about the original appearance of coffee cherries. The fruits picked from coffee trees are

Professional coffee knowledge exchange, more coffee bean information, please follow Coffee Workshop (WeChat public account cafe_style)

After coffee cherries are harvested, they need to undergo a series of complex processing procedures before becoming the roasted coffee beans you see. Many people have drunk coffee, but they don't know what coffee cherries originally look like.

The fruit picked from coffee trees (also called coffee cherries).

Coffee beans are actually the seeds inside the coffee fruit. Outside the seed are structures such as exocarp, pulp, pectin, endocarp, and silver skin. The purpose of processing is to remove these external structures to obtain the internal coffee seeds.

Natural Process Method

The natural process can be said to be the most ancient coffee bean processing method.

After picking the coffee fruits one by one from the heavily laden coffee trees, they are all spread flat on the ground, waiting for the sun to dry the moisture in the skin and pulp of the coffee fruits, and then they are processed.

The process of sun-drying coffee beans is similar. In some regions, due to lack of water resources, long sunshine hours, and strong free sunlight, using the natural method to process harvested coffee beans is the most economical approach.

Do Natural Process Coffee Beans Taste Strange?

Early coffee farmers had no concept of quality control and lacked good skills; after coffee trees bore fruit, regardless of the maturity of coffee beans on the branches, they would pull them all down (partly perhaps because they couldn't bear to discard them), then spread them directly on the ground in their yard to dry. They would turn them over when they felt it was about time. They might not see the spoiled parts or might be reluctant to throw them away. Poultry and livestock would run around nearby. When they felt they were dry enough, they would collect and store them in the warehouse. What a pleasant farm scene it seemed—however, with such a processing method, maintaining good coffee bean quality every time really depends on luck, and it's easy to produce strange flavors.

Early natural process beans had many off-flavors, and people often tasted some "unexpected surprises," so some people couldn't appreciate them, partly due to the "imprecision" of this processing method.

However, times are advancing. Even in remote coffee-producing areas of Africa, farmers receive many opinions and new technical knowledge from sales channels; therefore, today's natural process methods are completely different from what they used to be!

How is the Modern Natural Process Method Carried Out?

First, when farmers harvest the fruit, experienced harvesters pick fully ripe coffee cherries one by hand. Because fully ripe coffee cherries are as tempting as bright red cherries and belong to the berry category, we call them "coffee cherries." After collecting the red coffee cherries, farmers first go through a screening process, manually selecting defective coffee cherries before sending them to the drying yard for drying.

African Raised Beds Natural Process Method

Many regions now use "African raised beds" when drying coffee beans. Coffee beans are spread on elevated racks for natural processing. The biggest advantage is avoiding problems that arise from placing them directly on the ground, such as earthy flavors, pollutants, etc. It also isn't limited by sloped terrain—almost unlimited expansion is possible. When workers work, they don't have to constantly bend over, making it more comfortable and convenient, and can improve work efficiency!

When drying coffee, if the weather is bad, the fruits are easily affected by moisture. At night when humidity is heavy, coffee cherries must also be collected indoors; if not properly managed, the beans are easily contaminated and moldy, tasting rotten and being very harmful to health. During the drying process, it's also important to remember to stir periodically to allow the upper and lower layers of coffee beans to dry evenly, and to repeatedly pick out defective beans that aren't properly dried. This is truly hard and heavy work!

The Secret to Rich and Delicious Flavor

Using the natural process to dry beans costs much less than other processing methods and saves resources, making it the favorite method for many countries with low rainfall.

In natural processing, the entire fruit with skin and pulp is exposed to the sun. The drying time depends on the weather conditions at the time, ranging from two weeks to as long as a month. They are dried until the bean's moisture content drops to about 10-12%, then the hardened fruits are collected, and the coffee beans can be extracted.

Natural process beans have a yellowish appearance with a fragrant fermented aroma from the pulp and pectin being concentrated by the sun into the seeds. Sometimes the beans may have slightly broken edges because when hulling, the hulling machine removes the dried pulp and parchment layer at once, which inevitably slightly damages the beans.

The hard work of natural processing is not in vain. High-quality natural process beans have the sugar from fully ripe fruits concentrated drop by drop into the beans by sunlight. The fruit aroma is very rich, the mouthfeel is mellow, sweetness is high, and the acidity isn't as sharp as washed beans; the special fermented flavor of natural fruits makes many people fall in love with it after just a few tastings.

Taking FrontStreet Coffee's [Yemen Mocha] as an example, the ancient natural processing gives this bean an ineffable, wild flavor. People who first encounter this bean might not be accustomed to it, but once they get used to it, they'll feel what a magical flavor it is. If this wild, ancient flavor weren't present, they'd feel something was missing.