How to Differentiate Natural Coffee Beans_A Guide to the Appearance and Flavor Characteristics of Natural Coffee Beans

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Understanding Natural Process Coffee Beans

On coffee packaging and in coffee bean descriptions, we often encounter processing method names like "Natural," "Washed," "Semi-Washed," and "Honey." As a coffee enthusiast, do you understand these processing methods and their differences? Today, let's first introduce natural process coffee beans.

I. Processing Steps

1) Harvesting. This includes manual harvesting and machine harvesting. Specialty coffee exclusively uses manually harvested ripe coffee cherries.

2) Sorting. This involves pouring cherries into large water tanks for sorting (ripe fruits sink to the bottom, while unripe fruits float on the surface and are separated) or manual sorting.

3) Drying. The cherries are placed on cement patios or African bed racks to dry for about one month.

Until the juicy coffee cherries transform into dried coffee cherries with a moisture content of approximately 12%.

4) Removal of dried fruit pulp and parchment.

5) Manual sorting of green beans to remove defective beans and grade by size/quality. This process is the most time-consuming and labor-intensive step in the natural method.

Tools used for grading beans by size

II. Appearance

Natural process coffee beans (green) tend to be slightly yellowish-brown. The center line of roasted beans is usually not distinct. This differs from washed green beans, which tend to be more greenish, and washed roasted beans, which have a clear center line.

III. Flavor Profile

The natural method is the oldest coffee processing technique. Due to historical practices where natural-processed coffees were not carefully selected and were casually spread on gravel-filled grounds for drying, issues such as insufficient sunlight, inadequate turning, improper fermentation, and poor ventilation often led to defects like mold, foreign matter, and uneven moisture content, which had fatal effects on flavor. Consequently, many coffee professionals once believed that natural process coffee could never enter the specialty coffee category. However, with advancements in natural processing methods, improvements in every processing环节—such as manual harvesting, African bed drying, careful monitoring and turning, and manual sorting—have dramatically enhanced the quality of natural process beans.

Among the specialty coffees we encounter today, the distinctive prominent flavors of excellent natural process beans are often incomparable to washed beans. Besides having more elegant fermented aromatics, they generally offer higher sweetness and body compared to washed coffees. However, achieving a clean and excellent flavor profile with natural beans requires higher labor costs than washed processing. Therefore, we often find that natural-processed beans from the same origin, grade, and season are typically more expensive than their washed counterparts.

Natural Process Coffee Bean Brand Recommendations

FrontStreet Coffee's freshly roasted single-origin natural process coffee beans—such as Natural Yirgacheffe and Natural Sidamo—offer excellent guarantees in both brand and quality, suitable for brewing with various equipment. More importantly, they provide exceptional value for money. A half-pound (227g) bag costs only around 70-90 RMB. Calculating at 200ml per cup with a 1:15 coffee-to-water ratio, one package can produce 15 cups of specialty coffee, with each cup costing only about 5-6 RMB. Compared to café prices that often reach dozens of yuan per cup, this represents extremely high value for money.

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473