Is Bourbon the Most Famous Coffee Bean in Brazil? A Brief Introduction to Semi-Washed Processing Steps

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FrontStreet Coffee - Brazil Yellow Bourbon Coffee, Semi-Washed Processing Method Introduction

Brazil, known as the "Kingdom of Coffee," is one of the world's largest coffee-consuming countries and one of the three major coffee-producing regions. Among numerous coffee bean varieties, Yellow Bourbon stands out with exceptional quality, receiving enthusiastic pursuit from specialty coffee professionals.

Brazil · Yellow Bourbon

A variant of the Bourbon variety, its fruit skin appears yellow. Due to being less resistant to wind and rain, it hasn't been widely cultivated, resulting in lower yields but excellent quality. Yellow Bourbon has fascinating flavor characteristics and has led in Brazil's COE (Cup of Excellence) competition throughout the years.

Brazil's three major specialty coffee producing regions are Cerrado, Sul de Minas, and Mogiana. Yellow Bourbon comes from Brazil's Cerrado region, with the best quality found in high-altitude areas at 1100-1300 meters above sea level. The coffee beans produced are clear and sweet, with high body and no earthy taste.

Using the Pulped Natural processing method allows the coffee beans to have a thick sweetness similar to honey processing, resulting in better flavor and significant sweetness. Breaking away from traditional Brazilian flavors, it has excellent acidity, with nutty fragrance, lemon aroma, and fruit notes. The entry is silky and charming, with a balanced mouthfeel, thick and long-lasting throat note, and a gentle aftertaste with hazelnut flavor, providing an amazing taste experience.

Semi-Washed Processing Method Steps

Regarding the steps of the semi-washed method, the first step is the same as the washed method: when the fruit turns red and mature, it's picked by coffee farmers and then placed in water tanks to eliminate immature coffee berries.

Then, the mature coffee berries have their silver skin removed with special machines, and the berries are spread on the ground to dry. After drying, they are moistened again, or the red fruits are moved to water tanks for fermentation processing. Then, the coffee beans with mucilage are moved to outdoor drying fields.

When the moisture content reaches 10.5%-12%, the coffee fruits are stored in special containers for maturation. Finally, special machines are used to grind off the dried pulp and residual mucilage to extract the coffee seeds. This is how raw coffee beans processed by the semi-washed method are produced.

This processing method produces coffee with a sticky feeling, and the mucilage is not removed during fermentation in the tank. Therefore, coffee produced by this semi-washed processing method contains characteristics of both washed and natural processing methods.

As a result, the final coffee produced has quite good acidity, sweetness, flavor, and aroma. The disadvantage is that the coffee flavor is not as strong as that produced by purely natural or fully washed methods.

Knowledge point: The more mucilage, the deeper the bean's color, and you can experience stronger and richer sweetness and mouthfeel.

In Summary

In short: FrontStreet Coffee is a coffee research center, happy to share coffee knowledge with everyone. We share without reservation only to let more friends fall in love with coffee. Every month, there are three low-discount coffee activities because FrontStreet Coffee wants to let more friends drink the best coffee at the lowest price. This has also been FrontStreet Coffee's mission for the past 6 years!

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