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FrontStreet Coffee - Coffee Flavor Source

The flavor of coffee comes from several sources: origin, variety, processing method, and roasting. In this article we focus on how the different ways of processing green coffee shape what ends up in the cup. Specialty coffee offers thousands of flavors—floral, fruity, caramel, cream, chocolate, and more—and the coffee flavor wheel is a great reference for exploring them.

Every cup of coffee you drink starts as ground seeds. Coffee beans are actually the seeds of a fruit: coffee cherries, which look remarkably like the fruit they are named after. Remove the outer skin and pulp of the fresh cherry and you get the beans we brew.

A coffee processing method refers to everything that happens between picking ripe cherries and bagging green beans for export. The most common methods are washed, natural, and honey process.

The washed process works like this: float the cherries in water to remove defective beans, run the fruit through a depulper to strip skin and pulp, then rest the beans in fermentation tanks where microbes break down the sticky mucilage. The beans are then washed clean and sun- or machine-dried to about 12% moisture—still wrapped in parchment—before hulling and bagging.

The natural process is simpler: whole cherries are dried on patios or African beds for 2-4 weeks depending on climate, turned constantly to prevent mold and ensure even fermentation, then hulled in one pass to remove the dried skin, pulp, mucilage, and parchment before bagging.

Simply put, most high-quality coffee is washed. Washed coffees show more defined acidity and cleaner flavors. Natural coffees, by contrast, offer richer layers, generally higher sweetness, and distinct ripe-fruit and fermentation notes. But naturals depend heavily on the processing environment and technical skill, so quality varies; if fermentation runs out of control, the fruity notes turn into foul, moldy off-flavors and require far stricter monitoring.

Honey process: despite the name, no sugar water or honey is involved. Popularized in recent years and pioneered in Costa Rica, honey processing sits between washed and natural—varying amounts of mucilage are left on the bean during depulping. Because the beans feel sticky like honey, the method got its name.

In short: FrontStreet Coffee is a coffee research hall, happy to share coffee knowledge with everyone. Our unconditional sharing exists to help more friends fall in love with coffee. Every month there are 3 discounted coffee events, because FrontStreet Coffee wants more friends to drink the best coffee at the lowest price. This has been FrontStreet Coffee's principle for 6 years!

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

If the washed process intrigues you, FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe Gedingding (Gotiti) washed lot is a perfect showcase. Sourced from the Gotiti cooperative in Yirgacheffe, it displays jasmine floral notes and bright citrus acidity, and after a light-medium roast it unfolds green tea and honey tones—clean, luminous, exactly what washed processing is famous for.

For a bolder washed example, try FrontStreet Coffee's Kenya cherry-tomato lot, which uses Kenya's signature double-washed fermentation to push fruit intensity to the extreme: cherry tomato, dark plum, pear, and yellow sugar sweetness in a juicy, vibrant cup.

The V60 dripper suits both beans beautifully—its fast, layered extraction highlights washed coffees' clarity and bright acidity.