You may have heard a saying: the taste of sun-dried beans is richer and sweeter, and the washed beans are cleaner and more sour. Is this really the case?
What kind of flavor coffee beans will have, in fact, you can see some clues from the way coffee beans are handled, today let's talk about how to start from the processing process to imagine the flavor of coffee!
Coffee cherries need to be processed to remove the pulp, inner and outer peels of the coffee to get the green coffee beans. The processing of coffee beans is the process of coffee cherries plucked from fruit trees and processed into raw beans before roasting, and this process can also be regarded as the process of coffee bean fermentation, the combination of bacteria and coffee beans fermentation, the hidden secret flavor of coffee beans is guided out.
The way of treatment (e.g. sunning, washing, honey treatment) will affect the flavor and taste of the coffee beans, because some chemicals after the fermentation of the pulp will run into the beans, and different environments will affect the fermentation state of the coffee beans. Just as wine needs to be well brewed to produce a wine with a great flavor, the treatment is similar for green beans.
So what kind of secret flavor will there be when the sun method and the water washing method will have?
The sun method, simply put, is to use the sun to dry the coffee cherry, with the flesh and peel, so the English name is Nature, but this nature treatment method, seemingly easy but not simple Oh, his efforts have also been made.
The traditional way of sun exposure is to spread a plastic cloth on the ground and directly put the coffee beans on it for sun exposure; but the problem will lie in the transmission of geothermal heat and the heat convection of coffee cherries is unstable, if not often stirred, there may be too high heating or uneven fermentation problems. In addition, there are many bad strains of bacteria on the ground and pollution, which will also destroy the flavor of coffee beans, so the traditional sun, there are many ... The flavor of the early good beans basically do not use the sun method to process, because everyone's impression of the sun is very poor, the price is not high.
However, in recent years, the sun method has made a lot of progress. Most of the current solar treatment methods use African-style viaducts, which can effectively block the water vapor and soil on the ground and increase air convection. During the sunbathing process, the temperature will also be strictly controlled, so as not to let the high temperature cause the problem of excessive fermentation. The whole process of the sun method usually takes more than 20 days, so that the bacteria and coffee cherry pulp are gradually fermented, so the flavor is relatively sweet, and it also has a rich tropical fruit flavor.
The washing method is to peel and remove the pulp of the harvested coffee cherries, and throw the remaining seeds and a layer of residual mucous membrane into the sink and ferment with water. The entire fermentation time is only about 24-30 hours. Compared with the sun method, the washing method is obviously easier to control the quality, in the process of washing treatment, it can be easily removed from the blemished beans floating on the water, the flavor is not easy to appear miscellaneous, but also because the fermentation time is short, the beans are stripped naked and washed in the sink, so the washing treatment method will present a clean and flawless taste.
Why are sun-dried coffee beans sweeter and fruity?
It is true that sun-dried coffee beans are analyzed to have more sucrose and fructose than washed coffee beans, but this is not because of the relationship between sun and fermentation, but because the washing process reduces the sugar content of coffee beans!
Why? Let's start with the operation of plants, the task of seeds and beans is to find a suitable environment and germinate another plant in the long distance. When the coffee beans are soaked in water during the washing process, the beans will mistakenly think that they have come to a suitable environment for growth, so they begin to want to germinate, and let the beans produce some chemical changes and consume the sugar. So even if it doesn't really sprout, it still runs out of sugar.
If sugar doesn't increase, then why are sun-dried coffee beans sweeter? Because the fermentation time of the sun treatment is longer and the degree is higher, in the process of pulp fermentation, many aromatic substances will be produced to penetrate into the beans, such as butyl butyrate can help people feel more sweet when drinking coffee. In addition, green beans contain more sugars, which can produce more floral and fruity substances during the baking process.
However, washed coffee beans also have washed features! At first glance, the washed beans are beaten by the sun-dried beans, no, no, no, it is not like this. Washed coffee beans are better controlled by the production line, low production risk and high efficiency, so they can produce stable and high-quality coffee beans, which have a well-known clean and clear elegant taste. And in fact, the aroma of washed coffee beans is also very strong! After proper baking, it is also possible to develop a multi-layered fragrance!