Coffee beans as we know them aren't actually beans at all, but seeds of a fruit. Once coffee fruit has been harvested, it needs to be processed to make it ready for roasting: processing is what transforms coffee from being a fruit into the dried seed that we roast.

Great care must be taken with every step of processing, or the coffee can drastically lower in quality, and in some cases the fruit can spoil. Some producers have learned that extending the craft of processing can express special flavors in the coffee: all of this requires skill and experience, but also creativity and imagination.

Processing coffee is almost culinary, as all the same aspects apply - controlling time and temperature to develop sugars and acids - but on a grand scale and over a longer period of time than cooking. In most cases, the sun is used to dry the coffee, but there are many variations on how you prepare the coffee to be dried.

Because the length of drying time and where it’s dried have extreme effects on flavor, coffee millers all over the world have invented tools for processing better and better tasting coffee. Luis Alberto Balladerez has collected many of these tools at his mill in Nicaragua.

This is a washed processed coffee
The King Marago seeds were separated from the fruit after harvest, and then underwent a fermentation process (under water, though sometimes washed coffees are started dry) where yeast from the air ate at the remaining fruit material (mucilage) and sugar on the surface of the seeds. After being washed, the seeds were laid out on screens to maximize air flow (see the picture to the right). The coffee was then dried for 15 to 20 days.

Flavors of King Marago Washed
The Washed process gives you the terroir flavors of Nicaragua: clean citric acidity, brown sugar, and spices. This process truly allows us to taste the overarching character of the growing region and the genetic family that this coffee comes from: Maragogype (the one bit of genetics all these coffees share), and two of its hybrids: Pacamara (Maragogype + Pacas) & Maracaturra (Maragogype + Caturra). (See below for more info on the varietals!)

The other processes
Honey: For honey processing, the seeds are separated from the fruit after harvest, but the residual fruit and sugar that clings to the seeds is not washed away before the seeds are dried. The coffee beans are shielded by this layer of dried fruit during an extended drying time. The combination of fruit essence and fermentation can create new layers of flavor on top of the flavors intrinsic to the coffee seed.

Honey processed coffee tends to be a middle ground between washed and natural processing flavors, but can also be intensely bright, as we can taste in Luis Alberto’s selection with its stone fruit acidity and floral aroma.

Natural: The coffee fruit is dried intact with the seeds still inside, like a raisin. Once fully dried, the fruit is cracked open and the seeds are removed. Natural processed coffee beans have the most contact with fruit sugars so therefore retain the most fruit-like flavors, and because of the extra fermentation of sugars found in the fruit pulp, natural coffees tend to be sweeter than their washed and honey counterparts.

Monitoring humidity and temperature both around the drying beds and inside the fruit, Luis Alberto was able to develop similar stone fruit acidity to the Honey, but with a tropical fruit fragrance and heavier body due to the higher sugar content.