What is honey process coffee?

Honey process coffee has its skin and pulp taken off, like a washed coffee, but it goes out to dry with the sticky mucilage still coating the seed instead of being fermented and washed clean. The name comes from that layer, which feels like honey between your fingers. There is no honey in it. In the cup it usually lands between a washed coffee and a natural: sweeter and rounder than washed, cleaner than most naturals.

What the mucilage is

A coffee cherry has two seeds inside. Around each seed, from the outside in, sit the skin, the pulp, a slippery coat of mucilage, and a papery shell called parchment. The mucilage is mostly sugar, pectin and water. In a washed coffee it is broken down in a tank and rinsed away. In a natural it dries in place along with the whole fruit. Honey process keeps the mucilage and loses the rest of the fruit, which is why it sits in the middle. Our post on natural vs washed coffee walks through the other two methods.

How honey coffee is made

1. Ripe cherries are picked and sorted.
2. A pulping machine squeezes the seeds out of the skin and pulp. Some mills then run the seeds through a demucilager, a machine that scrubs off a chosen share of the mucilage.
3. There is no fermentation tank and no washing channel. The sticky seeds go straight out to dry, on raised beds or patios. Why coffee dries on raised beds explains what the air underneath does.
4. They are raked and turned often, most of all in the first days, because sticky parchment clumps and a damp clump can mold. The FAO's guidelines on preventing mold in coffee recommend thin layers, about 3 centimeters (just over an inch) for parchment, and turning four times a day where possible.
5. The coffee dries until the parchment holds no more than 12 percent moisture, the FAO's ceiling, and is later hulled at a dry mill like any other coffee.

Drying times vary with the weather and with how much mucilage is left. The Tico Times, writing about Costa Rica, gives 10 to 15 days on beds. The importer Cafe Imports gives 18 to 25 days on average. Both can be right on different farms in different weeks.

Skipping the tank and the washing channel also saves water.

The honey colors

There is no official standard for the colors. In general, the more mucilage left on and the slower and shadier the drying, the darker the name.

• White honey has almost all of the mucilage scrubbed off, so it sits right beside a washed coffee.
• Yellow honey keeps a thin coat and usually dries fastest, often in full sun. Of the colors Cafe Imports describes, it is the one closest to a washed coffee.
• Red honey keeps more mucilage and dries more slowly, often with some shade in the heat of the day.
• Black honey keeps most or all of it and dries slowest, sometimes under cover. Cafe Imports compares it to Brazil's pulped natural. It is the heaviest and fruitiest of the honeys and the easiest to spoil.

Some mills name the colors by the share of mucilage their machine leaves on. Others name them by how the drying is managed and what color the parchment turns. So a red honey from one farm may not match a red honey from the next, and the name is a rough guide rather than a recipe.

Where honey process is common

Honey process is most closely tied to Costa Rica, and Cafe Imports describes it as prominent across Central America. Brazil has a close cousin called pulped natural, known there as cereja descascada, or peeled cherry. The skin comes off and the seed dries with its mucilage on, usually on open patios or in mechanical dryers rather than on raised beds.

You will also see honeys from other countries now, since any farm with a pulper and space to dry can make one. What it takes is attention. A honey needs more turning than a washed coffee in its first days, and it gives less room for error than a washed coffee when rain comes.

How it tastes next to washed and natural

A washed coffee tastes of the seed: clear acidity, a lighter body, flavors you can pick apart. A natural tastes of the whole fruit: heavy body, ripe or jammy berries, sometimes a winey edge, and more variation from lot to lot.

A honey sits between them. Expect more sweetness than the same coffee washed, often caramel or brown sugar, with a rounder body and softer acidity. Cafe Imports lists stewed fruit, burnt sugar and nuttiness among its common notes. The darker honeys lean toward a natural, and a yellow or white honey can be hard to tell from a good washed coffee.

Mucilage does ferment while it dries, the same way the fruit of a natural does, and that adds to the sweetness and the fruit. Our post on coffee fermentation explains what the yeasts and bacteria are doing.

Our coffees and honey process

Honey is one of the three methods used across the family farms, alongside washed and natural, but none of the three coffees on sale today is a honey. Our light roast from Ethiopia is a natural, and our Colombia and our Guatemala are both washed. If you want to taste where honey sits, brew one of each next to a honey from Costa Rica, same grind, same water, same recipe.