Washed vs. Natural vs. Honey Processed

Some Sunday mornings are made for three small cups lined up next to a book you're in no hurry to finish — a chapter, a sip, a chapter, another sip. It's the easiest way to actually taste the difference processing makes, side by side, with nowhere else to be.

Before a coffee cherry becomes the beans you brew, someone has to get rid of the fruit around it. How they do that is called processing, and it's one of the biggest flavor levers in the entire supply chain — often bigger than the roast itself.

Washed coffee has the fruit and sticky mucilage removed before drying, usually by pulping the cherry and fermenting the beans in water until the mucilage loosens off, then rinsing clean. The result is a brighter, cleaner cup where the bean's own character — not the fruit around it — leads. Our El Salvador - Washed is a textbook example: tangerine, walnut, honey, no noise.

Natural (or dry-process) coffee skips all that — the whole cherry dries intact, fruit and all, for one to several weeks. The bean absorbs sugars and flavor compounds from the fruit as it dries, which shows up as heavier body and bigger, jammier fruit notes. Our Ethiopia - Dry Process leans into this with chai, cinnamon, and star anise.

Honey processed splits the difference: the skin comes off, but some or all of the mucilage stays on during drying. It's named for the sticky, honey-like texture of that mucilage — not the flavor. You get more body and sweetness than washed, more clarity than natural. Our Burundi - Honey Peaberry is a great honey-process introduction: black tea, caramel, lemongrass, passion fruit, apricot.

For a deeper technical breakdown of all three methods, Fantine's processing guide is worth a read.

Try all three side by side → SHOP LIMITED RELEASES