What mean the coffee uses honey?
We often hear this question when we explain the honey process to our clients, friends and relatives. The name Honey Process is indeed confusing, what comes to many people’s heads when they first hear the term may involve coffee soaked in a kind of honey concoction or the taste of coffee with a touch of honey flavor.
But in reality, it has nothing to do with honey made by bees or the taste it produces.
Then Why Called Honey?
Honey Process is one of three post-harvest processes commonly used around the world: 1) Natural or dry process, 2) Washed or wet process, and 3) Honey or honey process or often called pulped natural. These three methods have their own uniqueness. Before explaining these three methods, please absorb the coffee cherry image below.
When the coffee cherry is peeled, you will see a transparent layer that covers the coffee beans called mucilage. This mucilage is the most important part of the honey process.
Natural process is the process of drying coffee directly with the fruit. In essence, the fruit is picked from the tree, then dried directly in the sun. In the wet process, water is used to peel the cherries down to the mucilage, leaving only the coffee beans before the coffee is dried. Now, for the honey process, the coffee cherries are peeled and dried with a layer of mucilage that still covers the coffee beans. Then during the drying process, this layer still absorbs moisture from the air, making it even more sticky, which is similar to the texture of honey.
This process is widely used in Central America, and they call it the word miel, which means honey. So that’s where the name honey process comes from.
What is the importance of the honey process?
The honey process is quite difficult to do, but the coffee produced is definitely worth the effort. The first thing to do is, the farmer will pick the cherry with the best ripeness. Then, as we explained earlier, the outer layer of the cherry will be peeled off, leaving only the mucilage layer and the coffee beans. Next, the coffee will be dried in the sun like a natural process.
Well, this mucilage layer is the key to the honey process, because mucilage stores sugar and acidity, which gets more concentrated when the coffee is dried. Because the more concentrated, the sugar content will penetrate into the coffee beans. Therefore, the flavors commonly found in the honey process are very high sweetness with balanced acidity, as well as a clearer and more defined taste when compared to coffees that use natural processes.
What is the difference between red, yellow and black honey?
The color here represents the color of the coffee after the drying process. These different colors can occur because the mucilage layer attached to the coffee when drying has different thicknesses. The thinner the mucilage layer, the faster the coffee will dry. These are the differences between the three:
Yellow Honey
In this process, only 25% of the mucilage layer remains. The drying process is usually carried out in a place that is not too shady so that it is faster. Processing time is about 8 days.
Red Honey
For Red Honey, there is 50% of the mucilage layer remaining. Drying is done in cloudy weather or in a fairly shady place. This process is completed in approximately 12 days.
Black Honey
This process is the longest and most risky compared to others. 100% of the mucilage layer adheres to the seeds and is dried for approximately 30 days under a shelter for maximum yield.
Not a Simple Process
Compared to the three, Black Honey has a higher taste complexity than other processes. This is because a long time makes the sugar content in the mucilage more concentrated and more and more absorbed into the coffee beans. However, Black Honey is much more difficult to work with, mainly because of the time it takes. In that time period, the higher the risk of the coffee being defective / damaged due to bacteria and fungi. In addition, the coffee must be turned over more often than red or yellow.
We often hear this question when we explain the honey process to our clients, friends and relatives. The name Honey Process is indeed confusing, what comes to many people’s heads when they first hear the term may involve coffee soaked in a kind of honey concoction or the taste of coffee with a touch of honey flavor.
But in reality, it has nothing to do with honey made by bees or the taste it produces.
