Ivan Gutierrez CatuaiHoney Process Education Lot

In recent years, it seems as though honey processing is appearing in more coffee-producing countries than it has historically (perhaps most notably in impressive honey processed lots coming out of Ethiopia and India), but it largely remains true that honey processing is most closely associated with coffee production in Costa Rica.

In contrast to a washed processed coffee, where some combination of fermentation and washing is employed to break down and ultimately remove the sugary mucilage that remains on the surface of coffee seeds after the fruit has been removed, honey processed coffee is dried immediately after pulping, with some amount of the mucilage left to dry on the coffee seeds. Additionally, skilled producers are able to carefully set up their pulping machines to leave more or less mucilage on the coffee before drying. It’s this practice that gives us the different ‘colors’ of honey processing that we sometimes see marketed on specialty coffee bags. A 'white honey' indicates that almost all of the mucilage has been scraped off prior to drying, while a 'red honey' or 'black honey' would indicate that more mucilage was left on the seeds - which oxidizes to a darker hue during the drying process. As with natural process, the obvious implication is that the honey process requires far less water to execute compared to the aptly named washed process.

Natural, honey, and washed process lots, drying at Gundikhan Estate in Chikmagalur, India.

While there is limited formal establishment for this claim in peer-reviewed historical literature, it is generally agreed upon within the specialty industry that honey processing was popularized in Costa Rica sometime around the late 1990’s and early 2000’s as a response to water scarcity and implicit pressure from increasing governmental regulations related to wastewater management and general environmental sustainability. The hope for the honey process was that it would provide a way to maintain or increase cup score and access to specialty markets, while requiring significantly lower water use than washed coffees. While well-executed honey processed coffees can achieve this effect with great success, it is also true that honey processed coffees can occasionally taste like less of an innovative middle ground and more of a no man’s land between a washed and a natural processed approach. Nonetheless, given the increased interest from producers and the specialty market in post-harvest experimentation in recent years, the honey process occupies a unique, if not nostalgic, position as one of the original ‘experimental processing methods.’