Honey Process Coffee

Honey process coffee sits between washed and natural: the skin is removed like washed coffee, but some or all of the sticky fruit mucilage is left on the bean to dry, like natural coffee. That leftover mucilage looks a bit like honey coating the parchment, which is where the name comes from, and it's most closely associated with Costa Rica.

How Does the Honey Process Work?

Cherries are depulped within about 24 hours of harvest, as with washed coffee, but instead of fermenting and washing away the mucilage, mills leave some or all of it clinging to the parchment. The beans then dry in that state, typically over roughly 18 to 25 days on raised beds or patios, with fermentation continuing slowly throughout as sugars in the mucilage interact with the bean. Because there's no separate washing step, honey coffee generally uses considerably less water than fully washed processing.

What Are Yellow, Red and Black Honey?

Producers can control roughly how much mucilage stays on the bean, and the resulting color of the dried parchment gives each style its name. Yellow, or golden, honey keeps the least mucilage and dries fastest, in roughly 8 to 10 days, landing closest in style to washed coffee. Red honey retains somewhere around half to three-quarters of the mucilage and takes longer to dry, while black honey keeps all of it, dries slowest at around 30 days, and needs frequent turning so the sugary beans don't stick together or mold. Black honey is generally the most labor-intensive of the three and tends to land closest to a Brazilian-style pulped natural in character.

Where Is Honey Process Coffee Common?

Honey processing is most strongly associated with Costa Rica, where it developed as an alternative to washed coffee partly to save water, and it's especially common in high-grown regions like Tarrazú, whose farms also produce washed lots. From there it has spread to El Salvador, Honduras and other Central American origins, and producers in other parts of the world increasingly experiment with it as a middle path between washed and natural. Because Costa Rica's coffee institute and its network of small, independently run micromills give individual farms more control over processing choices than a large central mill typically allows, honey coffee has become an easy way for a farm to differentiate a lot without investing in full natural-drying infrastructure.

How Does Honey Processing Change the Cup?

Honey-processed coffees are often described as fruity, jammy or stewed-fruit-like, with a caramel or burnt-sugar sweetness and sometimes a nutty edge, while keeping some of the heavier body and chocolate notes associated with natural coffee. Compared with a fully natural coffee, honey lots tend to have gentler, less wild fruit character and somewhat lower acidity, since only part of the fruit's sugars and flavor compounds reach the bean rather than the whole cherry's worth.

What Are the Pros and Cons of Honey Processing?

Honey processing gives producers a way to add sweetness and body without the water use of washing or the full defect risk of natural drying, which is part of why it caught on quickly in water-conscious Costa Rica. The tradeoff is control: managing partial mucilage through weeks of drying takes more attention than washed coffee, and black honey in particular is labor-intensive, requiring frequent turning to avoid mold or beans fusing together. Results can also vary more between lots than washed coffee does, since "how much mucilage" is a judgment call rather than a fixed step.

How Does Honey Process Coffee Compare With Jamaica Blue Mountain?

Jamaica Blue Mountain is traditionally washed rather than honey-processed, so the two generally land in different places in the cup: JBM is widely described as mild, balanced and low in bitterness, while honey coffee is chosen specifically for extra sweetness and body that washing would rinse away. It's a fair, if hedged, comparison rather than a strict one, since a producer could in principle apply honey processing to Blue Mountain cherries and get a different result — but as commercially sold today, JBM's washed profile and honey coffee's fruit-forward sweetness sit at different points on the spectrum rather than competing head to head.