RevistaProAgro Archives

Coffee “Blumen,” Honey Process

Published September 18, 2018.

Café Blumen is a single-origin coffee from Apante, Matagalpa, Nicaragua. It is made from 100% Arabica Red Catuai and Caturra beans sourced from a single farm lot and roasted at origin.

Profile

• Roast: Full City
• Process: Semi-washed honey process
• Flavor: Strawberry, almonds and flowers
• Aftertaste: Strawberry, almonds, caramel, chocolate and flowers

Processing method

The process begins with alcoholic fermentation. The fruit skin is then removed while much of the pulp and sugar-rich mucilage remains around the parchment. Fermentation continues as the coffee dries in the sun.

The producer developed Café Blumen to emphasize floral, strawberry, almond and caramel notes. Yellow Catuai—and occasionally Java—is also associated with versions of this profile because of those varieties’ floral characteristics.

Understanding honey-process coffee

The source distinguishes three broad processing categories:

1. Washed
2. Semi-washed
3. Unwashed or natural

Honey-process coffee belongs to the semi-washed category. Its name does not mean that honey is added. It refers to the sticky mucilage left around the parchment after depulping. During sun drying, sugars in that mucilage concentrate and caramelize, influencing the finished cup.

Esquina de los Cafés states that it prepared an academic and technical article about this production method for the Central American agricultural publication RevistaProAgro.