Processing

Same tree, same farm, different process — and you'd swear they were different coffees.

"Process" means what happens to the coffee cherry after it's picked and before the seed is dried and shipped. It's the part of coffee most people never hear about, and it's one of the biggest reasons two coffees can taste completely different. We carry several different processes across our lineup, which is unusual for a roaster our size. Whichever one a coffee went through is listed on its own page, so you can always see what you're getting. Here's what each one does.

Washed

The fruit is stripped off the seed with water before drying. The result is clean and clear — you taste the bean and the place it grew, with bright acidity and nothing in the way. Washed coffees are usually the backbone of our shelf.

Natural

The whole cherry is laid out to dry with the fruit still on, so the seed soaks up the fruit as it dries. Naturals are heavier, sweeter and fruit-forward — sometimes wine-like. When we have a natural on, it is usually the loudest coffee we sell.

Honey

The skin comes off but some of the sticky fruit (the "honey") is left on the seed while it dries. It lands between washed and natural: sweeter and rounder than a washed coffee, cleaner than a natural. It is the one people are most often surprised by.

Semi-washed

Also called pulped natural. The skin is removed and the seed dries with a thin layer of fruit left on, common in Brazil. Sweet, nutty and low in acidity.

Decaf, done gently

Decaf has a bad reputation because a lot of it is made from cheap coffee, decaffeinated harshly, then roasted dark to cover it up. We do it differently, using two gentle methods. Sugarcane EA uses ethyl acetate naturally derived from fermented sugarcane to pull the caffeine out while leaving most of the flavor behind. The Mountain Water process uses only water from the glaciers of Pico de Orizaba. Both let us roast the decaf light, the same way we roast everything else, and each coffee's page says which one it went through. That's why our decafs taste like the coffee they came from.

Our half-cafs are a 50/50 blend of the decaf and caffeinated version of the same origin — same farm character, half the caffeine.