One of the oldest and most traditional ways to process coffee is “natural processing.” In many places, it is still the most common. When you process your coffee “naturally,” you spread out the coffee cherries so they are ready for drying right after harvest. This means that the coffee bean dries inside the cherry. It is clearly a much more time-consuming process, but it also adds sweetness and a creamier consistency to the coffee because the bean absorbs the sweetness from the cherry itself. The taste becomes more fruity and sweet because the coffee bean has more time to interact with the natural sugars. And this is clearly expressed in the taste of our coffee from El Salvador.

Natural drying also uses much less water. Coffee production and processing often take place in parts of the world where the population has virtually no access to water, such as in Ethiopia. Natural drying uses less water compared to more traditional methods, and in some places, we see water savings of up to 90% compared to washed coffees.