YOUR NATURAL PROCESS COFFEE: SEED TO DRYING
Like washed and honey process coffee, your natural process coffee also starts out as seedlings, which take 3-4 years to become coffee-producing trees.
Beans grow inside cherry-like fruit. After four years of growing to maturity, each tree can produce 1-1.5 pounds of coffee per year, depending on the resources a farmer can dedicate to her coffee. Harvests are just once a year.
For maximum sweetness and development, only the reddest coffee cherries should be picked, leaving green ones for another day.
We then hire about 40 people to select out anything that is not perfectly red, sparing no effort nor expense to bring you a great natural process coffee.
Then we rush the coffee still in its fruit down the mountain to be dried in the sun. This takes an entire month.
It must be moved often to ensure even drying.
As it dries some of the fruit's flavors penetrate the bean, resulting in awesome and different (yet natural) cupping notes such as blueberry and strawberry.
Traceability of every lot is maintained, from farms of partner producers to what we export to roasters. We mark every single bag with the variety, producer's name, and lot number.
After drying, coffee is stored in a warehouse for a minimum of one month so moisture levels in each bean distribute evenly (without this step, coffee tastes grassy or chalky). Next comes dry hulling.