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Coffee Processing – A Flowchart

Chris Kornman | Dec 9, 2020
Education & ResourcesGreen Coffee EducationOrigin & Supply Chain Education

In anticipation of a class on fermentation and processing styles in coffee, I asked my colleague Evan to help me create a unique visualization tool to convey accurately and quickly what people mean when they say “pulped natural” or “triple washed,” for example.

You’ll note the color-coded language: green indicating almost always and red almost never, with a good amount of ambiguity highlighted in yellow and a few exceptions noted in other shades and with some additional text.

This is because not everyone means the same thing when they use certain terms to indicate their processing methods. Ambiguity springs up all over the place. You can find out more about fermentation and Anaerobic & Carbonic styles of processing here.

You can also access the full size PDF here: Processing Steps Infographic

Written by Chris Kornman

Chris is a seasoned coffee quality specialist, writer and researcher, and the Director of Education at The Crown: Royal Coffee Lab & Tasting Room. He is the author of Green Coffee: A Guide for Roasters and Buyers.

Formerly a QC manager, cupper, educator, green coffee buyer, and roaster at Intelligentsia under the guidance of Geoff Watts, Chris logged thousands of miles across the coffee lands in East Africa and Brazil. His published work can be found in Roast Magazine, Daily Coffee News, Perfect Daily Grind, Coffee T&I, Tea and Coffee Trade Journal, and the Royal Blog, and his research and lectures are a regular fixture at events such as SCA Expo, the Roasters Guild Retreat & Sensory Summit, the Academic Agenda for the Café de Colombia Expo in Bogotá, and Hotelex Shanghai. However, his favorite teaching environments are next to humming roasters and slurping coffee tasters worldwide.

On weekends, Chris can be found helping at his partner's Improv Theater in Oakland. He rides a 1986 Schwinn Prelude, loves chilling outdoors with his cat and dog, and plays classical guitar, banjo, and trumpet. In addition to coffee, he can be found sipping Saisons and Oolongs, and fermenting hot sauces.


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1 Comments

1 Comment

  1. Sisola Coffee
    Sisola Coffee on December 11, 2020 at 2:19 am

    This is a good summary of what I have observed as well. However, we have a nice Honey process coffee that I have difficulty naming because it doesn’t fit any of these conventions. We do a fermentation of the cherry for a few days in water with a yeast inoculation, so it’s close to CM, but CM is supposed to be sealed tanks flushed with CO2. We started calling it Anaerobic 3 years ago since the water bath is a low oxygen environment, and at that time there was less industry clarity about which terms to use, so now it feels out of place since the term is usually used for a process different than ours.

    Cost of production and results in the cup are ultimately all that matter, but it sure is nice if we can add some fancy marketing speak to help indicate we have taken an intentional approach to fermentation.