#004 - How Do Farmers Choose Between Producing Honey, Washed or Natural Coffee Beans?

Renato Stivanin
Dec 28, 2025
2 min read

The three main coffee processing methods are widely known.

However, it is fascinating how producers are subject to cultural factors - such as labour, water availability and cost of capital - when choosing its processing method.

The processing methods differ in how to handle the coffee cherries after the harvest:

Honey processing involves the fermentation of the cherries in sealed environments, before de-pulping and drying. It allows a manipulated flavor. It demands expensive specialized infrastructure, such as fermentation tanks. When the infrastructure is not adequate, we see instability in flavors - and even an attempt to masquerade poorer quality.
Washed processing involves first removing the cherries’ skin and pulp. Then fermenting to loosen the mucilage and washing, and drying. It demands fermentation tanks, washing channels and - theoretically - wastewater management systems to comply with environmental regulations. As you can see, the main bottleneck is the availability of water.
Natural processing involves drying the whole cherry before removing the dried fruit and mucilage. It requires raised drying beds or sheds to protect from rain.

Theoretically, natural processing should be the easiest method. And every producer should migrate to Naturals.

However, there is a catch related to the time necessary to drying the beans.

Washed and Honey present shorter cycles, since the cherries are de-pulped before being dried. That allows faster turnover of inventory and quicker payment from buyers, easing cash flow pressures.

Natural processing has a longer cycle, since the cherries are full. Then, there is a big difference between commodity grade and specialty grade beans.

Commodity beans are dried in machines. The cycle becomes very short, but the quality deteriorates. Meanwhile, specialty beans are dried on elevated beds under the shade. This process can take 6 weeks - under several risks, such as changes in prices and even robbery. The cash flow deteriorates.

The main reason for not producing washed coffees is simply the lack of available water.

In summary, we believe Naturals with a high SCA score are really unique. They demand time to mature. There are several academic studies demonstrating the positive impact of the time into naturals.

Our guess is that every producer would move to washed processing if they had available water.

Later, we will explain how commodities exchanges arbitrarily impose a discount to Naturals… And how it impacts the entire supply chain.

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Coffee C futures +2.82% weekly, closing at 350.25 cents/lb.

B3 Arabica (4/5) +2.5% weekly, at ~460 USD/60kg bag.

BRL/USD -0.05%.

Freight proxy (Santos-Rotterdam 20ft equiv.) +1% weekly, at ~$1,100.

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