Honey process
The cherry is pulped and the seed is dried with some or all of its sticky mucilage left on. The colour names used for it, from white to black, are not standardised.
In short
A honey-processed coffee is pulped like a washed coffee and then dried with some or all of the sticky mucilage still on the parchment. There is no honey in it. The name is usually explained by the mucilage, which is sticky and sweet.
The method is the same in outline as the one Brazil calls pulped natural, and the two names overlap. What sets honey apart in the trade is a set of colour words, white, yellow, red and black, for how much mucilage is left on. This page says what one study meant by them and why that is not a definition.
The sequence
Sourced
Pulp
The skin and most of the flesh are removed by machine, as in the washed process.
Keep some or all of the mucilage
A machine can rub part of the mucilage off, or it can all be left on. This is the step the colour names refer to.
Dry with the mucilage on
The parchment goes straight to drying. There is no fermentation tank and no washing, though microbes are active on the mucilage as it dries.
Hull
The parchment, with the dried mucilage on it, is hulled off to leave green coffee.
The outline is common to honey and pulped natural coffee. The FAO guidance describes it as a third alternative to fermenting or mechanically removing the mucilage: drying the pulped parchment at once.
The colour names, as one study used them
Sourced
A 2025 study of honey-processed arabica in Yunnan, China, dried the same coffee with five amounts of mucilage left on and named them as follows.
| Variable | Typical range | What moving it does |
|---|---|---|
| White honey | about 20% of the mucilage kept | |
| Yellow honey | 50 to 60% kept | |
| Red honey | 75 to 80% kept | |
| Black honey | all of it kept | the study calls this the conventional honey process |
These are that study's working definitions, not a standard. No document read for this page sets out how producers in Costa Rica or anywhere else define the words on their own bags.
What that study found, and what it did not test
Sourced
The study measured the volatile compounds in the green coffee and identified the bacteria and fungi present. Coffee dried with 75 to 80 per cent of its mucilage had the highest relative content of volatile compounds. Bacteria were more active where little mucilage was left, and fungi, including yeasts, where a lot was. So the amount of mucilage changes which microbes work on the coffee as it dries, and what they leave in the green bean.
It did not taste anything. The analysis was of green beans, and the authors say themselves that roasted coffee from each treatment still needs chemical and sensory study. Their conclusion that one level was optimal is a statement about compounds in unroasted coffee at one site, and should not be read as a tasting result.
Why it is harder to dry than it looks
CoffeeHQ explanation
Parchment coated in mucilage is wet, sugary and sticky, and it goes to the drying yard in that state. The FAO guidance on drying applies with particular force: coffee in a layer that is not turned has been seen to become covered in mould, and the stretch between very wet and dry is where mould can grow. The more mucilage is left on, the more there is to dry and the more the beans stick together.
That reasoning is CoffeeHQ's, from the guidance's general account of drying. No document read for this page measured the drying of honey-processed coffee against washed coffee.
Honey coffee and the cup
Tendency, not a guarantee
The trade places honey coffees between washed and natural: sweeter and heavier than the first, cleaner than the second, and more so in each direction as the colour darkens. That is how the coffees are sold. The one study read supports the narrower point that mucilage changes the chemistry of the green bean, and nothing read supports a ranking of the colours by taste.
What the honey label still does not tell you
CoffeeHQ explanation
What white, yellow, red and black honey mean on a bag from a given producer. The words are not standardised, and the only definitions read were one study's.
Where the method or the name originated. No source was read for either.
How any honey coffee tastes. No tasting study of the process was read.
What to do next
- Pulped natural — The same outline under its Brazilian name, and what the method was introduced there to do.
- Coffee fermentation — What the microbes on the mucilage are, and what they change.
- Drying coffee — Layers, turning and the moisture window in which mould can grow.
- Become a coffee expert — A structured programme from the plant and its processing to roasting, water and tasting.
Steps
- Pulping
- Keeping some or all of the mucilage
- Drying with mucilage present
Where this method is documented in the atlas
Only countries CoffeeHQ has written an entry for, and only where a document it has read says so. Each line is what that document says. It is not a share of the crop, and this is not a list of everywhere the method is used.
lots recorded by a study in one place
- Indonesia. A 2023 study collected honey-processed lots in Takengon, in the Gayo Highlands of Aceh, alongside naturals and lots fermented in the cherry. It shows the method is used there and says nothing about how much. Source: The Authentication of Gayo Arabica Green Coffee Beans with Different Cherry Processing Methods Using Portable LED-Based Fluorescence Spectroscopy and Chemometrics Analysis.
- Panama. Honey-processed lots of both arabica and robusta were among the samples a 2026 chemistry paper analysed. It shows the method is used in Panama and nothing about how commonly. Source: Phenolic Composition, Antioxidant Activity and Caffeine as Chemical Markers for Differentiating Panamanian Coffea arabica and Coffea canephora.
how the coffee is classed in trade, not a description of practice
- Ecuador. The attaché's report of 2022 lists semi-washed or honey coffee as the third of the methods by which Ecuadorian coffee is classified. It gives no share and names no province for it. Source: Ecuador: Coffee Annual (EC2022-0008).
Learn it as a course
The Coffee Expert lesson Processing covers this ground in order, with exercises you can do at home.