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Natural (dry) process

The whole cherry is dried with the fruit still around the seed, and the dried fruit is hulled off afterwards. No pulping and no washing water, and the most water to dry out.

In short

In the natural, or dry, process the coffee cherry is dried whole and the dried fruit is hulled off the seed afterwards. It needs no pulping machine and no washing water. The Food and Agriculture Organization's guidance on coffee processing notes that most robusta is produced this way, and that arabica dried in the cherry is an essential part of espresso blends.

The same guidance makes a point that is easy to miss: simple as it is, drying cherries well takes as much management as the more complicated wet process. This page follows it on why.

From cherry to hulled coffee

Sourced

  1. Pick, or let it dry on the tree

    Ripe cherries are picked, or in some regions most of the fruit is left to dry on the branch and stripped in one pass. The FAO guidance says tree-drying can give safe, good coffee where the harvest season is reliably arid.

  2. Float and sortnot always done

    Passing the harvest through water separates what floats, including cherries that dried on the tree, from fresh fruit. The guidance recommends it so that dry and fresh fruit are not mixed on the yard.

  3. Spread to dry

    The cherries are spread on a prepared surface, the same day they are picked, and turned through the day.

  4. Dry to a stable moisture

    The guidance gives 13 per cent as the recommended maximum for dried cherry, one point above its figure for parchment.

  5. Hull

    The dried fruit and parchment are removed together, usually on the farm, leaving green coffee and a by-product of dried husk.

The sequence the FAO guidance describes. Regional variations it lists include holding cherries in sacks or heaps before drying and splitting the cherry without separating skin from seed.

Twice the water to remove

Sourced

A cherry is mostly fruit, and in this process all of it has to be dried. The FAO guidance puts the difference at almost twice as much water to remove on the drying yard, for the same weight of green coffee, as in the wet process. It also notes that whole cherries are slow to start: their moisture changes little for the first one to three days, against a day or less for parchment.

Against that, the guidance says, the whole cherry gives the seed more protection than parchment does. That trade is why the dry process suits places where the harvest falls in dependable dry weather, and why it is harder where it does not.

The fermentation nobody planned

Sourced

A natural coffee has no fermentation tank, but fermentation happens anyway. Field surveys cited in the FAO guidance found it common, especially among smallholders, to hold picked cherries in sacks or heaps for three to seven days before spreading them. The heap gets hot, and a rapid fermentation takes place that the guidance calls different in kind from the one used in wet processing.

Its verdict is careful. Direct studies did not produce consistent evidence to condemn the practice, but the process is not controlled and alarming outcomes were sometimes recorded. On that basis it recommends that fresh cherry is not held beyond the day of harvest. The international code of practice is firmer: it says the practice causes quality losses and raises the risk of ochratoxin A. Deliberately fermenting whole cherries before drying, in a sealed tank, is the basis of several of the newer methods described in the page on experimental processing.

Where the risk lies

Sourced

Mould needs water, and a slow-drying cherry gives it time. The guidance sets out the window: very wet fruit is dominated by yeasts and fast-growing microbes that hold the mould that produces ochratoxin A in check; fully dry fruit cannot support it; and the stretch in between is where it can grow. The aim on the yard is to pass through that stretch quickly, and five days or fewer is the figure the guidance reports as generally attainable and effective.

Two practical points follow from it. A layer of cherries left unturned has been seen to become covered in mould, so the guidance advises turning several times a day. And once coffee has partly dried, wetting it again may be more serious than drying it slowly: cherries in their first three days on the yard tolerate a shower, and after that they should be covered.

Natural coffee and the cup

Tendency, not a guarantee

The trade describes naturals as heavier and fruitier than washed coffees, and a careless natural as fermented or winey. The FAO guidance says only that cherry coffee has different sensory qualities from parchment coffee and a lower market value. No document read for this page tasted a natural against a washed coffee made from the same fruit.

What can be said is that the seed spends its whole drying inside a fruit that is fermenting, and that how long that takes and how evenly it happens are in the hands of whoever runs the drying yard. Two naturals can differ from each other by more than the label suggests.

What is not claimed here about naturals

CoffeeHQ explanation

How long a natural takes to dry. The guidance says drying rates vary enormously with weather and with how the yard is run, and gives no number of days.

That naturals taste fruitier, as a finding. It is the trade's description, repeated here as that.

What share of any country's coffee is processed this way.

What to do next

  • Drying coffee — Surfaces, layers, turning, moisture and water activity, from the same guidance, in full.
  • Brazil — The country most associated with the method, and how it is harvested and dried there.
  • Ethiopia — Where the choice between washed and natural follows the price of cherry.
  • Washed versus natural — The two methods side by side, with a tasting you can set up yourself.
  • Become a coffee expert — A structured programme from the plant and its processing to roasting, water and tasting.

Steps

  1. Drying whole cherries
  2. Hulling

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.

described as present-day practice

  • Ethiopia. The larger of Ethiopia's two methods: a 2024 study from the Jimma research centre cites, without a year, about 65 per cent of the crop as dry-processed. Ethiopian trade documents call it unwashed. Source: Effect of processing methods on physicochemical and cup quality of coffee at Jimma, Ethiopia.
  • Brazil. Brazil's traditional method, called via seca: the whole cherry is dried on a patio or in a dryer and hulled afterwards. A 2009 study describes it as the route Brazilian coffee was known by in the trade. Source: Impactos econômicos da tecnologia do café cereja descascado.
  • Vietnam. The usual method: the industry association's 2019 profile says nearly 80 per cent of post-harvest processing was by sunlight, with machine drying spreading in the Central Highlands. Source: Country Coffee Profile: Vietnam (ICC-124-9).
  • Cameroon. The coffee board's 2017 profile says robusta, which is most of Cameroon's crop, is dry-processed, and that hulling is done in factories owned by cooperatives or licensed private operators. Source: Country Coffee Profile: Cameroon (ICC 120-5).
  • Philippines. The national roadmap calls the dry or natural process the most common: typical for robusta, and used for much arabica as well for want of other equipment. It gives no share. Source: Philippine Coffee Industry Roadmap 2021-2025.
  • Thailand. The Department of Agriculture's manual says the dry method is the one usually used for robusta: whole cherries floated to sort them, then dried in full sun for about fifteen days before hulling. Source: คู่มือเทคโนโลยีการผลิตกาแฟโรบัสตา (Robusta coffee production technology manual).
  • Sri Lanka. The Department of Export Agriculture describes a dry method: ripe fruit dried in the sun and then hulled, giving what it calls cherry coffee. It gives no share for either method. Source: Coffee (crop page).
  • Sierra Leone. A 2023 review describes one method: the cherries are dried whole, on raised platforms where a development project installed them and on fenced drying floors elsewhere. It mentions no washing station. Source: Genetic diversity of coffee germplasm in Sierra Leone: implications for conservation and breeding programs.

lots recorded by a study in one place

  • Indonesia. The same 2023 study collected natural lots in Takengon. For Indonesia's robusta, which is most of the crop, the USDA's report shows sun-drying without describing the process. Source: The Authentication of Gayo Arabica Green Coffee Beans with Different Cherry Processing Methods Using Portable LED-Based Fluorescence Spectroscopy and Chemometrics Analysis.
  • Panama. Forty-one of the same 96 competition samples of 2018 and 2019 were natural. Competition entries are not a sample of the crop, and no source read gives a national share. Source: Physicochemical Parameters and Multivariate Analysis to Predict the Sensory Quality in Specialty Coffee from Panama.

how the coffee is classed in trade, not a description of practice

  • India. In India natural coffee is called cherry, on the trade handbook's definition; the USDA attaché's price charts are quoted for robusta cherry. Source: The Coffee Guide, fourth edition (2021).
  • Ecuador. One of the three methods by which the attaché's report of 2022 says Ecuadorian coffee is classified, paired in its table with arabica from Loja, Manabí, El Oro, Los Ríos, Guayas and Pichincha. One review says dry processing is generally applied to robusta. Source: Ecuador: Coffee Annual (EC2022-0008).
  • Nepal. The coffee board's price table has rows for dry cherry, fruit dried whole, in two grades. It shows that coffee is sold that way and gives no share of the crop. Source: कफीको न्यूनतम् सहमत मूल्य (Minimum agreed price of coffee).

a historical statement, not a description of the present

  • Yemen. On a 1922 account, cherries were dried in the sun on house-top terraces or floors of beaten earth and hulled between two small stones. Nothing present-day was read. Source: All About Coffee.
  • Mexico. The same 1922 history says large quantities of Mexican coffee were then prepared by the dry method, and that some coffee was still cleaned with a hand mortar and winnowed in the wind. No present-day account was read. Source: All About Coffee.
  • El Salvador. A 1922 trade history said planters in Salvador favoured the dry method and that the bulk of the crop was natural, or unwashed. The Coffee Council's 2016 profile puts semi-washed, honey and natural coffee together at 4 per cent. Source: All About Coffee.
  • Venezuela. A 1922 trade history says the dry, unwashed coffees, called trillado, made up the bulk of Venezuela's output. No present-day document read describes how the coffee is processed. Source: All About Coffee.

Related flavour attributes

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Learn it as a course

The Coffee Expert lesson Processing covers this ground in order, with exercises you can do at home.