There is no un-natural coffee. I am sure there will be some day, depending on what the decidedly watery term “natural” means to you. But in this context natural coffees are the dry-processes kind, also called unwashed coffees.
In this method the coffee fruit is picked from the tree and laid out to dry in the sun until it becomes a hard, dark brown pod. In most cases the pod dries slower than coffee that had had the skin removed and the fruit mucilageMucilage indicates the fruity layer of the coffee cherry, between the outer skin and the parchment layer that surrounds the seed. It readily clings to the inner parchment... ...more fermentedAs a defect flavor, a fruit quality in a coffee that is excessively ripe, toward rotten. Fermented flavor can be the result of poor wet-processing, over-ripe cherry, or... ...more or scrubbed off, wet-processed or washed coffees. The slower drying in the presence of the fruit and skin changes the flavor of the roasted natural coffee. There are also theories about other chemical differences in the seed of a natural coffee since the biological trigger telling the seed that it can start to germinate is not set off in a natural coffee. But that’s not something I can go into since I am posting this from a phone!
The cherries picked for natural lots are no different from washed lots. But in the wet millThe wet mill is a processing center where coffee cherry from the tree is brought for initial processing.: The wet mill goes by many names (Beneficio, Factory, Washing... ...more there are methods to remove unripe or defective fruits that do no exist in the simple “lay it in the sun to dry” method. That means an extraordinary amount of hand labor is needed to remove bad cherries from the drying beds.
You would think that making sure only ripe cherries were selected for drying, to avoid all the subsequent labor to pick them out later. But in EthiopiaEthiopia, formerly known as Abyssinia, or a coffee cultivar: Ethiopia, or more specifically the Empire under Haile Selassie, was known as Abyssinia. The name is Latin, derived from... ...more and many other places this is not the case. A huge spectrum if unripe to ripe fruits are included, largely due to local culture and business practice. If you turn away farmers who bring in a mix of cherries then they won’t return. They will go to the mill down the road. Even paying more wont ensure getting better quality fruit. Small holder farmers in Ethiopia are set in their ways. The only way to control fruit picking is to own the farm, and their are few large estates in the best coffee areas of Ethiopia.
I include above a picture of cherryEither a flavor in the coffee, or referring to the fruit of the coffee tree, which somewhat resembles a red cherry.: Either a flavor in the coffee, or... ...more sortingCoffee is sorted by size, density, and color in its preparation for export.: Sorting refers to several steps performed in the preparation of coffee for export. Coffee is... ...more just beginning on a set of raised bedsRaised beds, also referred to as "african-style beds" are elevated beds used for drying coffee when dry-processing.: Raised beds, also referred to as "african-style beds" are elevated beds... ...more at the privately owned Aricha mill in Yirga Cheffe from my visit last week. When this was owned by Abdullah Bagersh the top coffees here were called Idido Misty Valley. They maintain some of the Bagersh practices, in the most part because they are the same local workers who learned by his standards. -Tom