What are green coffee beans?

Green coffee beans or raw, unroasted coffee beans are coffee beans that have not been processed or roasted. They are usually processed differently from the regular espresso beans we are used to seeing and tasting and have a wide variety of known benefits. As such, many coffee drinkers have since been replacing their regular espresso beans with green coffee beans.

Although green coffee beans are regularly processed into extracts and tablets, consuming green coffee beans as an espresso has become increasingly popular of late. On its own, green coffee beans are known to taste more like herbal tea than regular coffee. Upon preparation, green coffee beans often retain its distinctive green hue in a beverage.

If you’re used to the regular taste of black coffee, you’ll be pleasantly surprised that it isn’t a flavor you’ll find in green coffee. This, however, does not mean you won’t be getting the same caffeine effects. Instead, you may even gain more benefits from green coffee than your regular cup of joe.

But with all these great benefits that green coffee has to offer, you may be wondering how they make this new era of super coffee. Well, let’s look at how the coffee producers make green coffee beans.

How are green coffee beans made?

Unlike regular coffee beans, green coffee beans are beans that will not be roasted before being brewed. This retains much of the green coffee bean’s natural chemicals such as antioxidants for better overall health and chlorogenic acids that help aid weight loss.

To make green coffee beans, coffee producers regularly harvest the coffee cherries and send the fruit through a variety of processes like the wet process, dry process, or semi-dry process. Each of these processes takes place across coffee plants worldwide, with every plant adopting their preferred method to produce top-grade green coffee beans.

In a wet process, the green coffee beans are usually soaked in a large quantity of water to aid the sorting process. This helps the workers identify the good coffee cherries from the bad, and the cherries are pushed through a screen to remove the skin and pulp. The coffee cherries are then dried in a machine or under the sun before being packed for export.

A dry process, on the other hand, is the oldest form of processing coffee beans. After picking the coffee cherries, workers will sort the fruits by hand, eliminating any dirt, twigs, or spoiled cherries from the harvest. These fruits are then left to dry under the sun for up to 4 weeks and later sent to a silo where the hulling process to remove the pulp takes place.

After the wet or dry processes have been completed, most of these beans will be taken to a final milling process to remove any final layers of pulp and is then cleaned and sorted. An optional polishing process may also take place in this step to make the green coffee beans look better before they are packed into woven poly bags for export.

Many small-scale businesses may opt to sell green coffee beans to consumers in small, vacuum-sealed bags. This ensures that the green coffee beans will not receive unnecessary exposure to oxygen, thus affecting the flavor and aroma profile of the beans.

When left as a whole bean, you may keep the green coffee beans for up to 12 months in an airtight container. Green coffee beans that have been ground for consumption should ideally be used within 6 to 8 weeks as the flavor profile may change after.