If a washed coffee is a high-definition photograph of a farm, a natural is more like an oil painting: warmer, fruitier, with broader brushstrokes. Naturals are the oldest way of processing coffee, with roots in Ethiopia and Yemen going back centuries. They're also the most divisive. People who love them tend to love them with conviction. Others reach for something cleaner. Worth understanding either way.
What Is Natural Process Coffee?
Natural processing (sometimes called the dry process) keeps the whole cherry intact. After harvest, the ripe fruit is laid out to dry in the sun with the bean still cocooned inside. Over the course of two to six weeks, the outer layers shrivel down like a raisin while the bean ferments slowly inside its sticky fruit envelope. Once everything's fully dry, the shrivelled cherry is mechanically stripped off at a dry mill to reveal the green bean.
That long, slow drying is where the magic, and the risk, lives. The bean absorbs sugars and complex fermentative compounds from the fruit that washed coffees never see, which is what gives naturals their signature fruit-forward, sometimes funky character.
How It's Done: Step by Step
- Harvesting: Only the ripest cherries make the cut. With naturals more than any other method, picking matters. Any underripe or damaged fruit that slips through will distort the fermentation downstream.
- Sorting and floating: Cherries are tipped into water tanks where defective or underripe fruit floats and gets removed. The ripe, denser cherries sink and move on.
- Sun-drying: Cherries are spread out on raised beds, patios, or sometimes (in the most traditional setups) directly on the ground. Drying takes two to six weeks depending on climate, altitude, and depth on the bed.
- Turning and monitoring: Workers rake or turn the cherries multiple times a day to keep drying even and prevent mould or unwanted fermentation. This is constant, hands-on work for the entire drying period.
- Dry milling: Once the cherries hit around 11% moisture, they're sent to a dry mill where the shrivelled fruit and parchment are mechanically removed in one go, revealing the green bean ready for export.
What's Happening Inside the Cherry
While the cherries dry, the bean isn't just sitting there. It's fermenting. Yeasts and bacteria living naturally on the fruit (and in the surrounding air) get to work on the sugars and acids in the mucilage, producing alcohols, esters, and organic acids that gradually migrate into the bean. The longer the drying takes, the more time those compounds have to develop. It's the same broad principle behind wine, kimchi, and sourdough, just running on coffee chemistry.
This is why naturals taste so different from washed coffees of the same variety on the same farm. The bean is identical. What's wrapped around it, and what that fruit goes through over the next month, is completely different.
Flavour Profile
Naturals lean bold, fruity, and sometimes intentionally wild. You can usually expect dried fruit notes (sultana, date, fig), berry-forward sweetness (blueberry, strawberry, raspberry), a heavier syrupy body, and an aftertaste that often nudges toward boozy or wine-like territory. Done well, the fruit is integrated and sweet. Done less well, it can stray into vinegar or solvent territory.
Origin shifts the picture considerably. Ethiopian naturals from Yirgacheffe or Sidamo are often the textbook example: blueberry, strawberry jam, and floral notes with surprising complexity. Brazilian naturals tend more toward chocolate, peanut, and red apple, with a milder fruit character that makes them a workhorse in espresso blends. Yemeni naturals (rare and pricey) can be wine-like, spicy, and intensely aromatic. Naturals from Central America and Costa Rica often sit in tropical and stone fruit territory, with cleaner fermentation than the wilder African examples.
Why Naturals Are Tricky to Get Right
Natural processing looks simple. Pick cherries, dry them, mill them. The reality is much harder, which is part of why washed processing was developed in the first place. With the fruit still on the bean during drying, there's a much bigger window for things to go wrong.
Dry the cherries too fast and they crack, losing flavour compounds and creating uneven moisture pockets. Dry them too slowly or unevenly (or pile them too deep on the beds) and you risk mould, over-fermentation, or "stinkers": individual beans with off, rotten, or vinegary notes that can taint an entire lot. Bad fermentation might show up as harsh acidity, medicinal flavours, or musty notes that no amount of careful roasting can rescue.
The producers consistently making clean, expressive naturals tend to share a few habits: they sort obsessively, dry on raised beds rather than the ground, turn the cherries regularly, and keep the drying depth shallow enough for air to move through. It's labour-intensive work, but the difference shows in the cup.
Natural vs Washed vs Honey Process
Not sure how natural processing fits alongside the other main methods? Here's a quick comparison:
| Process | Fruit Contact | Common Flavour Profiles | Body |
|---|---|---|---|
| Natural | Full | Fruity, funky, bold | Heavy |
| Washed | None | Clean, bright, crisp | Light |
| Honey | Partial | Sweet, balanced, smooth | Medium |
For a full overview of all processing methods, visit our introduction to coffee processing.
Brew Recommendations
Naturals shine in brew methods that lean into their heavier body and fruit-forward sweetness. A French press is hard to beat for showing off that syrupy mouthfeel, and an AeroPress gives you a bit more control if you want to dial body up or down. Pour-over methods work too, though they tend to thin the body slightly. Naturals also make outstanding espresso, particularly as the fruit-forward backbone of a more adventurous blend.
Modern Natural Processing and Fermentation
Natural processing has gone through a quiet revolution. Where producers used to leave fermentation entirely to the sun and the local microbes, many now actively control it. Anaerobic fermentation, where cherries are sealed in oxygen-free tanks before drying, encourages specific microbial activity and produces intensely tropical, jammy, or wine-like results. Some producers go further still, inoculating with specific yeast strains or adding fruit and spice botanicals during fermentation, borrowing freely from craft beer and natural wine.
The research is starting to catch up too. A 2025 Colombian study fermenting whole cherries under a controlled CO2 atmosphere for 24 hours before drying lifted average cupping scores from 82 to nearly 87 compared with unfermented controls. The kind of result that's slowly turning natural processing from "leave it in the sun and hope" into something far more dialled in.
At the same time, there's been a parallel move at the more traditional end. So-called "new naturals" apply the rigorous sorting and careful drying originally developed for washed coffees, but keep the cherries intact. The result is naturals that taste cleaner and more focused than the wilder examples of a decade ago, without losing the fruit character that makes the method worth doing in the first place.
You'll often see experimental lots labelled "Anaerobic Natural" or similar in our shop. The Product Info section on each gives you the full story. For a deeper look at one of the more distinctive experimental methods, read our guide to carbonic maceration.
Why Naturals Matter
Naturals are the most fruit-forward expression of coffee you'll find. They use a fraction of the water that washed processing demands, which makes them a natural fit (the pun was inevitable) for dry, water-scarce regions. They reward producers who can manage drying carefully and punish those who can't. And when they're good, they're some of the most exciting coffees in the specialty world: complex, sweet, and unapologetically expressive.
Explore Our Natural Coffees
From Brazil to Burundi, we source naturally processed lots that showcase the best of this method. Browse our current selection →
