Carbonic maceration
Whole cherry sealed under injected CO2 before drying. Borrowed from Beaujolais winemaking and it tastes like it.
- Family
- Anaerobic, gas-assisted
- Processing character
- Pronounced
Carbonic maceration comes out of winemaking, where whole grape clusters are sealed under carbon dioxide and ferment from the inside before they're ever crushed. Coffee borrowed it directly.
Whole cherry goes into a sealed tank or barrel and CO2 is injected to push the oxygen out. Fermentation then happens inside the intact fruit, enzymatically, rather than in the liquid around it. Runs are typically forty-eight to ninety-six hours with temperature held down.
The difference from a plain anaerobic is that the cherry stays whole, so the seed sits inside a closed fruit environment the entire time. That's what produces the heavy aromatic lift these lots are known for: strawberry, tropical fruit, sometimes something close to a cider.
It's an intervention and it announces itself. A carbonic lot tastes like a carbonic lot before it tastes like its origin, which is the point for some drinkers and the objection for others.
Whole cherry goes into a sealed tank or barrel and CO2 is injected to push the oxygen out. Fermentation then happens inside the intact fruit, enzymatically, rather than in the liquid around it. Runs are typically forty-eight to ninety-six hours with temperature held down.
The difference from a plain anaerobic is that the cherry stays whole, so the seed sits inside a closed fruit environment the entire time. That's what produces the heavy aromatic lift these lots are known for: strawberry, tropical fruit, sometimes something close to a cider.
It's an intervention and it announces itself. A carbonic lot tastes like a carbonic lot before it tastes like its origin, which is the point for some drinkers and the objection for others.
This is the starting presumption for the processing character scale. An individual coffee can sit higher or lower when the cup says so.
