I wrote off washed coffee

Hello Again!

For a while there, I thought washed coffees were done.

Not done like they stopped existing. Done like... I was done with them. Like I'd extracted everything I could get from them and there was nothing left to learn.

They all started tasting the same to me. Clean, yes. Structured, sure. But kind of flat in a way I couldn't articulate. Every washed coffee just felt like a slightly different version of the same conversation.

So I went looking for something else.

I'm not going to pretend I got distracted by shiny things. That's not the whole story. The exploration was intentional. I wanted to understand what naturals were actually doing. What co-ferments brought to the cup that nothing else could. Where the experimental processing stuff, the anaerobic, the extended fermentation, all of that, where it fit in the picture.

And I learned things. Real things. Naturals hit you with fruit immediately, big and loud, and then they kind of settle into themselves. Co-ferments can do wild stuff, tropical, boozy, funky, things that don't even register as coffee until you think about it. There's a place for all of it.

But somewhere in all that exploring, I started to wonder if I'd given up on something too fast.

Because the thing about naturals, and I mean this with respect, they tell you what they are immediately. The fruit hits you, it impresses you, and then you've kind of heard the whole story. Which is beautiful, don't get me wrong. But it's a different kind of relationship.

A few months ago I roasted a Colombian. Medium roast. Nothing fancy about how I approached it. Didn't even use my refractometer to dial in the numbers. I just knew it was where I wanted it.

And I brewed it. And it was... fine, at first. A little juicy. Some structure. Soft acidity, not lemony, more like a faint fruit thing sitting in the background. Chocolate running through the whole thing.

And then I let it cool.

That's when it started talking.

The balance opened up. Maybe 50/50, acidity and sweetness, sitting right next to each other without either one winning. The flavors got more personable as the temperature dropped. More articulate. Like the coffee had been waiting for me to slow down before it was willing to say anything.

And after a while, it didn't matter which brewer I used. It just kept being good. Kept being itself.

That's when I realized the problem wasn't the washed coffees. The problem was me.

Here's what I used to call it: stubbornness. Washed coffees are stubborn. They don't give you anything right away. You have to work for it.

But that's not stubbornness. That's just how trust works.

Think about the person you first meet who doesn't say much. Who's reserved. Who's watching to see if you're worth opening up to. You can mistake that for coldness. You can decide they're boring and move on.

Or you can stay in the conversation. Keep showing up. And then one day they start telling you things. Real things. And two weeks later you realize this is your best friend and you almost walked away because you wanted them to be easier.

That's a washed coffee. It doesn't announce itself. It waits to see if you're serious.

And when I was going through my naturals phase, my co-ferment phase, all of that, I was choosing the coffees that announced themselves. Which was valuable. Genuinely. But I was also getting a little lazy without realizing it. I was getting used to being impressed immediately.

Washed coffees don't do that. And that's exactly why they're worth your attention.

When a coffee makes you work, it brings out everything in your toolbox. You think harder about the water. The temperature. The brewer you're reaching for and why. You're not just executing a recipe, you're actually trying to understand what this specific coffee needs.

That Colombian medium reminded me of something I'd started to forget. That figuring it out is the point. Not having it figured out.

I'm not really special at this. I just get up every day and try to understand what's in the cup. And the coffees that force that process, that don't let you be on autopilot, those are the ones that actually push you forward.

Which is maybe the same thing that's true outside coffee too. The situations that don't resolve themselves immediately, the ones that require patience and repetition and staying in the discomfort, those are the ones that actually change you.

I keep coming back to washed coffees for the same reason I keep coming back to anything that challenges me. Not because it's easier. Because when you finally get it, you know you actually earned it.

Your Turn

Do you have a processing style you wrote off too fast? A washed coffee that bored you, a natural that overwhelmed you, something you gave up on before you gave it a real chance?

Or maybe you're deep in the washed coffee world and you've never left. Tell me what keeps pulling you back.

Hit reply. I read every single one.

Oke