Learn · Fermentation school
Lesson 1 of 3
Lesson 2 of 3
Before washing or drying, the producer seals whole cherries away from oxygen for a set number of hours. Any of the three can be sealed first. The hours are a dial.
Taste the dial · same producer, two windows
Lesson 3 of 3
Also out there, not on our shelf today: added yeasts or koji, lactic ferments, carbonic maceration, fruit co-ferments.
A roast is time plotted against temperature. Every decision — where to slow the rise, when to drop — is a choice about which flavours to hold and which to burn away. Here is the curve we run, and the three zones it passes through.
Bean loses its moisture. Grass-like aromas burn off. Thermal momentum builds for what's next.
Sugars brown. Amino acids react. Most of the flavour complexity in the final cup is built here.
After first crack — where flavour is balanced, acidity is tuned and body is set. With heavily fermented lots we run a longer, lower-temperature development to preserve the volatile esters the environment worked so hard to build. The drop is a judgement call.
Three variables. You change one at a time. That is all there is to brewing well — the rest is taste, time and patience. Every coffee's page has its own brew guide; here is the reasoning behind them.
Grams of coffee to grams of water. 1 : 16 is a starting point for pour over. Stronger? Lower the ratio. Weaker? Raise it.
The surface area water can touch. Finer = more extraction, more body, more bitterness risk. Coarser = cleaner, lighter, risk of sourness.
How long water is in contact. Adjust with grind, not with stopwatch. A 3-minute pour-over that tastes sour was probably ground too coarse, not brewed too short.
If a cup tastes sour, extract more (finer grind, hotter water). If it tastes bitter, extract less (coarser, cooler, shorter). One variable at a time.
A cupping is a controlled-environment tasting. Every coffee is ground the same way, brewed the same way, at the same time. The noise of technique is removed so the coffee itself can speak. Here is the protocol we run on every arrival.
Grams of coffee to grams of water. The SCA cupping ratio — the one we run every morning. Typically 12 g of coarse-ground coffee to 216 g of 93 °C water, five cups per lot.
Nose on the dry grounds. First impressions — sweet, green, fermented, muted?
Hot water at 93 °C, 1:18 by weight. Steep four minutes, a crust forms on top.
Stir the crust, lean in. The burst of aroma is the most concentrated the cup will ever smell.
Remove floating grounds. Slurp aggressively — aeration spreads the liquor across the palate.
Rate fragrance, flavour, aftertaste, acidity, body, balance, uniformity, clean cup, sweetness, overall. SCA 100-point.
Weighted, deep-bowl, SCA-standard. Ships free in every Anaerobic welcome kit — also available in our accessories shelf.
The scorecard Free cupping sheet (print-ready) →SCA 100-point format, five cups per lot, defect grid included. Print, clip and score.
Sealed fermentation adds to a traditional process rather than replacing it: in lab studies, more than forty aroma compounds reach tasting level in anaerobic lots compared with washed ones. The studies are listed in Our Story · Chapter 4.
Terms we use across Anaerobic — on labels, on the site, in conversation. Not exhaustive. Useful.
Elevation of the farm, usually m.a.s.l. Higher altitude slows cherry maturation → denser beans → more complex flavour.
The fruit of the coffee tree. The bean is the seed inside.
Standardised tasting protocol — see Module 04.
Audible cracking during roast as the bean expands and fractures. Marker for the start of Zone 3.
A traceable batch from a single farm, day, process and drying method.
Sticky, sugar-rich layer between the cherry skin and the bean. Honey keeps it on; washed removes it.
How the cherry leaves the bean — washed, natural, honey. See Module 01.
Coffee from one farm or cooperative, not blended across origins.
Total dissolved solids. Measured with a refractometer; tells you how much coffee made it into the cup.
A cultivar of Coffea arabica (Bourbon, Typica, Gesha, Sudan Rume, Heirloom…). Like grape varieties for wine.
In brewing: extraction yield, the percentage of the coffee dissolved in the water. 18–22 % is the target window.
See Module 01. The first three are base processes; anaerobic is an over-layer that can be applied to any of them.
