What is Carbonic Maceration?

What is carbonic maceration coffee? What happens to the beans? How is the process different to the washed and pulped natural/honey process? What can you expect flavour wise? Find out more here with our guide to carbonic maceration.

Carbonic Maceration creates a unique and distinctive flavour profile, which here shines in harmony with the other characteristics of the beans. That's without a doubt down to the fantastic quality of careful post-harvest processing, which we've seen in all the families coffees over many years now. 

So what is Carbonic Maceration? Well, it means putting the freshly picked cherries into a sealed tank which is rich in Carbon Dioxide. This makes it a particular type of Anaerobic Fermentation. Because the fruit skin is intact, there's not a lot of contact between Yeast (on the outside of the fruit) and any sugars that could ferment. Instead, the enzymes inside the fruit begin to break down sugars as well as other compounds, releasing Carbon Dioxide and Alcohol whilst this happens.

This is a method adapted from the wine world, and there's research there about how this changes flavours by the compounds which are released - it's often described as giving fresh, fruity flavours of cherry and red fruit, which fits well with our experience of the process in coffees too. This method is most famously used on grapes in the French winemaking region of Beaujolais and occasionally in Rioja in Spain.