Washed vs. natural, and why we keep buying both
For a while we were firmly "washed only" people. Naturals, in our early experience, meant an overwhelming fermented-fruit thing that read more like a mistake than a flavor note. We'd avoid them on principle when ordering green beans.
What actually changed our minds was roasting the same origin two ways back to back — a natural and a washed lot from what the supplier said was the same farm, same harvest. The washed one was clean and predictable, exactly what we expected. The natural one, roasted a touch lighter than we normally would, turned out genuinely good — more like dried strawberry and a little winey, not the ashtray-adjacent thing we remembered from earlier bad naturals.
Where we landed
Our current, extremely unscientific take:
- Washed is the safer choice when we want a coffee to taste clean and consistent, especially for filter brewing where flaws are harder to hide.
- Natural is worth it when the process was done carefully — patchy drying seems to be what causes the flavors we didn't like early on, not the process itself.
- We now keep one bag of each in rotation instead of picking a side, which is a very unsatisfying conclusion for a blog post but is genuinely what we do.
If you had a bad experience with a natural early on like we did, it might be worth trying one more from a source that's specific about their drying process before writing off the whole category.
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