by Dr. Anja Rahn

It is difficult to imagine where the specialty coffee industry would be without the introduction of the “washing” process. Washed coffees, known for their subtle aromas and delicate bodies, have become favourites amongst specialty coffee consumers the world over, staples on every coffee menu. 

And yet while highly praised and valued by the coffee industry, few are aware of washed coffees’ chocolaty origins. 

Most people attribute the introduction of this “washing” as a response to coffee production in more humid climates. However, if this were true, the process would likely have been introduced prior to coffee's arrival in the Americas. Despite extensive research, I have not been able to find any written evidence to support this hypothesis. Even after the Dutch introduced coffee to their American colony of Surinam, there is no mention of washing coffee seeds in literature. 

The lack of innovation surrounding coffee’s post-harvest practices is unsurprising due to the profit-oriented nature of colonialism. During this time, production costs were minimized to maximize profits. With little motivation to invest in improving production practices increasing their costs, there was even less impetus in coffee as it was less lucrative than the spice trade. Making “washing” coffee an unusual innovation in context of the time. Begging the question where did this practice come from? 

One of the earliest records of this process is from the French planter Laborie who described the practice as “washing” when he documented the coffee practices in the French colony of Saint Domingo in 1798. Coffee was introduced to Saint Domingo after a plant had been successfully imported to Martinique from France in 1723, a decade after the Dutch introduced coffee seeds into Surinam. So why did the French start washing coffee? 

Martinique began commercial cacao production in 1660 after the French took full control of the island. However, the cacao industry was devastated by a series of unfortunate events around the time coffee appeared on Martinique’s shores, including an earthquake and a severe storm that destroyed nearly half of the crop. The remaining cacao trees were then ravaged by two plagues: a root fungus and an invasive caterpillar, ultimately reducing the industry to less than 5% of its former glory. During this difficult period, coffee was introduced and flourished, emerging as a potential economic alternative and saviour to the devastated cacao colony. 

Although coffee was poised to salvage Martinique’s economy, it was not a crop native to the Americas. Given that locals had never seen the crop before, it can be assumed that they were unsure of how to process it. What they definitely had the equipment for and knew how to process was cacao as South American natives: Olmecs, Aztecs and Mayans, had been cultivating and processing cacao for over a millennia before Europeans even heard about coffee. 

We know from archaeological remnants that the natives of South America used at least two types of cacao, fermented and unfermented. The most common method mentioned by colonialists, and its popularity persists to the present day, involves fermentation. In this method, the cacao seeds once removed from the pod are then either piled and wrapped in leaves or placed into wooden crates for one to two days to ferment without oxygen. After which the seeds are regularly mixed for a couple of additional days. Introducing air, promoting the second stage of fermentation, which eliminates the seeds potential to germinate. 

While fermentation is necessary for cacao to develop its chocolaty flavour that we all love during roasting, this method may have been preferred by colonialists for a different reason. Removing the seeds germination properties would have prolonged its storage like the kind necessary to transport cacao seeds back to Europe. 

On the other hand, unfermented cacao also known as "lavado" or "washed" in Spanish, is a far milder process. Involving the separation of the seeds from the husk before washing and drying them in the sun. Due to the gentle nature of these processing conditions, the seeds are not only likely to retain their germination potential, resulting in a shorter shelf-life, but their sensory profile is completely different to that of fermented cacao. In the absence of fermentation the polyphenols and proteins within the seed will not degrade, leading to a product that is not only bitter and astringent, but ill equipped to generate the characteristic chocolate aroma upon roasting. These unflattering attributes may have been the reason why lavado cacao was not widely adopted or exported by Europeans. This could also explain why the process was not immediately applied to processing coffee, despite the clear similarities we can now see between the cacao’s lavado process and washing coffee. Cacao farmers may have thought that coffee needed to be fermented in order to make a shelf stable and palatable product.