Coffee Glossary · Processing
Parchment (Pergamino)
The papery protective husk around each coffee seed, exposed after pulping and retained through drying in washed processing. Coffee dried and stored 'in parchment' keeps better — the husk buffers moisture swings and protects the bean — so quality-focused mills rest coffee in parchment for 30–60 days before hulling, allowing flavor to stabilize. 'Parchment coffee' is the intermediate product a dry mill converts to exportable green by hulling.
Related terms
Hulling
The dry-mill step that strips the parchment husk (or, for naturals, the entire dried cherry shell) from green…
Green Coffee
Coffee in its internationally traded form: the dried, milled seed of the coffee cherry before roasting,…
Wet Mill vs Dry Mill
Coffee's two processing stages, often in different places: the wet mill (washing station) handles fresh…
Decaffeination (Swiss Water, EA, CO2)
Industrial removal of caffeine from green coffee before roasting, targeting 97%+ extraction. Leading methods:…
Hand Sorting
The final human quality gate: workers — overwhelmingly women, at origin after origin — picking defective…
Mucilage
The sticky, sugar-rich fruit layer clinging to parchment after the cherry's skin is pulped away. What happens…
Reading up before buying? Volcana Coffee exports SGS-inspected specialty Arabica and Fine Robusta from the Bolaven Plateau, Laos — and we're happy to walk new importers through every term on a real offer sheet.
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