Fruit Fermented Coffee

Friday, June 20th, 2025

Fruit Fermented Coffee

I’m not really sure how interesting this is to anyone else but for the past couple years I’ve gotten really into fruit co-fermented coffee. This may go without saying but all coffee is fermented, and depending on how it’s processed the outcome can vary a lot. Before we get into co-fermentation it is useful to understand the most common processing techniques.

Coffee Processing

This refers to what happens to the coffee fruit and its seeds (which we call beans) after they are harvested. Despite drinking a lot of weird coffees I’m still kind of casual with my knowledge so I’m going to keep it brief. If you see any mistakes please do let me know!

Natural

The coffee fruit is air dried, often on raised beds, with its flesh and skin attached, which increases the flavor the resulting coffee receives from the fruit pulp and its sugars as it ferments. Once the drying process is complete the coffee is milled to separate the seeds from the remaining dried fruit. This typically creates more fruity and potentially funky flavors due to the increased number of variables during fermentation.

Washed

The coffee fruit is filtered through water channels and undergoes a depulping process, removing the flesh and skin, before being stored in large water tanks to ferment for a while. After that the seeds are washed and dried. These coffees tend to be cleaner and have more characteristics intrinsic to their variety.

Honey

Somewhere between natural and washed, the coffee fruit goes through a similar depulping process to remove the fruit while leaving behind some of the mucilage (honey) before being air dried and fermented. As the process would suggest, the results are somewhere between natural and washed processing with more sweet and fruity flavors than washed but less than natural.

Co-Ferment

I think of co-fermentation as a sort of augmentation to the more well known processes. Whether it’s air dried on a bed or stored in a water tank, the producers introduce an additional element to the fermentation process by adding fruit, herbs, additional sugar, or some other combination of ingredients.

Because the ingredients are added during the fermentation stage, you get much more complex results than you would from just adding a flavor. The fermentation process creates all kinds of taste and aromatic compounds that might be quite unexpected for the fruit it was co-fermented with. In this way it feels like coffee is following craft beer culture, taking particular inspiration from barrel aged sour beers.

I am not sure how widely available this kind of coffee is but I am fortunate that a local roaster, Push X Pull, frequently carries them.

I have also had some success getting them through Fellow Drops, which releases a limited coffee every Tuesday from roasters around the (mostly western it seems) world. Most of their offerings are not co-ferments but they do show up now and then. I’ve gotten a few from Black & White and they even go as far as to create original blends like this Painkiller inspired coffee.

What I’m Currently Drinking

Sometimes when it rains it pours, and I have three different fruit co-ferments right now.

First is Grape Soda, a blend from Black & White that basically tastes like how it sounds. The aroma is extremely grape but it has a lot of tart and funky notes too. I got it through Fellow Drops.

Next up is Juicy Cherry from Push X Pull, which despite its name has a much more nebulous cherry chocolate almond character. I wouldn’t call it juicy but it is really interesting and I like it quite a bit.

Finally I have Tropical Splash, also from Push X Pull, which feels tropical in the same way that many hazy IPAs are tropical. It has a fruity coconut cocktail thing going on.

This post feels a little indulgent but whatever it’s my blog. I hope some of you get curious and give co-ferments a try. If you have any roasters you’d recommend please send them my way!