What Is Green Coffee and What Does It Look Like?

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Green coffee is the unroasted coffee bean — greenish, hard, and nearly odourless. It's shipped from origin countries to roasteries in 60 kg jute sacks. Only roasting creates aroma and colour. Green coffee is the intermediate product between processing and roasting. After harvest and processing (washed, natural, or honey), the dried beans are freed from their parchment husk (hulling), sorted, and packed into 60 kg or 69 kg jute sacks. They travel by container ship from the origin country to roasteries worldwide. The beans look nothing like what you find in a retail coffee bag: greenish to yellowish, sometimes bluish (in highland coffees). They're hard — noticeably harder than roasted beans — and smell like almost nothing. Some describe the scent as grassy or hay-like. The familiar coffee aroma is entirely absent, because it only forms through the Maillard reaction during roasting. Green coffee, stored properly (dry, cool, dark, at 15–20 °C and below 60 % humidity), can last 1–2 years without major quality loss. That's fundamentally different from roasted coffee, which stays at its aroma peak for only a few weeks after roasting and declines from there. Quality grading of green coffee follows international standards. Beans are evaluated by size (screen size), defect rate (insect damage, mould, breakage), and cup profile (cupping score). An SCA score of 80+ points qualifies the coffee as Specialty Grade. We don't roast ourselves; our coffee comes ready-roasted from roasteries. Anyone who sees green and roasted beans side by side tends to ask: "That's supposed to be the same thing?" Yes. The difference is roasting — and a lot of craft goes into it before the coffee reaches the cup. Stop by: Sophienstraße 27, Berlin-Lichtenberg. Mon–Fri 8am–5pm, Sat 10am–5pm.

What Is Green Coffee and What Does It Look Like?

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In practice at Green Wall Coffee

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