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.

What Is Green Coffee and What Does It Look Like?

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.

Why that matters

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 reaches its aroma peak within 4–6 weeks of 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.

At Green Wall Coffee

At our café on Sophienstraße 27 in Berlin-Lichtenberg, I sometimes show guests green coffee samples — the greenish beans next to the roasted ones. The surprise is always the same: “That’s supposed to be the same thing?” Yes. The difference is roasting. Making this transformation visible helps guests understand how much craft goes into every cup.

Related Questions

• How long does green coffee last?
• Why does coffee need to be roasted?
• What is a coffee cherry and is it edible?

More depth on this topic in the article How to Make Perfect Espresso. Or stop by at Sophienstraße 27 — Mon–Fri 8am–5pm, Sat 10am–5pm.