"Pergamino" is Spanish for dry beans in parchment. Parchment coffee is a stage in wet/washed processing. Coffee roasters are familiar with silverskin or chaff, the last remnants of parchment, but otherwise it’s rarely seen it, unless they visit a coffee farm or mill.
Like all stages of coffee production and processing, you can tell a great deal about a coffee’s quality by inspecting the parchment.
I love scooping up a handful of pergamino, rubbing it together in my hands as the hulls fall away, and breathing in the vibrant aromas of freshly dried green coffee beans. Before coffee’s graded it’s dried in the parchment, which protects the bean. There’s nothing like it!
"Guardiolas" is Spanish for drier. Some coffee origins have to dry their coffee mechanically due to unpredictable rainfall patterns or limited space. Others prefer the controlled environment to help ensure consistency. Coffee drying is a critical step in the processing of the beans. It can also accentuate the natural sweetness of the coffee when selected correctly.
Coffee picking is an integral step to the quality assurance process. When coffee is picked too early it can taste “raw and astringent”; when picked too late, the coffee can taste “rough and fermented”. Visiting coffee farms during this vital phase helps ensure we purchase just the right coffee.
Coffee cherries are like no other fruit and to inspect them up close, first-hand, reveals details of the coffee quality you cannot glean otherwise. It’s valuable to see directly the ripening stages of the cherries on the branch, the cherry size, the yield quantity and overall health of the tree. These are all first-hand indicators of coffee quality.