Did you know that coffee quality is determined by many factors involved during the production process? And to achieve quality coffee, the beans must be classified taking into account both physical and sensory factors. I'll tell you that coffee classification must be carried out from the moment the beans are picked at the plant until they are threshed . During the initial stages of the production process, quality is more related to physical characteristics than sensory ones. Afterward, once roasted, the quality in the cup is highlighted with sensory aspects such as smell, aroma, and flavor. Then, taking into account physical aspects, the good and poorer beans are classified to finally obtain a lower-quality coffee byproduct known as "pasilla," which, according to the general concept, is the type of coffee that remains in the country and the one most Colombians have always consumed.
I'm going to explain to you what Pasilla Coffee is and how it can be restored to a quality standard for consumption and a good price in the national and even international markets.
What is pasilla?
These are coffee beans that exhibit defects such as browning, vinegar, black spots, cracks, and chipping. Generally speaking, these are the physical defects observed in a coffee bean, including unpulped beans.
When do you get the pasilla?
There are two important situations in which coffee rasilla is obtained. The first is during the harvest and processing process. The second is after the threshing process has been completed. In both cases, the availability of more or less rasilla in a batch depends on various factors, ranging from the variety and species of coffee grown to the climate and the activities carried out during production, harvest, and post-harvest .
During harvesting and processing, overripe grains with the presence of borers, green grains, unpulped grains, dry grains, black grains, grains with aging (water shortage), empty grains, or grains with low weight (floating grains), and grains with mechanical damage are classified as pasilla grains. During the threshing process, split and pruned grains are classified as pasilla grains.
Consequently, pasilla is a lower-quality coffee, which is typically reflected in the cup, especially in the flavor and aroma. However, this doesn't mean this coffee is useless and can't be used for everyday consumption. In fact, it's among the most consumed coffees in our country, and it tastes delicious to us, and is even exported.
Recovery of the pasilla
As you can see, the coffee vine can be recovered, and to make the most of it, the producer must manage it properly. This way, they can obtain a good income. To achieve this, it is necessary to manage it in the same way as high-quality coffee. On large farms, excellent work is usually done to organize it by size with the help of sorters or sorting screws. On smaller farms, the easiest way is to remove the supernatant from the fermentation tank to achieve efficient management of the vine.
Additionally, it is very important to properly manage berries with the berry borer. They must be sorted and inspected, observing the berry borer, in order to remove it and apply additional treatment to reduce the infestation of this pest in the crop. The most commonly used treatments for eliminating this berry borer are solarization or placing the berries in bins that are flooded to eliminate the berry borer present in the coffee berries.
After the pasilla has been harvested, it must be washed, just like the rest of the coffee, and then dried to a humidity level of 10 to 12 percent. In some cases, the producer may perform a reprocessing or additional processing process to obtain a standard or second-grade coffee, which can be sold at a higher price than the pasilla.
Pasilla Coffee Market
After the production raisin is threshed, the resulting product is a good kernel, on the one hand, and a new raisin from the threshing process on the other. This kernel is often mixed with the highest-quality coffee to obtain dry parchment coffee, which is sold for export.
The rasilla resulting from the threshing process is composed of bad and black beans, which are practically unused in the market. However, sometimes, depending on the trading process, coffee for export can be sold with a very small percentage of threshed rasilla, which makes it a much more economical coffee.
In addition, coffee by-products can be sold for export by undergoing a further roasting process to cover the defects in the threshing floor, and then sold on the domestic market.
The pasilla market, It is basically focused on the sale of roasters, or instant coffee production factories. Freeze-dried coffee, which also uses raisins as a raw material for its production process, has gained considerable popularity these days.
In Colombia, the National Federation of Coffee Growers is promoting proper handling of rasilla and is purchasing rasilla through the association's coffee grower cooperatives. The goal is to enable farmers to sell it at a good price.
Finally, it can be said that two options remain for producers. One is to prevent pasilla by improving coffee harvesting, processing, drying, and milling practices. The second option is to properly manage pasilla, which, although not a coffee of excellent quality, has significant market value, as it is widely used as a raw material in the food industry, primarily to produce good-quality coffee at low cost.