How To Make Green Coffee To Drink At Home

Whether you’ve heard about it in supplements or tasted it in a coffee shop, green coffee has become a major trend. 

Starbucks offers several drinks made with unroasted coffee, and there are energy drinks and other products with unroasted coffee beans as a base ingredient.

If you’re curious about how to make green coffee at home, look no further. 

What Is Green Coffee?

Quite simply, green coffee is the raw seeds of the coffee plant, dried but not roasted. 

The growers remove the pulp of the coffee cherry and allow the seeds to dry, but they don’t process them in any other way. 

The result is a raw, unroasted coffee bean, which has some different qualities compared to the usually roasted beans you get at the grocery store or specialty coffee shop.

First and foremost, the taste is completely different. Green coffee has a grassy, acidic flavor that can take some getting used to. 

Related Read: Best Green Coffee Beans, Unroasted Coffee Extract Benefits

The roasting process changes many of the chemical compounds in the coffee bean, increasing the sweetness and burning off some of the acids present. 

The dried but unroasted beans also tend to be somewhat lighter in flavor than traditional coffee, especially dark roasts.

Multiple companies have released different products using green coffee beans or an extract made from them–including Starbucks, which has an entire product line of drinks that feature green coffee extract as a key ingredient.

Some coffee lovers swear by it as a milder way to get the buzz in their morning cup, and while supplements using green coffee powder have gotten more and more popular, whole beans are often the better way to go for versatility.

Why Consume Unroasted Green Coffee Beans?

Why Drink green coffee? 

While some simply enjoy the flavor, most people who consume green coffee beans in any form typically do so because of the potential health benefits. 

The evidence for the health benefits of green coffee is not established enough for FDA approval in relation to being used as an active pharmaceutical ingredient (API). However, there have been several promising studies, which we will touch on below.

The power player in green coffee is a compound called chlorogenic acid, a potent antioxidant. 

Some studies suggest that chlorogenic acid compounds can help relieve inflammation and may help prevent or decrease the effects of obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. 

The chlorogenic acid in green coffee beans appears to be very easy for humans to absorb.

While the same compounds do exist in roasted coffee beans, roasting the beans results in a much lower level of the active components than green coffee. 

It makes sense: antioxidants are volatile compounds, and exposure to heat degrades them. Leaving the beans unroasted prevents the loss of antioxidants and phenols.

Next, there’s the use of green coffee for weight loss. 

While research suggests that mice given an extract or green coffee beans lost weight more rapidly than those who didn’t, human studies haven’t been so conclusive. 

However, while there is evidence that the active components in green coffee may help when it comes to chronic illness management and prevention, It’s still only a hypothesis. 

Still: the promising evidence means that having a daily serving of green coffee may help and can’t hurt.

Where To Buy Green Coffee

One convenient thing about green coffee is that freshness isn’t quite as important, or as fragile, in green coffee beans compared to the roasted variety we all know and love.

Because the brew is made from unroasted coffee beans, most volatile compounds have a better chance of staying locked into the beans and losing less of their flavor over time.

However, quality is still very important when buying green coffee beans. 

While raw green coffee beans stay fresh longer than the roasted kind, you still don’t want to risk consuming them stale. 

The higher the quality of the beans, the better the flavor you’ll get from the brew you make with them.

Finding Quality Green Coffee Can Be Tricky

In spite of the growing popularity of raw coffee, finding high-quality unroasted coffee beans isn’t as easy as you’d think.

However, in some countries, the green beans are graded for commercial export for wholesale to roasters. 

This is the case in Jamaica and Kenya, which are ranked by size and appearance to fall into a grading band.

It’s also important to make sure you’re getting whole beans and not green coffee bean powder. 

The green coffee bean powder is often used as a dietary supplement, but it’s not good for brewing, and the resulting brew will taste very bitter and be difficult to strain due to the fine grind size.

Recommended Brands For Green Coffee Beans

We recommend Fresh Roasted Coffee as a solid source of green coffee.

They offer a variety of whole green coffee beans from different regions, their prices are very reasonable, and delivery is fast. 

In addition, Fresh Roasted Coffee is a family-owned business, so you can feel good about buying from them.

How To Make Green Coffee

The process is fairly simple if you want to try out the potential health benefits of green coffee at home or just want to see what the taste is like. 

Making green coffee is more time-consuming than most methods of brewing traditional coffee, but the actual steps aren’t very complicated.

What You’ll Need

• Whole bean green coffee
• A jar to soak the beans overnight
• A stove
• A saucepan big enough for the coffee and water you boil it in
• Coffee filter

Step One

Soak your beans overnight in water. This is important because the green beans are very hard and need to soften up a bit before you brew them. 

Use a ratio of 1 tablespoon of unroasted beans for every 1 cup of water in your finished batch of brew.

Step Two

Pour the green coffee beans and water into your saucepan, and bring the mixture to a boil. 

Once the unroasted beans and water reach a boil, lower the heat and simmer for ten minutes, up to fifteen minutes.

Step Three

Take the saucepan off of the heat, and allow the mixture to cool for several minutes until it’s the right temperature to drink.

Step Four

Filter out the whole green coffee beans from the water, either by using any coffee filter you might have available or a fine sieve.

The result of this process is a very strong brew that has a very different taste to traditional coffee. 

Some compare it to green tea or herbal tea flavors and like to drink one cup of it in the morning to enjoy a gentler caffeine buzz compared to the usual stuff.

Step Five

Drink your brew right away, or store it in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 3 or 4 days. 

If you find that the taste is too sharp or acidic, you might want to add honey or add sugar to sweeten it. And yes, this is something you can consume daily or drink two cups a day if you so wish.

Just remember, if you’re adding sugar to the drink, that’s something to be aware of if you’re gulping it down!