How to understand more about Coffee Part 1

How coffee was came to the whole world

Legend has it that the Arabs, protective of Coffea arabica, refused to allow fertile seed to leave their country. In about 1650 a.d. a Moslem pilgrim from India named Baba Budan was the first to sneak some seeds out of Arabia. He planted his stolen treasure in the hills near Chikmagalgur in south India where they flourished. Today, offspring of Baba's original trees are officially known as var.Old Chick, and still produce around a third of India's coffee.

 The French became interested in the Indian coffee, but their attempt to propagate coffee in southern France, near Dijon, failed because the tree does not tolerate frost. The Dutch carried the descendants of the seeds of Baba Budan to Java, where, after some effort, coffee growing was established on a regular basis.

Now comes one of the most extraordinary stories in the spread of coffee: the saga of the noble tree. In 1715 Louis XIV of France, with his insatiable curiosity and love of luxury, was of course an ardent coffee drinker. The Dutch owed him a favor and managed, with great difficulty, to procure him a coffee tree. The tree had originally been obtained at the Arabian port of Mocha, then carried to Java, and finally back across the seas to Holland, from where it was brought overland to Paris. The first greenhouse in Europe was constructed to house the noble tree. It flowered, bore fruit, and became one of the most prolific parents in the history of plantdom.

From that single tree sprung billions of arabica trees, including most of those presently growing in Central & South America. But the final odyssey of the offspring of the noble tree was neither easy nor straightforward.

Due to efforts of Chevalier Gabriel Mathiew de Clieu, the first sprouts from the noble tree reached Martinique in the Caribbean in about 1720. When his spindly shoot of the noble tree reached Martinique, it flourished. Fifty years later there were 18,680 coffee trees in Martinique, and coffee cultivation was established in Haiti, Mexico, and most of the islands of the Caribbean.

The noble tree also sent shoots to the island of Reunion, in the Indian Ocean, then called the Isle of Bourbon. This plant was found to be a somewhat different variety of arabica, with smaller beans, and was named var.Bourbon. The famed Santos coffees of Brazil and the Oaxaca coffees of Mexico are said to be offspring of the Bourbon tree. For the final irony, we have to wait until 1893, when coffee seed from Brazil was introduced into Kenya and what is now Tanzania only a few hundred miles south of its original home in Ethiopia, thus completing a six-century circumnavigation of the globe.

Finally, to round out our set of coffee notables, we add the Don Juan of coffee propagation, Francisco de Mello Palheta of Brazil. The emperor of Brazil was interested in cutting his country into the coffee market, and in about 1727 sent de Mello Palheta to French Guiana to obtain seeds.

Don Francisco, whom legend pictures as suave and deadly charming, had a hard time getting at those seeds. Fortunately for coffee drinkers, Don Francisco so successfully charmed the French governor's wife that she sent him, buried in a bouquet of flowers, all the seeds and shoots he needed to initiate the billion-dollar coffee industry of Brazil.

Dry Method

In the dry method, the berries are dried, either by exposure to the sun or in a mechanical dryer. The hard, shriveled husk is later stripped off the bean by machine, by soaking and washing with hot water, or with a grindstone or mortar and pestle.

Wet Method

In the wet method, most of the covering is removed from the bean before it is dried. This leaves the beans covered with a sticky substance. The beans are soaked in water, which allows natural enzymes to digest this slimy layer from the bean. This step is called fermentation.

 Next, the coffee is washed and then dried, either by the sun in open terraces, or in large mechanical dryers. This leaves two last thin layers covering the bean, the parchment or pergamino and the silver skin. Most often a machine called a huller is used to rub these layers off.

The last step in processing is cleaning. With most high-quality coffees, the beans are placed on conveyor belts or trays and examined by workers who remove defective beans, sticks, dirt, and other debris. The very best coffees may be cleaned twice.

Grading

There are four main criteria for grading:   how big the bean is, where and at what altitude it was grown, how it was prepared and picked, and how good it tastes, or its cup quality.

Typically, the government of the growing country imposes grading standards to encourage and support quality and to attract and reassure foreign buyers. Coffees may be subject to still another grading or sorting after they reach the United States.

Roasting Coffee

  The key to excellent coffee is the roasting process, to which we owe the delicately flavored oils that speak to the palate as eloquently as caffeine does to the nervous system.

Roasting Overview

The chemistry of coffee roasting is complex and still not completely understood. This is owing to the variety of beans, as well as to the complexity of the coffee essence, which still defies chemists' best efforts to duplicate it in the laboratory.

Much of what happens to the bean in roasting is interesting, but irrelevant. The bean loses a good deal of its moisture, for instance, which means it weighs less after roasting than before. It loses some protein, about 10 to 15 percent of its caffeine, and traces of other chemicals. Sugars are burned or caramelized, which contributes color and some body to the cup.

Roasting is simple in theory: The beans must be heated, kept moving so they don't burn or roast unevenly, and cooled, or quenched, when the right moment has come to stop the roasting. Coffee that is not roasted long enough or hot enough to bring out the oil has a pasty, nutty, or bread-like flavor. Coffee roasted too long or at too high a temperature is thin-bodied, burned, and industrial-flavored. Coffee roasted too long at too low a temperature has a baked flavor.

   

  Most roasting equipment uses a rotating drum above a heat source, usually a gas flame. The drum rotates, tumbling the beans to ensuring an even roast. The air temperature inside the drum is usually controlled at about 500 degrees F; the precise temperature depends on the intentions and philosophy of the operator. Eventually, the deep "bound" moisture is forced out, expanding the bean and producing a snapping or crackling noise. Then, when the interior temperature of the bean reaches about 400 degrees F, the oil suddenly begins developing. This process is called pyrolysis, and it is marked by darkening in the color of the bean.

  This is the moment of truth for the coffee roaster, because the pyrolysis, or volatilization, of the coffee essence must be stopped at precisely the right moment to obtain the flavor and roast desired. They are quickly dumped into a metal box, where pyrolysis continues until the beans are quenched with either cold air or a light spray of cold water. Most specialty roasters air-quench their coffee.