How to understand more about Coffee Part 2

Market Names

There are literally thousands of market names in the coffee trade. Some derive from the name of a district, province, or state; others from a mountain range or similar landmark; others from a nearby important city; and still others from the name of a port or shipping point.

Grade Names

Grade designations (AA), or market names referring to coffee-growing regions (Antigua). Grading is a device for controlling the quality of an agricultural commodity so that buyer and seller can do business without personally examining every lot sold.

Estate Names

"Estate coffee" is a coffee that has been grown, and in most cases processed, on a single farm or estate, and is sold unmixed with coffees from other locations. The most celebrated traditional estate coffee is the famous Wallensford Blue Mountain of Jamaica.

Flavoring Names

Flavored whole bean coffees are good but relatively inexpensive coffees, roasted a medium brown, and mixed with liquid flavoring agents that soak into the beans. If the coffee's name includes the words creme, vanilla, chocolate, or the name of any nut, fruit, or spice, you can be certain it's a flavored coffee.

Names of Blends

Blends are mixtures of two or more straight coffees. The most famous mixture of one-third Yemen Mocha and two-thirds Java Arabica, the Mocha Java of tradition. Such a blend is designed to combine two coffees that complement one another: Yemen Mocha is a sharp, distinctive, medium-bodied coffee, whereas Java is smoother, deeper toned, and richer. Together the two coffees make a more complete beverage than either one would make on its own.

House Blends

A specialty roaster may have one House blend or a dozen. Some of these blends may have been a tradition in a coffee-roasting family for a couple of generations, but most are standard blends well known in the coffee business.

Organic Coffees

Narrowly defined, organic coffees are those coffees certified by various international monitoring agencies as having been grown without the use of harmful chemicals. Organic coffees should be identified by origin and roast, just like any other straight or varietal coffee.

Brand Names

Certain canned or packaged coffees walk the line between specialty and commercial coffees. Carrying brand names often famous in the world of fancy coffee, these products share the high quality of the best blended specialty coffees, but are handled and packaged like commercial coffees; in other words, preground and packed in tins or bags.

Caffeine-Free Coffees

Decaffeinated, or caffeine-free, coffees have had the caffeine soaked out of them. They are delivered to the roaster green, like any other coffee. Most roasters offer a variety of straight coffees, roasts, and blends in decaffeinated form. The origin and roast of the bean should still be designated: Decaffeinated French-Roast Colombian, for instance.

Grinding Coffee

Every step of transforming green coffee into hot brewed coffee makes the flavor essence of the bean more vulnerable to destruction. Green coffees keep for years, roasted coffees begin to lose flavor after a week, ground coffee an hour after grinding, and brewed coffee in minutes.

Once roasted, coffee beans still keep fairly well. But once the coffee is ground, it begins to go stale in a few hours. Canning or otherwise packaging ground coffee simply replaces the natural coffee package, the bean, with an inefficient artificial package. When consumers break open the artificial package, they may find a coffee that is relatively fresh, but not for long.

The easiest and most effective way to assure freshness is grind your coffee yourself just before you brew it. Grinding coffee fresh just before you brew it is one of the easiest things that you can do to improve the quality of your coffee.

Buying Coffee Fresh and Keeping It That Way

The ideal coffee routine would be as follows: Buy the coffee in bulk as whole beans. Put the beans in an airtight container in a cool, dark place, and take out only as much as you want to grind and brew immediately.

A good way to store whole bean coffee is in an airtight solid glass jar with a rubber gasket inside the cap that gives a good seal. Don't put the beans in the refrigerator. The moisture and smells will destroy the freshness and flavor. Freezing whole beans works well, but only light to darkish brown roasts. Very dark-roast coffees do not freeze well.

If you order coffee by mail and you know about how much coffee you consume each month, you can put in a standing order with a coffee roaster, so your coffee comes fresh every other week, a couple of pounds at a time