Tag Archives: Coffee bean

Coffee Chain of Action

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You may think that good coffee starts with getting it in your cup and down your throat. You’d be wrong. That is indeed the end.

English: Coffee berries Polski: Owoce kawy

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Coffee starts long before you ever get it. Many of you know that it grows in the regions of the earth within about 1500 miles of the equator. I will not delve into the specifics of how coffee is grown or harvested, I have done that here.

Coffee has to be roasted right. It has to be done, but not over done. Coffee can be roasted to a number of degrees of done, from light to dark, from cinnamon to full city to vienna I wrote about that here.

What you need to understand is that there are a ton, a ton of factors that go into your coffee. We aren’t even done yet. The beans should be used within a couple of weeks, three on the outside. Buy small, buy locally roasted. Besides this will give you a chance to stop by more often and get to know your local coffee roaster.

BERLIN, GERMANY - JANUARY 24: Freshly-roasted...

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So at this point your coffee might have sat from a few days to a few weeks to a few seasons has likely traveled several thousand miles so that it can be roasted. Your roaster is your friend. They have to pour the love into the bean. If they are not passionate, your coffee cannot be saved. The quality will be off, uneven, horrible. You can tell. Now there is one exception to this rule (there always is one), Starbucks. This cold heartless soul-less coffee giant produces consistent coffee day in day out. Consistently burnt.

So now let us say you got your coffee from Buona Caffe, Batdorf & Bronson, Grass Roots Coffee, Simple Joe or Frankly Good Coffee (get the point there ARE good local roasters) and you are the proud owner of freshly roasted greatness. Ok congrats, now what? So if you go to a coffee house for this you need to make sure that you go to a place that grinds the coffee fresh PER CUP. Failing that certainly per pot. Hopefully you will have a place that will do a french press or a clever or hario or whatever.

Well you’re a nerd and you don’t go to a coffee place, you brew at home. W00t you! GO!!! Bust out your clever, or your preferred method (see above but don’t see Mr. Coffee). Start with your grinder, get it ground and get it in your cup. Is it that simple? HA! Of course not. You need to watch this all carefully. You have to have a grinder that can get you a consistent ground. This is important. An inconsistent grind will give you dissimilar chunks which will give you an uneven flavor profile. Do the best you can with what you have. You can get some reasonably decent grinders for not too much. Just shop smart (shop s-mart (those of you that got it will be laughing)).

So, how about some water? Yep water is easily as crucial or more so than even the coffee itself. If you don’t believe me know that water is 98% of your coffee. Yep, wrote an article about that one too. Clue, if your water smells like sulfure or if you are on a well and you have particulates or iron in the water, well, it isn’t going to help your coffee, at all. If you take coffee beans from plant to grinder and into your filter perfectly, and you put some nasty ol’ city water in it, you have ruined the efforts of hundreds of people that moved it along the Coffee Chain Reaction before you even touch it.

All of this to get to the perfect cup of coffee for you. This is determined by choices made all along the way. People you don’t even know have had something to do with how good your cup of coffee is. But in the end, it will be up to you to determine your cup of coffee. When you do drink it and its great, thank everyone that put effort into that cup. There were a lot of people involved.

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Full City, Cinnamon Roast, City, Vienna Roast, Spanish Roast, what?

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I would like to clarify what a roast means to you when you hear the description. When I go to a coffee roaster I hear light, medium and dark. When I have been to non-roasters I hear the more fanciful terms of Italian Roast, Viennese Roast and what not. I want you to know what that means. There is no reason not to be able to request the right roast of coffee for your tastes.

There are plenty of descriptors out there for how your coffee is roasted. Many of these are regional and your use of them is important to determine the characteristics of the coffee you want to drink (not to mention the caffeine levels). A few things you should know, there are many methods for determining the degree of a roast. Color, temperature, time on roasting device and sound. Yep sound. When coffee beans are roasted, they start to crack. The coffee bean is a seed, as it heats up, there are tons of chemical changes going on inside the bean that is altering the structure. The bean expands and at certain points the casing of the bean just cannot take it anymore and cracks. Caffeine content decreases as the roast progresses. So your lighter roasts will have more caffeine. Flavor profiles will also change. A more full bodied flavor is achieved with darker roasts. Too dark and you are left with charcoal. So on to descriptors we go.

The light roast is also called the city roast, cinnamon roast, there are a host of descriptors here that will further break down into + categories. Some of these you will see as City + to describe a slightly darker variant of a lightly roasted coffee. Light roast coffees will traditionally have the highest caffeine contents. So if you are seeking that buzz you need a light roast. What does this tell you? You have to go to a real coffee joint to get a light

 

Afrikaans: Geroosterde pitte van die koffiepla...

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roasted coffee to drink. Something that can grind per cup for you. Most all coffee joints I have ever seen have only a medium and dark roast available for immediate drinking. Heck most won’t even have a light roast available. Usually this roast is considered done at first crack or shortly there after in the roast process. They will still have some silver skin (or chaff) on them. Light roasted beans will be about 426°F and this usually takes 10 minutes or so on a drum roaster.

A medium roast, this is also called a full city roast (with the + iterations), New England roast, American Roast, again a plethora of descriptors. These roasts are a little more full bodied in taste, a little less caffeine content and so much more common. Pretty much any

Roasted coffee beans.

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roast shop should have a selection of medium roasts on hand. These beans have been on the roaster for maybe 11 minutes and have a temperature of 454°F. Once sitting for a few minutes some oils will work out to the surface of the coffee giving it a satin looking finish. Right as the second crack starts a medium roast has been achieved.

Your dark roast coffees are also known most famously as French Roast, also as Viennese or Continental Roast, New Orleans Roast and Espresso Roasts. It’s all in the degrees (get it, heat joke there). Espresso roasts are on the high end of a dark roast. The subtle nature of roasting coffee really comes into play here. When we get to a dark roast you can go from a full bodied rich warm (flavor not temp) tasting coffee to ash and carbon in seconds. Tom at Sweet Maria’s notes that when you get to a dark roast, roasting

Dark roasted coffee beans

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characteristics can over take origin characteristics in flavor. Be careful! The temperature range of dark roasts is anywhere from 444°F on up to 474°F or so. It would really take some skill to manage the temperature at this level. From low dark to dead I think was 30 seconds or less. This is an exacting activity and not for the faint of heart!

So as I stated in my post titled “If you would not order dinner burnt, why burn your coffee?” be aware of your taste preferences. Know what you want to taste. If you want to taste that bean you just paid 14 or 15 dollars for a pound of, get it in a medium roast. Taste that country, the hill side, the forest it came from. Not the carbon it got turned into. Dark roasts are alright, but you have to watch it carefully or the flavor will get away from you, permanently.

 

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Processing your coffee.

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First an introduction to our friend, the Coffea arabica. Coffee plants were initially observed in the highlands of Ethiopia, Yemen and southern South Sudan. The coffee tree itself grows best at high altitudes and does not tolerate subfreezing temperatures. The flowers of the tree are white, the scent that of Jasmine. In fact this lead 

Antoine de

Coffea arabica

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 Jussieu, to name it Jasminum arabicum. The great Linnaeus placed it in its own genus later. The ripened fruits of the tree are red and called cherries. The tree takes five years to mature to a point of providing useful yields. The fruit takes 9 months to fully mature/ripen although apparently there is some flex in that as trees in Columbia, South America can flower (thus produce fruit) twice a year. Deep inside under several layers normally there are two coffee beans, called flat beans (one side rounded the other side flat).

Structure of coffee berry and beans: 1: center...

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 Sometimes only one is present, called a peaberry. This is a larger more oval bean. These peaberries are set off and used for a separate type of coffee. Most peaberry is associated with Tanzanian coffee; Kona coffees (grown in Hawaii) also produce a peaberry with some regularity.

 

When a coffee bean is harvested it is encased in the cherry. Sometimes green cherries are also picked. These greens are not ripe and will tend to produce a poor end product. This is what your mass producers use as they are cheaper. Cherries can be picked by hand or mechanical. In some parts of the world theft of crop is an issue which may encourage an early mass picking. There are two main methods to processing the bean of Coffea arabica wet and dry processing.

The primary methods of wet processing are ferment and wash and machine washable. Ferment and wash allows the fruit to break down over the bean and is then washed off. This has to be monitored closely to prevent absorption of undesired flavors. This stage takes from 24 to 36 hours. Machine washing uses a mechanical process to separate the fruit from the seed. With the machine wash process the chance for the pulp of the fruit to influence flavor is lost. Then the bean must be dried out, this is done by sun or machine. There is quite a bit of moisture in the shell surrounding the bean. This has to be dried out. The final result of this is a relatively dry bean (10% of its original moisture content) which needs to be hulled. Drying out will result in what is called a parchment bean. There will be a covering over the bean that is dry like parchment and can be crumbled off easily. The parchment will have a sand paper texture.

Dry processing is fairly straight forward. 

Coffea arabica: Dried beans. Photographer: Met...

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Old fashioned layout in the sun drying or in a solar dryer or mechanical. With sun drying the fruited beans are laid out in the sun and simply dried. This can take up to four weeks. Dry processing results in a pod. This is the dried cherry wrapped around the bean. The pods will be dark in color. Sometimes machines are employed to speed the process up or take over if humidity or rain is preventing the drying process from reaching success. Smaller scale operations can use a “solar box” to capture and utilize sun without direct contact. This process allows for the cherry to impart more flavor on the bean.

After the beans have reduced to the proper moisture levels (which must be monitored closely to avoid mildew) they can then be hulled. From the processing process thus far a skin will be left over the beans. Sometimes it the beans will be polished to improve appearance and remove the silver skin and chaff.

Coffea arabica, Rubiaceae, Arabica Coffee, Mou...

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After all that the beans are not yet done. Now they must be sorted according to size, density and color. There are machines that will do this much more quickly than people ever could for density. For color the best tool is the human eye. This can be done by machines by passing the beans through a camera focus that tests for color and uses compressed air puffs to separate the off color (and therefore undesirable) beans. How these machines do this fast enough is mind boggling.

 

* Sweet Maria’s Coffee in Oakland California has awesome videos on youtube. Some of them are shot on a flip cam so they are not the highest resolution but the content is incredible.


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Bad timing and Oil slicks, talking about coffee

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It was horrible timing this week, I ran short of good coffee just as the long weekend came upon me. Everything was closed. Well someone had given me a bag of Sumatra that kept me through the week leading up to that point. This Sumatra was a dark roasted coffee, the beans were aromatic enough. I use 4.5 tbs of coffee beans to make four cups of coffee. This translates into two cups really. A standard mug is what, 8 to 10 ounces? I know hard to pick a standard as I have many cups of many sizes. I digress however.

Location of Sumatra island.

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After grinding them and putting them in the coffee maker I rinsed out the grinding cup and noticed there was a good bit of oil (I am guessing it was oil) on the bottom that would not rinse out. That was definitely a portent it turns out. I poured in the cold filtered water and let the reliable old Mr. Coffee do its job.

There was indeed a strong smell to the coffee, not unpleasant. The coffee bubbled up nicely, I was always told that was a good sign. It was very oily. Not quite slick across the top oily but close. The flavor of the coffee wasn’t too bad. It had strong earthy tones, the acidity was a bit heavy and the body was there. There was a sharp edge to it and it certainly tasted a bit on the greasy side. Ok so I didn’t die drinking it, but it was not what I would call a premier coffee experience.

So the next batch I used less coffee beans, the result was less oily but a lot less body. That time the coffee just lacked the oomph that want out of my coffee. When I drink coffee I should know it. Coffee has flavor, I want to experience it. This coffee was probably if graded in the B- range. I had no roast date on the coffee, that was a problem. It normally

Roasted coffee beans.

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would have sat on my shelf but hey, I was out of coffee, any port in a storm etc etc you know how it goes?

Well coming up this week I will get a hold of some real coffee and give it a whirl (or grind as the case may be) and write.

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