Coffee Appreciation

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Coffee Appreciation

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Coffee Appreciation

Don’t you just hate it when your friends are all talking about the latest episode of 24 or Lost and you’re completely out of it because you didn’t watch it from the beginning? Not knowing much about coffee can similarly put you on the outer. In this article, David Gee and Matthew Gee arm you with the essentials in understanding about the second most (legally) traded commodity in the world (there – bet we’ve taught you something new already!)

Coffee Grows on Trees

Some people think coffee is either a manufactured product or a product that grows in the ground. Most are surprised when they hear that coffee actually grows on a tree. The coffee bean is actually a seed that grows inside a cherry that grows as a fruit on the coffee tree. Most cherries usually have two of these seeds inside them lying face to face. They are green in colour. After the jasmine-like flowers on the coffee tree disappear, green cherries emerge and eventually turn red, indicating to the harvesters that they are ready to be picked and then processed.

Machines are not good at distinguishing between green and red cherries so to this day most of the world’s coffee is hand-picked. In most countries, after being picked the red cherries are soaked in an enzyme or bacteria over a thirty-six hour period, during which the flesh separates from the seeds. The seeds are then washed thoroughly with water and put out into the sun to dry. This usually takes from a couple of days to a week. When the seeds (let’s call them beans from here on in) are dry they are put into a machine which shakes them up vigorously so that a hull or husk that surrounds the bean is shaken off. Shiny green beans are left which are then hand sorted and graded according to their size and quality (yes, every single bean!). They are then packed in their characteristic 60kg hessian bags, ready to be shipped overseas. Coffee in its green form can be stored for up to two years before it degrades.

We’ve seen coffee roasting done in domestic ovens, popcorn makers, huge commercial roasting machines that need the expertise of a craftsman with years of experience to operate and mega roasters that are fully computer-driven. Interestingly, forty-five seconds either side of ideal will produce a batch of coffee that is either too light in colour if under-roasted (and hence milder than the target roast) or coffee that is too dark in colour if over-roasted (and hence stronger or more bitter than the target roast). Therefore the ideal coffee roaster isn’t going to be an old popcorn maker but to some people’s surprise nor is it the human-operated commercial roaster. It is actually the fully automated roaster that comes out on top as it virtually guarantees consistency. Its computer sensors know with precise accuracy the moisture content, density, average bean size and bean hardness that will all play in part in determining the optimum roasting time. Roasting times will therefore differ from batch to batch. There aren’t many of these roasters in Australia as they are incredibly expensive.

Generally speaking, the roasting process takes between fourteen and sixteen minutes to complete. During this time the beans expand and they lose weight as water is driven off. The surface temperature of the beans eventually reaches between two hundred and two hundred and twenty degrees Celsius and by this stage the sugars within the coffee beans have caramelised.

The colour of the beans changes as the

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