|
Coffee bean processing has grown, from its origins over 2,000 years ago, to a worldwide market whose output as a commodity has a dollar value second only to petroleum.
From Beans ...
There are dozens of bean varieties; however, the plants fall into 2 main classes: Arabica, which was first cultivated on the Arabian Peninsula, and the robusta, which contains about twice the caffeine.
The coffee bean (called a "cherry") isn't valued for its fruit as wine is, but only for the bean inside. It's the bean that is aged, roasted, ground and brewed to make the 400 million cups per day consumed around the world.
Beans come in two main varieties, green and red. The red beans have a higher aromatic oil and lower acid content, which produces finer coffees. Therefore, one of the most important stages in the life cycle of bean to shelf is the picking.
Most beans are picked by laborers at the rate of a few baskets per day. Separating the red and green beans is a valued skill and has a large effect on the final product.
The fruit, after picking, is removed by soaking, scouring and mechanical rubbing. The beans are then washed to remove any remaining flesh. This stage, called "fermentation," produces beans, which are then dried in the sun over large concrete or rock slabs, until they have only about 12% water content.
The beans are then sorted by color and size, either by hand or increasingly often by machine. Some of the beans are discarded, others polished to remove the skin. For select types of coffee, the beans are then aged anywhere from 3 to 8 years, while others go to be roasted within a year.
Roasting the beans at 400-degree Fahrenheit expands them to twice their dry size. During the roasting, they crack and change color from green to brown as oil in the interior is released. It's this oil that gives the different coffees their basic flavor.
Naturally, a wide variety of in-house techniques have developed for roasting. For example, beans from Kenya and Java are often lightly roasted producing a distinctive flavor. After roasting, the beans produce carbon dioxide for several days so the beans are "degassed" either by airing or packaging in semi-permeable shipping bags.
Up to a few weeks later, the resulting beans are then ground where again there are variations in styles and results. "Burr" grinders are used to crush the beans to a consistent-sized granule. In other cases, choppers are used to chop the beans into small pieces with a less homogeneous-sized result. Using a mortar and pestle, Turkish coffee is made by pounding the beans to a powdery consistency.
To Shelf ...
The final result is then brewed, where the variety of styles and techniques is almost as great as the number of brewers. There are 4 main coffee-brewing techniques: boiling, gravity, pressure and steeping.
When "boiling," hot water is run through the grounds then filtered or settled. Gravity or "drip brew" drips hot water onto coffee grounds and filters. In pressure methods, such as espresso, the slightly-less-than-boiling-hot water is forced through the grounds at high pressure. Steeping is similar to the method of tea bags, though the bags are much larger.
Coffee beans - through their long journey from jungles or mountains - go into making up one of the world's most treasured drinks. With the new research, which demonstrates the health benefits of moderate coffee consumption, one has even greater reason to be grateful for the effort.
Three cheers to coffee!
| 