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Coffee
A Pocket Guide Club Guide
Copyright © 2018 PGC Group LLC All rights reserved. ISBN: 1732013735 ISBN 978-1-7320137-3-5
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CONTENTS 1
Introduction
1
2
The History of Coffee
4
3
The Science of Coffee
11
4
Buying The Best Beans
17
5
On Coffee Certifications
21
6
Making The Perfect Cup
26
7
Conclusion
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INTRODUCTION You may have read somewhere that coffee is the second highest traded commodity in the world, second only to crude oil. This little tidbit can be found on any number of web sites devoted to coffee. It is a jaw dropping statement. And it is not true. But that does not mean the stats for coffee are not impressive. Far from it in fact. Take coffee bean production, which has been averaging nearly 150 million 60-kilo bags a year, with consumption running even a few million bags higher. That means, simply, demand is outpacing supply. A recent Gallup poll showed that two-thirds of all Americans drinks at least one cup of coffee a day, which means that at about 400 million cups a day we are the world’s largest coffee consumer (though other countries may have higher consumption statistics per capita). In fact, the average daily consumption is just over 2 ½ cups. So, we like it. We like it a lot. Onequarter of the American population actually consider themselves addicted to coffee, yet only 11 percent say 1
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they have any interest in cutting back. This addiction does actually affect our behavior. A recent Huffington Post poll showed nearly a third of all coffee drinkers report making their coffee first thing—before any other activity. And half said they would rather go without their shower than their coffee, and half would even go without their phones for a month rather than give up coffee! Coffee shops are popping up everywhere and the convenience of home brewing has increased exponentially with the single use machine. Yet, oddly, as Americans we drink the same amount now as we did nearly 20 years ago. That could be because older generations actually drink greater amounts of coffee than younger. Consider the fact that most coffee drinkers aged over 55 report that they drink coffee everyday whereas only half of all younger coffee drinkers, aged 18 to 34, partake daily. And older folks drink more coffee as well: coffee drinkers over age 35 average three cups a day while those under 34 average less than two. Doctors used to warn people away from drinking coffee maintaining it could cause cancer and elevate blood pressure. Now the pendulum has shifted. The World Health Organization (WHO) recently removed coffee from its list of possible carcinogens, with study after study reporting actual positive benefits. The European Society of Cardiology recently noted that higher coffee consumption was linked to a lower risk of early death. They studied a group of middle agers for over 10 years and found that those who drank at least four cups a day had a 64 percent lower risk of dying than those who drank little to none. Even those who drank half that much—two 2
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cups a day—saw a 22 percent lower risk of early death. And this lowering of risk seemed to only appear in older adults. Other studies have found similar results, including one reported in Circulation in November 2015. Other research has shown reductions in cardiovascular diseases, including strokes and heart attacks, Type 2 diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, uterine cancer, cirrhosis, depression, Alzheimer’s, and gout. The World Cancer Research Fund International has concurred with their findings that regular coffee consumption can in fact reduce the risk of some cancers. One study actually reviewed 200 other studies and concluded that even drinking one cup of day can be helpful, though the sweet spot seemed to be three to four cups a day. Researchers caution, however, that not everyone should just up and start drinking coffee for the health of it as some people may experience adverse, yet usually harmless, effects such as sleeplessness and heartburn that could outweigh benefits in the quality of life department. And just so we are all clear, we are not talking triple mocha lattes here—no sweetened, fat-laden drinks. Also, the practice of eating something sweet with coffee certainly needs to be monitored as well as these habits could indeed prove very counterproductive. But even though they are finding these positive correlations, doctors and researchers are still not sure why this is so. So the answer as to why coffee can be so good for us remains, for now, a mystery.
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2 HISTORY OF COFFEE Also shrouded in mystery are the early years of coffee’s cultivation and practice. There are many legends surrounding the discovery of the little bean’s magical properties, most of which point back to either Ethiopia or Yemen as its birthplace. One popular tale looks to the ancient coffee forests in what is today Ethiopia. It is said that in the 9th century a lowly goat herder named Kaldi one day noticed his goats became very energetic after eating berries from a particular tree. In fact, they didn’t sleep that night! He tried some himself and then took some to a local monastery. According to one version of this legend, the abbot tossed the berries into the fire. The wonderful aroma caused some of the other monks to gather around; they gathered the roasted beans, ground them up, and put them in boiling water, and then drank up their concoction. It should be noted, however, that this story was first written down 800 years after the fact. So judge for yourself. 4
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Another story mixes both of coffee’s ancient roots by laying the title of coffee discoverer on a Sufi mystic from Yemen who, while traveling in Ethiopia, noticed some birds who had been eating the berries exhibiting an unusual level of vitality. So he, of course, tried them as well to positive effect. Another account involves Sheikh Omar of Yemen who was living as a recluse after being exiled. After becoming very ill, a bird brought him berries, so he tried to eat them. After finding them bitter, he tried roasting them and then boiling them. The resulting beverage both healed him and kept him alive. Word of his miracle spread back to his home town of, coincidentally, Mocha, and he was not only permitted to return, he was canonized and made Saint Omar. It is likely, whatever the legend, that for centuries people had been chewing on coffee beans to derive some sort of stimulation before they began roasting and brewing them. The Arabian Peninsula is where cultivation and roasting coffee beans first began. It was widely used by Sufi mystics to aid in their concentration when chanting before spreading to Turkey, Syria, and Egypt. With increased cultivation of beans came communal coffee houses. These qahveh khaneh, as they were called, cropped up throughout the Near East and were popular with men of every social strata. Here coffee drinkers also listened to music, conversed, kept up with the news, played chess—not so dissimilar from a male-only version of today’s coffee houses. In fact, so much knowledge was passed on in these settings they also became known as “Schools of the Wise.”
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Turkish story teller in a coffeehouse
Word of this coffee drink, or “the wine of Araby” as it was also called, spread, particularly with the thousands of pilgrims who came to Mecca each year as part of their Haj. The word ‘coffee’ actually comes from the old Dutch word ‘koffie.’ This is a derivative of the Turkish word ‘kahve’ which was a twist on the Arabic word ‘qahwah’ which originally was a word that also meant wine. In this way, word traveled back to Europe and by the 1600s it was becoming a popular beverage there as well. But coffee was not without its detractors. The church, in particular, was suspicious of this “bitter invention of Satan.” Suspicions about coffee grew to the point where Pope Clement VIII had to intervene: 6
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he gave it the papal seal of approval after trying it for himself. As had been true in the Near East, coffee houses were also very popular in Europe. In Great Britain they were often called “penny universities” because for the price of a penny you could buy a cup of coffee and engage in stimulating dialog. Coffee was beginning to surpass the other favorite beverages—beer and wine—with a noticeable improvement to work quality some noted. By 1650 there were over 300 coffee houses in London alone, and they attracted a range of coffee drinkers across class lines. Once again, these would have all been male. Other than in Germany, it appears that women were banned from most European coffee houses.
Edward Lloyd’s Coffee House, London, William Holland (1789)
Coffee arrived into New York City, or New Amsterdam as it was then called, in the very early 7
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years of the colonies. But tea was always the favored drink, that is until that fateful event in 1773—the Boston Tea Party. After that, the fledgling Americans began to favor the brew of the bean over the leaf as tea drinking for some took on treasonous connotations. Though the popularity of coffee spread through Europe and the colonies through these years, any growth in the actual planting of coffee trees took much longer. Arab coffee producers and traders parched and boiled the coffee beans, rendering them infertile. In this way, the Arab world was able to corner the market on coffee crops. In fact, tradition says that not a single coffee plant existed outside of the Arabian Peninsula or the African continent until well into the 1600s, when Baba Budan, an Indian pilgrim, left Mecca with fertile beans fastened to a strap across his abdomen. Baba’s beans resulted in a new and competitive European coffee trade. In Europe, it began with the Dutch who planted seedlings in the East Indies, particularly Indonesia, while the French would center their sights on the Caribbean. In fact, all the coffee trees throughout the Caribbean, South America, and Central America, it is said, are the product of one little seedling. The story goes that a young naval office named Gabriel de Clieu obtained a seedling from a coffee plant in France’s Royal Botanical Garden in 1723. The coffee plant had been a gift to Louis XIV nine years prior. Gabriel de Clieu brought the seedling to the island of Martinique where it thrived. Soon coffee cultivation spread—there would be over 18,000 trees on Martinique alone within 50 years. Brazil is well known as a coffee producer today but 8
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it almost didn’t happen. History, or legend, has it that in 1727 Francisco de Mello Palheta was sent by the King of Portugal to French Guiana to get coffee seedlings to plant in Brazil. The French, unsurprisingly, did not want to share their supply, but the Governor’s wife, who it was said was quite taken with Francisco’s good looks, presented him with a large bouquet of flowers upon his leaving, into which she had just happened to have hidden some coffee seeds. And thus a Brazilian coffee empire was born. Within a hundred years, thanks in part to the world’s largest slave economy at the time, Brazil became the world’s largest producer of coffee. It is still the world’s largest producer today.
African slaves working on a Brazilian coffee plantation, 1882. Slavery was abolished in 1888.
Coffee seeds continued to be carried to new lands by traders and missionaries and colonists, all around the equatorial regions of the globe. Cultivation often came at a very high price. The demand for the bean led to large-scale forced labor and too often the exploitation of the indigenous peoples. As a result, 9
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uprisings and coups were not uncommon. Guatemala began coffee cultivation in the 1500s but when growers realized they lacked the necessary man power to harvest, they forced the local indigenous peoples to do it. That resentment in fact still carries on today. In the 1700s, the small French island nation of Saint-Domingue (on what is today Haiti) produced 60 percent of the coffee and 40 percent of the sugar consumed in the world. Their plantations relied on African slave labor and conditions were worse than harsh. Eventually the slaves revolted, leading to the 1791-1804 Haitian Revolution. This was the only successful large-scale slave revolt in modern history and became a major contributing factor to the eventual end to the slave trade.
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