How to tell if a green bean is quality --- the roast

Coffee as we know it goes through a few processes before it is even roasted. It is fermented (either using a dry or wet process) and then de-pulped and then it is a state know as green bean. Many years ago this is where the process stopped, it was mixed with fat and chewed. If you have ever tasted a green bean you will understand why this did not become a world-wide hit, as its roasted cousin eventually did.

When coffee is roasted, a number of things happen inside the bean that essentially is summarized as water being forced out of the bean, and the bean then goes from a light green to an amber and then light brown then darker brown. When the internal temperature of the bean reaches about 200 °C it goes through a process that is called the first pop. This sounds like pop corn popping, as the water and other molecules are forced out. At this point it starts it a process that exposes first floral, then fruit then herbal (see wheel). The finest coffees can be roasted into the nut and chocolate areas by a skilled roaster, the lower quality bean need to go through that process dry distillation areas for flavours to be exposed.

What is often forgotten is the reason why some of these darker roasts are now called their well know names. Namely:

• Italian
• Austrian
• French
• Portuguese

So what was the reason. Well look back at the history of roasting and blending. Blending became an art when the coffee lovers of the above countries could not get access to the finer coffees, because of crop failures and war. Three things resulted:

1. Roasts where extended to find flavour in lower quality product
2. Other products where found and roasted with the coffee - the most popular was and still is the Robusta bean
3. A combination of the 1 & 2, and the blend and blend master was born.

The blend master strived to get the same nuances that a single origin high quality coffee would produce on its own.

Now of course these blends rule the roast or is that roost. Since they became well know. A coffee company today has its hand forced to produce a blend. Like wines and whiskeys the most famous wines and whiskeys are blends. But the real lover of coffee is slowly re-discovering the beauty of a coffee that is a from a single grower or area that produces a great coffee. Some years it is excellent, some years okay.

If you love coffee start looking for these coffees...

South Africa drinks 20% less than the world average

So according the the website Current Worldwide Annual Coffee Consumption per capita, South Africa drinks 20% of the world average when it comes to coffee.

Are we serious that much into beer? I also read today that they claim that 60% of the coffee in South Africa is drunk in the workplace. Workplace coffee however is mostly instant at the moment.

There is a slow move towards a higher quality coffee, but the majority of coffee drinkers in South Africa think quality coffee is filter coffee. On that most filter coffee is purchased as pre-ground (yuk), which is the same as buying you coke open and two days old. If you vacuum pack two day old coke does it taste any different?

But I digress, lets go back to numbers. 66% of all coffee drunk in South Africa is instant, the other 36% is brewed coffee. Of that at least 90% of that is pre-ground, which means that 3.6% at most is in bean form. Excluding the specialty coffee market this means that only 710.4 metric tons of coffee are sold in their finest natural form, i.e. in beans.

What does this mean? Well that serious coffee drinkers in South Africa drink less than 1% of the world wide average.

Perhaps I have something funny in my cup, but these figures are strange. I may not drink 19,733 tons a year, but I get close to 10kgs a year, and that is above the Norwegian average :)

Brewing guides I found

Michaele Weissman mentioned Duane from Stump Town, so I took a look at their site, it is quite inspiring, here is really a person driven to make the coffee world better, no wonder they call it the 3rd wave of coffee. Specialty Coffee is the 3rd wave, and it is slowly undoing the wrongs of the past that are part and parcel of the traditional coffee industry.

Here are their brewing guides:

• Preparing the perfect plunge / press pot of coffee
• Excellent Coffee at Home Using a Moka Pot
• How to prepare Espresso at Home

Take a look, I may publish them one at a time.....

Office coffee and its importance in the coffee industry

Although I am sure that Michaele Weissman's initial article on Coffee in the Workplace, Something's Brewing in Office Coffee - washingtonpost.com, it inspired her to document her quest and eventually write: God in a Cup.

I recently came across her video taken at Google talking about her book, and spoke about many things but I liked her summary of specialty coffee.

She said that like the movie industry had been turned in it head in the 70's by a demand for better quality, this is what is happening to the coffee industry. The a select few driving the upper echelons of the coffee industry, through there own personal quest to find the best for themselves, and sharing it.

Her summary of what is specialty coffee, is as follows:

• Coffee that grows high up in the equatorial regions of the world, which includes about 60 countries
• When the coffee is cupped it scores at least 80 out of a possible 100
• Specialty coffee is not release to the commodities market only the specialty coffee market
• It is mostly entrepreneurial driven who are keen to buy high and seller higher, so the whole chain makes a good enough profit. This means that the grower benefits, since quality is the the primary driver

This is a more journalistic point of view, but I like that summary so I am posting it here

Sign of confirmation that Specialty Coffee is the Best

So Lavazza buys stake in Green Mountain Coffee - Yahoo! Finance, is this the first Italian confirmation, that specialty grade coffee is the better choice?

Although Green Mountain Coffee, do nasty things like K-cups and the like, their business is based on fresh roasted specialty grade coffee. And when Italy's number one is buying into that kind of model, to me this is affirmation that the specialty coffee world has once again confirmed that it is the crema of the crop.
Specialty grade coffee has steadily increased the quality of coffee over the last 30 years, and that has been linked with better prices to the farmer, few middle men, and a better cup of coffee.
There are all these rumours about coffee shortage, perhaps it is driven by better quality coffee trees, which means that quality over quantity wins. The shade grown specialty grade coffees represent the best in the world, and it is good to see a financial transaction that seals this confirmation, especially on for $250 million.

What makes the perfect cup of coffee?

What is the perfect cup of coffee. We as humans are driven by our sensors, and often what makes the perfect cup of coffee is our memory of the perfect cup. It is normally not the coffee that is the major contributor to us remembering a cup of joe. I asked myself this question while reading Kenneth Davids' Coffee book


For me I remember as a young man going to the drive-in on a cold winter night and craving what I now call drive-in coffee. This is normally not very good coffee, with condense milk, it is sweet to the point that your teeth rattle. But feeling freezing cold and having this syrupy cup of coffee was perfect that day and time.

When I was studying and I needed a break grinding the coffee fresh, placing the coffee in a two cup mocha pot and relaxing while it made its magic brew was the perfect cup for me then. And I remember those coffees well.

What makes the perfect cup of coffee today for me is a combination of things:

• The coffee must be fresh roasted, highland grown and specialty grade, which means that by the time you get it at least 4 different people have rated it as enjoyable.
• If you have the time then a group head machine normally produces the best coffee, but normally the perfect coffee means you have friends around, and you enjoy their company and that is normally not conducive to the attention you need to give a group head machine that is where high quality super automatic, comes to the party. Once you get to know a good quality super automatic I find that you can get a great cup from them.
• Then obviously you need the environment to be perfect, the place, the people and the ambience, that is where the deal is sealed.

When do you last have your perfect cup, add a comment to list it. Was it on a picnic, on the beach in the mountains, or overlooking the field.

Exciting Times 4 Coffee in South Africa

We live in exciting times for the coffee industry here in South Africa. In the over 4 years since I tasted my first brew of specialty grade coffee; things have progressed at a slow but steady rate. With more and more people becoming aware that we can find good coffee and now over 4 years later there are about 20 specialty coffee micro roasters, roasting coffee to order. Not all f them are in pursuit of the highest grade, and have become price and profit based, but I am happy to say that there are a few purists that still hold quality at a premium.

The other good news is that it you can find fresh roasted specialty grade coffee at reasonable prices. If you consider that in green bean (unroasted form) specialty grade coffee is 50-100% more that expensive than the traditional coffee market, the fact that you can find specialty grade pure Arabica, at about 25-35% higher than the going rate for the budget coffees, it makes you realize that this is good value. Even more so when you realize that imported coffees in the South African market are much more expensive and paying over R200 per kilogram is a possibility, when the winner of the Specialty Coffee Associations coffee costs R240.00 per kilogram, it is highway robbery that lower quality coffees that are in most cases not even pure Arabica, can get away with charging these over inflated prices just because they are branded. That is the cost of marketing.

With the increase in the number of people purchasing higher quality brewing equipment in South Africa, we believe that we are seeing more South Africans take to heart the quality of the product that they invite into their mouth to tantalize the senses.

Over the next few blogs entries I will go through some of the required knowledge that more and more coffee lovers are requesting.

Although some of this information is available on the site by Quaffee, some will be in more detail.