Coffee and Packaging and storage

Over the many years that I have dealt with coffee, I have found the it amazing how illogical coffee packaging can be.

Firstly let me excluded any type of instant packaging (including  instant coffee, pre-ground, pods, etc), these are designed for convenience and if you are a lover of coffee these should not be put in any category of coffee. I am talking about coffee beans only here.

So what types of packaging have I seen, and what are my comments:

• Tins, these are great if you are using the coffee in the next 7 days, otherwise they are a fashion accessory. Yes some fancy pancy products come with seals and they have some sort of Nobel gas in them, but even if the gas can survive for longer than 2 weeks, once the tin is opened the coffee gets flat quicker and 7 days is an absolute maximum
• Foil bag, this is another of these fashion things adding a non-return valve is also a great gimmick, convinces those who are impressed with blumph that they do something, best case they will keep the coffee fresh for about 10 days, but after that no thanks may as well put it in  a Tin.
• Vacuum pack, seriously now think about coffee gives off gas if it is fresh, so can this work NO, marketing crap
• Freezer Bag, this is probably the most effective, and if the coffee was not murdered when it was roasted then it will survive perfectly well in the freezer for between 2 to 3 months (depends on the roast level, and how often it is taken out of the freezer)

After the tests we performed, what where the conclusions:

• Fridge is worse than cupboard, especially if cupboard is dark
• Freezer only works if the oils are not exposed to the surface on roasting, otherwise the stuff should be thrown in the bin anyway
• Freezer bags work best in cupboards, and the freezer. Coffee straight from the freezer into grinder performed as well as stuff left to return to room temperature.

And the best thing is that if you are seriously interested in reading properly written articles than these claims are substantiated many times over.

Ethiopian Export news, commentary

With Ethiopia being of significance when it comes to specialty coffee, I do try and look for anything interesting about the country, and so I found: East Africa Forum » Coffee vs non-coffee commodities: "Ethiopia’s annual exports recently reached a never-before-seen level of USD 2 billion, a growth of 38 percent from the year before."

In this report there is good news exports are up 38%, and the largest importer of Ethiopian commodities is Switzerland, which is interesting, as that is also the capital of decaf coffee production.

So items of interest:

• Ethiopia now has five major non-coffee exports (oilseeds, gold, khat, flower, and pulses)
• Exports of goods in Ethiopia are only about 7 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), compared to an average of near 30 percent of GDP in Sub-Saharan Africa.
• Coffee continues to dominate the top spot among Ethiopia’s exports but its relative significance is now at a historic low

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 :)

Another post that gives Reasons to Drink Coffee

This is an extract from:

Greenliving's Reasons to drink coffee

"According to research, the potential benefits of caffeine for maintenance of proper brain functioning has only recently begun to be appreciated....".

"In a study published in a special supplement to the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, researchers explored the potential benefits of caffeine and found substantial evidence that it may be protective against the cognitive decline seen in dementia and Alzheimer’s disease."

For the study (“Therapeutic Opportunities for Caffeine in Alzheimer’s Disease and Other Neurodegenerative Diseases”) a group of international experts looked into the effects of caffeine on the brain. The result was a collection of original studies exploring  a number of  topics ranging from molecular targets of caffeine, neurophysiological modifications and adaptations, to the potential mechanisms underlying the behavioral and protective actions of caffeine in distinct brain pathologies. Here’s a brief summary of what they found:

• Caffeine has a positive effect on cognition, memory performance, and the ability to complete complex tasks.
• An inverse association between regular caffeine consumption and the incidence of Parkinson’s disease was found–in other words, caffeine looks to be protective against Parkinson’s disease.
• The consumption of moderate amounts of caffeine was seen to decrease the cognitive decline associated with aging, as well as the incidence of Alzheimer’s disease.
• Caffeine prevented motor deficits, normalized brain function, and prevented brain degeneration.
• Caffeine improves a sense of well-being, happiness, energy, alertness and sociability.
• Caffeine  enhances aerobic endurance.
• Consumption of coffee can lead to a decreased risk of Type 2 diabetes.
• Coffee has a whopping amount of antioxidants–on average, Americans receive 1,299 milligrams of antioxidants  from their 1.64 cups of daily coffee. The closest competitor was tea at 294 milligrams. Rounding out the top five sources were bananas, 76 milligrams; dry beans, 72 milligrams; and corn, 48 milligrams.

Espresso machine?

I have found it strange what people define as an espresso machine. A machine that uses the espresso concept does not necessarily make an espresso in my book. But here is how is what I have found:

• mocha pot or stove pot, this is probably the original espresso device, but in todays term I would not consider in an espresso, the pressure is good, but the grinds are not very fine, and there is normally no crema
• Aeropress coffee maker - once again not an espresso, it produces the best coffee using course grinds
• Domestic espresso machines - I do not class these as espresso but rather espresso like. The grind is fine but not as fine as it could get, the machines do not have enough punch, perhaps I can be proved wrong
• Automatic espresso machines - Also an espresso like machine, with the Jura, probably the pick of the lot

So what is an espresso maker then. Well to me it has to have the following:

• The grind can be so fine that it clumps, i.e. it start to attach itself to other fine grinds
• The filter head MUST be metal, with out that it cannot produce enough backward pressure
• The tamp has to be manual, unless a tamp of 25kgs is guarnateed
• The machine must have accurate temperature control, so that the water is never hotter than 95 degrees.

So that is why I have found the definition espresso machine is too vague.

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