Nature VS. Nurture: September - October 2020 Newsletter
Coffee can have variety of flavours, some due to nature and some to nurture…
Coffee can have variety of flavours, some due to nature and some to nurture.
There are at least 900 species of Coffea, but the commercially important ones are Coffea Canephora (Robusta) and Coffea Arabica. On a world scale the dollar value, production and consumption of Arabica exceeds that of Robusta by a third. On a flavour scale there's no competition, Arabica wins outright.
And over 90% of that huge quantity of Arabica coffee is still descended from Baba Budan's original seven seeds. The rest is "Native" coffee grown mostly in Ethiopia and Yemen, although experiments with Ethiopian varietals (e.g. Gesha) are ongoing in most Arabica producing countries. This is as much to introduce more genetic variation as it is to discover the next Gesha.
The Arabica genome is terribly limited. Most of the more disease resistant and higher yielding varietals have been interbred with Robusta, with consequent loss of flavour. The hope is that the addition of wild coffee genes will improve disease resistance, yield and taste, as well as produce new and exciting flavours.
The other way to produce new flavours is to change the way the ripe coffee cherries are processed. Traditional processing in Yemen simply spreads the cherries in a single layer on a flat surface (often a house roof) and lets them dry in the sun. The dried skin and fruit is then husked off the green beans and kept to make a sort of tea, known as qishr or cascara, and the beans are further dried then hand winnowed to remove the parchment layer. This is called Dry or Natural processing. Flavour results are generally "fruity".
All the other processing methods rely on pulping the coffee cherries first to split and remove the skins and some of the sweet gooey fruit, known as mucilage. Spreading the pulped cherries out to dry results in "Pulped Natural" or "Honey/Miel" beans which when fully dry undergo mechanical cleaning and parchment removal. Flavours tend to be intense and sweet.
Fermenting the pulped cherries in water then removing the skin, mucilage and parchment while wet and sun drying the beans is "Giling Basah" processing. This is more or less exclusive to Sumatra, and results in earthy flavours and a heavy body.
Finally there is fully fermenting the cherries so that all the skin and mucilage comes off, drying the beans either with the sun or mechanically, then storing them with the parchment on. The parchment is then removed mechanically. This is "Wet Processing" or "Washing." Flavours tend towards clean, pure coffee taste and higher acidity.
Right now people are experimenting with the fermentation stage by using various types of yeast, or eliminating oxygen (anaerobic fermentation) or fermenting whole un-pulped cherries in sealed vessels (carbonic maceration.) They can get excellent results (as with the yeast fermented Burundi last year) but consistency is a problem. So, instead, this month's special is a "Natural" process coffee.
Until November,
Alan
$60 Per Kilogram
Medium
Shimmering strawberry acidity up front with a medium body and a creamy butter and malt finish.
Fully: Nicaragua SHG* Rancho Alegre - Red Catuai - Natural Arabica
Red Catuai is (via a complex family tree and many mutations) a descendant of the "Seven Seeds".
*SHG = “Strictly High Grown”
Marc’s Notes
I hope everyone’s enjoying this series of more in-depth articles that we’re asking Dad to write. We’ve got several more in the pipeline, but if there’s a particular area of coffee knowledge that you feel needs further exploration, feel free to reach out!
Regarding AusPost shipping - Express Post remains the best way to ensure speedy delivery of your coffee right now, as Standard Post is proving slightly inconsistent when it comes to delivery times (5-21 days based on our July/August data). Read more.
Cheers,
Marc
July-August 2020 Newsletter
Retirement, alas, is not all it's cracked up to be…
Retirement, alas, is not all it's cracked up to be. Or it wouldn't be, if I was actually retired. Instead of floating languidly down a tropical river sipping cocktails with little umbrellas in them, I've been fossicking in cardboard boxes with 30 years accumulation of espresso machine spare parts. And shivering my way through the usual cold Melbourne winter.
Marc and I have got the website and ordering systems up and running, and fairly well tuned. He now wants me to do a series of articles distilling the experience I've gained in 35 years in the coffee industry. Which I wouldn't mind doing, especially if I was writing them while on the deck of the boat floating languidly etc.etc.
Travel restrictions having put paid to that, I've been trying to clear out all the junk that's built up over the years, and rediscovered the jumble of machine spare parts left over when my technician retired. Later this month we'll be putting up a new webpage, initially just with parts for the Lelit PL041 and 042 and the PL53 grinder. These will be, in Real Estate parlance, "priced to sell", but remember that it's a list of bits and pieces rather than a comprehensive supply. The reason it's taking a bit of time to do is including the GST so that we can stay in line with the ATO.
Later on I hope to include a few odds and sods for the Silvia and Rocky, the Lelit PL Plus and the laScala Butterfly, but since most of the stuff is Lelit bits we're starting with them.
Now, onward to some of the "experience" bit. The history of coffee tends to emphasise the spread of coffee in the west, starting with bags of beans left behind when the Turks retreated from the siege of Vienna in 1683. In fact, there was already a thriving coffee culture in Venice (Italy) at this time, and the first licensed Venetian coffee house opened in the same year.
However, coffee and coffee houses were well known in the Islamic world by 1510. Coffee was a popular and profitable product from Cairo in Egypt to Mecca in Arabia to Constantinople in Turkey. That's why coffee growing, production and shipping were limited to Yemen, and the (then) Arabians protected their monopoly jealously.
The monopoly was broken in 1695 when Indian Sufi mystic Baba Budan smuggled out seven seeds following his pilgrimage to Mecca, allegedly in his beard. These were planted outside a temple in Chikmalagur, and there are still coffee plants directly descended from these 1695 plantings, growing in the same area.
Coffee seeds from this area were spread to Indonesia by Dutch traders, and from there became the basis for most of the Arabica coffee grown worldwide. DNA studies indicate that both Typica and Bourbon traits originated from the "seven seeds."
It's only recently that it's been possible to get hold of these heirloom coffees processed in the original way. The introduction of the East India Company and British coffee planters in the early 1800's meant that "native" coffee processing methods were set aside in favour of "modern" washing stations. Unfortunately this didn't do much for the flavour, producing clean but bland coffees mostly used for blending, quite unlike this month's special.
$56 Per Kilogram
Medium
Shimmering sweet acidity with notes of cinnamon and cloves in the middle palate, medium body and a burnt sugar finish.