Most of the people are always rushing and running from place to place and their daily tasks don’t leave them enough mental space to sit and enjoy this beautiful but hard journey that is Coffee. have you ever wondered where it comes from, how is it cultivated or harvested, how is it processed and shipped to each country and how it becomes then a liquid that gives you energy, comfort, and makes you feel undeniable more sociable, only after you’ve had it of course, cuz before coffee "there is no life" or so the saying goes.
In this post i will try and compress a long and hard journey of the magic beans that give us life on a day to day basis.
The Coffee Family Tree
The Cultivation of coffee around the world has brought on two things that will forever change our views of coffee at those are the diversification of coffee varieties and the special environmental factors that coffee needs in order to grow. The first one, or the diversification, has started when coffee started being moved around. This made the original coffee plant to start naturally mutate and give variations, or varietals, of the original. This is important to us because the difference is very noticable between the two largest varieties, Arabica and Robusta. Arabica is what we call the speciality variety where coffee is sweet, fruity, florar, high acidity and low in caffeine. Robusta is the commodity coffee that is mainly found in big coffee corporations and it has lower quality attributes.
To make things even more complicated and your head to pop a bit, Arabica, has also mutated in different varieties of its own, naturally or man made over the years. so when you see on a bag of coffee Bourbon , Typica, Catuai, SL28, or other weird words that you don’t know, most of the time they specificate the variety of Arabica that was cultivated in the lot you bought.
The Coffee Regions.
First thing that we need to understand is that coffee can’t grow anywhere or in any conditions all over the world. The Coffee plant requires special attention from mother nature and thus it can grow only in specific conditions. We, in the coffee world are calling this region "The Coffee Belt", and it fact it is a metaphorical belt when we think about it as it is circling the middle of the world. The Belt is in fact the Equator and the regions stays between the Tropic of Capricorn and the Tropic of Cancer. Think of this region as the Goldilocks of coffee. Here the terroir is perfect for the coffee plant to grow and bear fruit every year, or twice a year in some regions. The best known coffee producing regions are found in South - Central Americas, Africa, and Asia. Here, coffee is grown like corn in Kent and it is the livelihood of the farmers.
Growing Coffee.
Let's say that you want to move tomorrow to one of these regions and start your own coffee farm. Bold and fearless i would call you, but at the same time i would advise you that it won't be that easy in the first years. And this because, well planting coffee and growing and harvesting is a "bit" more difficult than corn. The coffee plant will reach maturity in only around 4 years and bear fruit in its 5th year. So that means that farmers who plant a whole new variety of coffee have to wait 5 years to make the first profits from that. And all of this while taking in consideration plant disease and climate change and other risk factors. At one point, the coffee that you are drinking it took 5 years to grow and reach maturity, let that sink in a bit while having your morning coffee. After those 5 year the farmers need workforce to hire in order to pick the coffee. Oh yes, you read that correctly, the farmers have people picking cherry by cherry, and this is because is better overall for farmer and plant. Farmer gets higher yield of coffee and plants doesnt get damaged in the process. Hard work if you ask me but totally deserving. the pickers only harvest the ripe cherries that find in a day and this continues until the whole crop is harvested on the ripest of moments. Quality and consistency is the key.
Processing Coffee.
After the coffee is harvested and brought to the farm it is Time to start the process in which the cherry is depulped and the bean is revealed. a bit more complex than that actually. So..., there are 3 main ways of processing coffee and those are called, Natural, Washed, and Honey process. There are more and more now but I'll leave you to google that so you don’t fall asleep while reading this, haha. Each different process gives coffee different attributes, or in a more simple way, different process means different taste, even if it the same coffee variety.
Natural processed coffee is always with more sweetness attached to it and more "body" when we drink it. This is because the farmer will leave the cherry intact during the period of drying the coffee and this will give the bean more sugars as the cherry dries. the drying faze takes up to 28 days. The bean is like a sponge and all the sweetness and sugars from the cherry will go in it. After the drying stage is done the farmer will remove the pulp or outer lairs from the cherry and only the bean remains which will go into sacks.
Washed processed coffee is different as the farmer will remove all the pulp remaining only thea bean that will be washed several time with fresh water to remove any material from it and they it will be placed on the drying beds. This will give the coffee a clean, vibrant, fruity taste, opposite to the natural process. the drying faze usually takes a good two weeks.
Honey process is somewhat in between these two approaches to processing coffee. the farmer decides how much pulp to leave on the bean for the drying stage. This in turn will give the coffee a more close to natural taste if the amount of pulp is more and closer to washed if its less. Depending on variety and choice of farmer they decide which way to go.
On the way to your Mug.
After all this tedious work the farmers will finish their work by having a coffee professional panel asses the quality of their beans to give them a score, which usually start in speciality at 85 point and above, thus qualifying them as speciality coffee. The farmers will bag the coffee, or on special lots they will vacuum seal and on their way to you favorite roaster they go. All this work over the year to end up in a cup for your morning routine.
So to end this i would say this, please take your time, enjoy your coffee, appreciate the time and effort that was put into transforming a bean into the beautiful liquid that makes you not kill you boss or co-worker.. Remember , a coffee a day, keps jail away..haha