Coffee

Both the Esmeralda Especial and the El Salvador La Montana are unusual coffees, and both owe much of their distinctiveness and value to the botanical variety of the trees that produced them (or at least to the felicitous harmony of those trees and the terroir on which they are grown). The Esmeralda is produced from trees of the rediscovered Gesha variety, a cultivar of arabica that originated in Ethiopia, the botanical home of coffee, and traveled a complicated route from there, most likely Kenya to Tanzania to Costa Rica, before it reached its now hallowed hillside in Panama. At this point we do not know for certain how this variety fares when grown elsewhere in the world, but we doubtless will find out soon enough, given the number of farmers who are attempting to plant it.

Read More…

No Comments »

Coffee available to American consumers comes from the four corners of the globe including Sumatra, Arabia and India, but Brazil and Colombia remain the two largest suppliers.

Small trees of the madder family grow abundantly in the Colombian mountains under the watchful eye of farmers. Barely reaching heights of twenty feet at maturity, the trees simultaneously produce fragrant white flowers and clusters of crimson red cherries. And nestled within the flesh of those cherries are the seeds that fill close to ten million Colombian coffee sacks per year ??? many which find their way into nearly every American household. Coffee available to American consumers comes from the four corners of the globe including Sumatra, Arabia and India, but Brazil and Colombia remain the two largest suppliers.

read more …

No Comments »

Basic Beans: Arabica or Robusta?Coffee is divided into two categories: Arabica and Robusta. These two coffees are very different from one another, starting with flavor. Arabica coffee beans produce the rich flavor and body found in a good cup of coffee; Robusta lacks this flavor and body. Arabica coffee is difficult to grow- it is prone to disease, requiring more hand cultivation, and yields smaller harvests per acre. The Robusta species is a hardy, high yielding plant resistant to the numerous pests which afflict Arabic coffee. Robusta coffees have higher caffeine content than Arabica; up to twice as much! Arabica beans are much more expensive, which is why larger coffee companies use predominantly Robusta coffee. Sometimes they will blend a small amount of Arabica coffee with a larger portion of Robusta. Fresh Coffee Now sells only Arabica coffee beans, the finest coffee in the world!

Bean Size and Shapes:Although coffee beans are of a fairly uniform size and proportion, they are graded first by size and then by density (the elephant bean is the exception). Typically the size of beans is expressed on a scale of 10 to 20. The number represents the size of a round hole’s diameter in terms of 1/64th of an inch. A #10 bean would be the approximate size of a hole with a diameter of 10/64ths of an inch and a #15 bean, 15/64ths of an inch. Beans are sized by being passed through a screener. Next, over-fermented or unhulled beans are removed. This is usually done by hand as the beans move along on a belt, but other methods include electronic color sorting.

Bean Color:Coffee bean colors range from blue-green to yellow-green, and shades of brown. The difference in color depends on geographic origin, species, age, and how it???s processed. Other factors include: maturity of the cherry at harvest and conditions of storage and transport.

Peaberry: What is it?Peaberries result when the coffee fruit develops a single oval bean rather than the usual pair of flat-sided beans. A half-hearted, vestigial crevice meanders down one side of the little egg-shaped beans. These longer beans are sometimes separated from the normal beans during grading by means of the above-mentioned slotted screens (see Bean Sizes and Shapes), which allow only the peaberries to fall through. The coffee made from peaberry beans should have a similar taste to normal beans, although some say a peaberry is often a bit brighter.

read more…

No Comments »

The plunger method, said to have been invented in 1933, extracts the most flavour from the ground beans. The pot is warmed, coarsely ground coffee is placed in the bottom, hot water is added to the grounds and stirred, then it is allowed to steep for three to five minutes, before the plunger is pushed down to separate the coffee grounds from the coffee infusion. This method is only slightly less convenient than the filter method and is today one of the two fastest growing ways to make fresh ground coffee. Cheaper pot models have nylon rather than stainless steel mesh to separate the grounds from the infusion, but they do not last as long.

read more …

No Comments »

Although the coffee bean spread from Arabia to the rest of the world, the Arab method of making coffee did not. There is a fundamental difference between the Arab and other methods: the Arabs boil their coffee, traditionally, three times. Boiling coffee boils away the most delicate flavours, but it is a romantic way to make strong-tasting coffee. Arab coffee is made in an ibriq, a small copper pot with a long handle. Two teaspoons of finely-ground coffee plus one of sugar are added to a cup of water and the mixture is brought to the boil. The ibriq is taken off the heat as it comes to the boil, usually three times, and then it is poured out and drunk. A cardamom seed can also be added for flavour.

read more…
tutorial

No Comments »

INeedCoffee

This coffee brewer guide is meant to assist buyer to choose the ideal single cup coffee brewer for individual use. All coffee brewers are capable of making good coffee but not all of them are designed for single cup brewing.

There are several brewing methods since the discovery of coffee, and the method chosen is a matter of personal preference, based on the:

• Taste and quality of coffee produced using the method
• Ease of use
• Ease of cleaning and maintenance
• Price of the equipment
• Esthetic value

For now, the most popular method of making coffee is the drip method, where water is poured over the coffee grounds in a filter above the carafe. This method offers convenience, the ability to make many cups at the same time and keep them warm if the carafe comes with a hot plate or warmer. Next in popularity is the French press, where hot water poured over coffee grounds is set to steep for 3 to 5 minutes before the filter is pressed down to separate the grounds from the coffee, depending on the preferred strength of the coffee brewed. As this method uses meshed metal filter instead of paper filter used in the drip method, it is able to keep the essential oils in the brew, making one of the strongest coffee among the brewing methods, especially when the steeping time is long. Note that most drip brewers today come with plastic filter to do away with the paper type.

read more …

No Comments »

Like Samuel Beckett, Phil Lynott, U2, Riverdance, and Guinness - all famous exports of Ireland - the classic Irish Coffee is a true child of Ireland: born on Irish soil, created with Irish ingredients. It all began in Foynes Airport, Ireland, in 1942…
And about the coffee… in the original recipe, Bewley’s was used. Bewley’s is a coffee roasting company in Ireland; I’ve visited the roastery in Dublin while I was there. If you don’t happen to have Bewley’s on hand, any freshly ground and brewed coffee will do - we were using Intelligentsia Coffee Roaster’s Ojo de Agua Nicaraguan Microlot coffee in the press pot, and their Oromo Blend in the americanos with great results.

read more - the recipe and step by step guide …

No Comments »

Coffee beans were first exported from Ethiopia to Yemen. Yemeni traders brought coffee back to their homeland and began to cultivate the bean.

The earliest mention of coffee may be a reference to Bunchum in the works of the 9th century CE physician Razi, but more definite information on the preparation of a beverage from the roasted coffee berries dates from several centuries later.

The most important of the early writers on coffee was Abd al-Qadir al-Jaziri, who in 1587 compiled a work tracing the history and legal controversies of coffee entitled “Umdat al safwa fi hill al-qahwa”. He reported that one Sheikh, Jamal-al-Din al-Dhabhani, mufti of Aden, was the first to adopt the use of coffee (circa 1454). Coffee’s usefulness in driving away sleep made it popular among Sufis. Al-Jaziri’s manuscript work is of considerable interest with regards to the history of coffee in Europe as well. A copy reached the French royal library, where it was translated in part by Antoine Galland as De l’origine et du progr?¨s du Cafe. The translation traces the spread of coffee from Arabia Felix (the present day Yemen) northward to Mecca and Medina, and then to the larger cities of Cairo, Damascus, Baghdad, and Istanbul.

The 19th-century orientalist Antoine Isaac Silvestre de Sacy edited the first two chapters of al-Jaziri’s manuscript and included it in the second edition of his Chrestomathie Arabe (Paris, 1826, 3 vols.). Galland’s 1699 work was recently reissued (Paris: Editions La Bibliothque, 1992).

Consumption of coffee was outlawed in Mecca in 1511, and in Cairo in 1532, but in the face of the drink’s immense popularity, the decrees were later rescinded. In 1554, the first coffeehouse in Istanbul opened.

Read More…

No Comments »

The history of coffee has been recorded as far back as the ninth century. During that time, coffee beans were available only in their native habitat, Ethiopia, but, when the Arab world began expanding its trade horizons, the beans moved into northern Africa and were mass-cultivated. From there, the beans entered the Indian and European markets, and the popularity of the beverage spread.

The word “coffee” entered English in 1598 via Italian caff?¨. This word was created via Turkish kahve, which in turn came into being via Arabic qahwa. This last is a word of uncertain etymology, which can mean both “coffee” and “ass”.

There are several legendary accounts of the origin of the drink itself. One account involves the Yemenite Sufi mystic Shaikh ash-Shadhili. When traveling in Ethiopia, the legend goes, he observed goats of unusual vitality, and, upon trying the berries that the goats had been eating, experienced the same vitality. A similar myth attributes the discovery of coffee to an Ethiopian goatherder named Kaldi.

One possible origin of both the beverage and the name is the Kingdom of Kaffa in Ethiopia, where the coffee plant originated (its name there is bunn or bunna).

Read More…

No Comments »

Coffea canephora (Robusta Coffee; syn. Coffea robusta) is a species of coffee which has its origins in western Africa. It is grown mostly in Africa and Brazil, where it is often called Conillon. It is also grown in Southeast Asia where French colonists introduced the crop to Vietnam in the late 19th Century and now has exports second to Brazil. It is easier to care for than Coffea arabica and hence is cheaper to produce. Since arabica beans are considered superior, robusta is usually limited to lower grade coffee blends as a filler. It is however included in instant coffee, and in espresso blends to promote the formation of “crema”. Robusta has about twice the amount of caffeine compared to arabica. Approximately one third of the coffee produced in the world is robusta.

Read More…

No Comments »