Chapter 1

Demystifying Coffee: Just the Basics

IN THIS CHAPTER

Discovering the characteristics of coffee

Grasping a process that includes sourcing, processing, roasting, and brewing

Exploring the links that exist between coffee's early history and the coffee world today

Seeing coffee as an agricultural product

Coffee and all that its world encompasses today can be confusing. I toss the word coffee around rather cavalierly and use it to define quite a few things - a drink, a bean, a crop, an industry. It used to be far easier, and if you're old enough, you probably remember the biggest decision was whether you wanted cream and sugar or black. The story is quite different today as the industry has exploded and, in that growth, it has become immensely confusing. I want to make it easier so you just might start to understand it better, gain a bit more confidence with it, and in the end, enjoy that coffee experience way more.

This chapter serves as your jumping-off point into the world of coffee. Whether you like it with cream and sugar, with just a little cream, with steamed milk, with some syrup and whipped cream, or just black, you can find the basics in this chapter and then dive into the rest of this book for more details in your search of the perfect cup.

Understanding What Coffee Is (and Isn't)

Coffee is right up near the top of the list of the most consumed beverages in the world. (It actually ranks third behind water and tea.) But before it gets to your cup, it's a significant, globally grown agricultural crop that represents a livelihood to millions of people around the world.

Coffee is all the following:

• A seed (the bean), well protected in a layered fruit (the cherry).
• Put through one of a number of distinct processes in order to get to the seed at the center. Whichever process is used plays a big part in its eventual taste. (Refer to Chapter 2 for more about the different processes and how they can affect the taste of coffee.)
• An annual crop - and, like wine, a different crop every year, even if it's from the same place. (The chapters in Part 3 look at the different places in the world where coffee is grown.)
• Significantly impacted by environmental conditions, such as temperature, rainfall, and where it grows. Refer to Chapter 2 for more info on coffee growing and the impact the environment has on it.

Coffee isn't any of the following:

• Easy to grow.
• Easy to harvest and process.

Chapter 2 explains in greater detail how coffee is grown, harvested, and processed to show you how delicate the multiple steps are that get the bean from inside the cherry.

Appreciating Coffee - from Its Past to Today

To better understand coffee today, it's useful to look at where it came from. With a history spanning across centuries as well as the globe, coffee is more easily understood when you know some of its historical background. That history has witnessed romance, revolution, discovery, and turbulent change, all of which have led to coffee being what it is today. The following sections give you a snapshot of important historical developments that have led the coffee industry to its present state.

A world of farms and fickle crops

At its most basic, coffee is a precious miracle of nature. Although it's scientifically classified in a rather confusing hierarchy of names, here I focus on two types of coffee crops:

• Arabica: Represents about 70 percent of what is grown and consumed around the world and is the type seen most prominently in the gourmet or specialty coffee business. Arabica is difficult to grow because it needs elevation and is easily impacted by insects and disease. Even if everything goes perfectly in a crop year, the yield with Arabica is limited. Arabica is the type that has the best taste though, with complexities and flavors that are unrivaled.
• Robusta: This would be the ideal type of coffee because it has greater yield per tree than Arabica, isn't as susceptible to insects or disease, and grows at any elevation. Unfortunately, it's known for its harsh taste characteristics, and even though a significant quantity is grown, processed, and consumed, it isn't considered specialty or gourmet.

Chapter 2 digs in to the specifics of the fruit and delves deeper into the differences between Arabica and Robusta.

The cherry is picked annually, and it yields seeds. About 95 to 97 percent of the time, each fruit has two seeds; 3 to 5 percent of the time, it has a peaberry. A peaberry is the seed of a cherry that has only grown one inside. Multiple decisions regarding growing, often driven by long-standing practices, availability of water, and technology, determine how the trees are raised, how their fruit is collected, and finally how the seed inside that fruit, the coffee bean, is handled. These factors all have a significant impact on the taste of the coffee when it gets to you, the consumer.

Going back to coffee's roots

An almost inadvertent discovery by some goats and their herdsman might just have started it all. Whether this story is truth or fable, the centuries that followed that discovery certainly saw coffee rise as a brewed beverage that inspired passionate interest and dialog.

Religious leaders, politicians, and artists played a part in the development of the beverage's refinement and a burgeoning café society. Cultures across time and the globe seem to have been imbued with coffee and its side effects. Furthermore, industrial and cultural revolutions, coupled with the growth of coffee consumption across all demographics, put coffee at the forefront of change. An industry sprang up from those changes as entrepreneurs recognized a wide-open frontier and major opportunities. Chapter 3 examines the history of coffee - where people started drinking it and how the business of coffee started.

Examining coffee and roasting today

Coffee in modern times really began with a vision and a dream in the late 1960s. A transition occurred that involved a small group of entrepreneurs taking a different approach. Specifically they began focusing on origin (where the coffee is grown), quality, craft roasting, and taste as fundamental to their coffee work. Like many entrepreneurial adventures, that of coffee is wonderfully woven into a kind of art and science, and roasting coffee is central to and representative of that. I discuss how coffee roasting has evolved in Chapters 9 and 10.

Traveling Worldwide - Where Coffee Is Grown

I realized early in my journey with coffee that I was challenged by global geography. The equator and the continents were easy to recognize, but the names and locations of countries, borders, mountains, lakes, and streams quickly became overwhelming as I learned more about coffee. I also found that geography established connections to the perceived quality and inherent characteristics linked to taste.

Add to all that the crucial environmental elements, because growing coffee requires Mother Nature's cooperation. The following are important aspects of climate:

• Temperature
• Rainfall
• Soil conditions
• Sun, shade, and wind

I survey these aspects in greater detail in Chapter 5. Meanwhile, the following sections look at where coffee is grown in the world to help you understand how many places coffee comes from.

Visiting the Western Hemisphere

In the Americas, coffee has been grown successfully in several countries, both large and small. Chapter 6 provides more in-depth information about these places.

Central America

Some of these smaller countries feature a few of the most noteworthy coffees and coffee success stories of the last century:

• Costa Rica: Known as the Switzerland of Central America, Costa Rica offers a perfect environment for growing coffee. Peace and neutrality have allowed for the development and growth of an envied coffee infrastructure. Figure 1-1 shows a Costa Rican coffee farm.
• El Salvador: Societal development, the coffee industry, and cultural growth in El Salvador both benefited and suffered together over the past 25 years, and a solid but still not fully realized coffee opportunity exists there.
• Guatemala: This country is the source of some of the most exquisite and treasured coffees in the world.
• Honduras: This country has a burgeoning coffee industry and an increasing premium crop production.
• Mexico: One of the world's top ten coffee producers, Mexico features diverse, mountainous terrain and an equally diverse range of potential flavor profiles.
• Nicaragua: Although coffee is a principal crop in Nicaragua, an opportunity remains for both increased output and better quality.
• Panama: The famed Boquete Valley, and an interest and investment in producing the Geisha varietal, have cemented Panama's reputation for amazing coffees.

Photo by Major Cohen

FIGURE 1-1: Costa Rica has great coffee farms.

South America

An almost perfect coffee-growing climate and vast land made South America a prime spot...