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From its origins over two thousand years ago,
coffee bean processing has grown to a worldwide market whose output as a
commodity has a dollar value second only to petroleum.
Though there are dozens of bean varieties, the plants fall into two main
classes: the Arabica, first cultivated on the Arabian Peninsula; and the Robusta
which contains about twice the caffeine.
By contrast to wine, the coffee berry (called a "cherry") is not valued for its
fruit, but only for the bean inside. It's that bean that is aged, roasted,
ground and brewed to make the 400 million cups per day consumed around the
world.
variety of beans
The beans come in two main varieties, green and red, with the latter -- with
its higher aromatic oil and lower acid content -- used to produce the finer
coffees. Hence one of the most important stages in the life cycle of bean to
shelf is the picking.
Since most beans are handpicked by laborers, at the rate of a few baskets per
day, separating the red and green is a valued skill and has a large effect on
the final product.
After picking, the fruit is removed by soaking, scouring and mechanical rubbing.
Then the beans are washed to remove any remaining flesh. This "fermentation"
stage produces beans which are then dried in the sun over large concrete or rock
slabs, until they have about 12% water content.
From there the beans are sorted by color and size, sometimes by hand,
increasingly often by machine. Some of the beans are discarded, others polished
to remove the skin. For select types, the beans are then aged anywhere from
three to eight years, while others go to be roasted within a year.
During the 400-degree Fahrenheit roasting process, the beans expand to about
twice their dry size, crack and change color from green to brown as oil in the
interior is released. It's this oil that gives the different coffees their basic
flavor.
Naturally a wide variety of in-house techniques have developed for roasting.
Beans from Java and Kenya, for example, are often lightly roasted, producing a
distinctive flavor. After roasting, the beans produce carbon dioxide for several
days so the beans are "de-gassed" either by airing or packaging in
semi-permeable shipping bags.
The resulting beans, up to a few weeks later, are then ground where again there
are variations in styles and results. In some cases, "burr" grinders are used to
crush the beans to a consistent-sized granule. In others, choppers are used to
chop the beans into small pieces with a less homogeneous-sized result. Turkish
coffee is made by pounding the beans to a powdery consistency, using mortar and
pestle.
the final result
The final result is then brewed, where the variety of styles and techniques
is almost as great as the number of brewers. All these fine differences fall
into one of four categories, however: boiling, pressure, gravity and steeping.
In "boiling", hot water is run through the grounds, then filtered or settled. In
pressure methods, such as espresso, the slightly-less-than-boiling-hot water is
forced through the grounds at high pressure. Gravity or "drip brew" drips hot
water onto coffee grounds and filters. Steeping is similar to the method of tea
bags, though the bags are much larger.
Through its long journey from mountains or jungles, coffee beans go into making
up one of the world's most treasured drinks. And with the new research
demonstrating the health benefits of moderate consumption, one has even greater
reason to be grateful for the effort. Cheers to coffee!
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