COFFEE

Those of us who are true coffee lovers firmly believe there was no life before the heavenly

brew was discovered. But actually, the human love affair with coffee didn't begin until around the

year 1000 when Arabs in Ethiopia tried sipping a drink they created when they mixed camp fire-

browned crushed coffee beans with hot water into. They liked the invigorating bitter taste and its

uplifting, stimulating effect on the mind. Slowly but surely coffee g_ta_hined popularity throughout the

Arab world and Turkey, and was introduced into Europe with the 15 century spice trade. It spread

like wildfire, just as espresso did in the U.S. in the 1980s.

Today, we drink coffee regularly in nearly every household in the Western Hemisphere.

The volume of coffee traded worldwide is second only to crude oil.

Coffee Facts

Where do all these beans grow?

Coffee beans are the centers of cranberry-sized fruits that grow on a small tropical evergreen

tree. Two types of coffee trees are actually in cultivation, the original arabica which produces

higher quality, more flavorful beans, and robusta, which is much more common today. Robusta is

fast-fruiting and can grow at wider elevation range than arabica. It is more tolerant to diseases and

frost and easier to grow so it is a lower-cost coffee bean. But low-cost rarely means high quality and

robusta does not have the flavor the arabica produces—it is the coffee beans of choice of mass

market coffees.

The most flavorful coffees grow at higher elevations at a slow rate in a cooler tropical

climate. This limits the total yield, of course, and ups the price of the beans. Warmer, lower-level

coffee plantations yield an inferior but much more abundant crop. Coffee roasters also blend arabica

with the robusta to bring up the quality of less flavorful beans.

The coffee tree is very sensitive to frost and thrives only in tropical surroundings. Pickers

harvest the cherry-red fruit from the shrub, they separate the bean from the pulp, dry it and ship it

green to coffee merchants who roast and blend the different varieties for retailers.

Green coffee beans have no smell and keep indefinitely. The heat of the roasting process

starts a complex chemical reaction which, by the time roasting is complete, produces about 800

different chemical compounds, most of which contribute to coffee's aroma and flavor. Roasting only

takes a few minutes at temperatures ranging from 385°F (200°C) to 480°F (250°C). Slower

roasting, however, is desirable. The slower the roast, the better and deeper the final flavor but it adds

to the cost. Darker roasting brings out more bitterness and deeper flavor. In the U.S., the East Coast

prefers lighter roasts than West Coast, and Europeans favor even darker roasts.

Of all the chemical compounds in a cup of coffee, the alkaloid caffeine is the best known

and most important to coffee drinkers. It is less well-known that the lighter the roast, the higher the

caffeine content, which means that the light American roasts are high in caffeine, while those soot-

black Italian roasts are lower. However, don’t switch on this account—the difference is only 2 to 3

percent in caffeine between dark and light roasts. During the roasting process many of the chemicals

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