By no means am I a coffee aficionado. As long as it is hot and caffeinated it will suffice. So when an invitation to tour and attend a coffee cupping at a local coffee plant popped up in my email, I wasn’t overly enthused.
Now if this had been a brewery or a winery I would have been all over it, but coffee isn’t that sexy or exciting. It’s just roasted beans and water? Right?
Wow, was I ever wrong!
First off, coffee is a fruit (didn’t know that) and the “bean” is not really a bean at all. A coffee plant bears small reddish berries or cherries that produce two seeds that resemble a common bean, thus the name.
Coffee is grown in more than 50 countries and is the world’s second-largest export, surpassed only by oil. Virtually every country consumes this “day starter,” however, a typical tree produces only a single pound or two, making it one hot commodity.
There are at least a dozen varieties, but the two primary types cultivated for drinking are Arabica and robusta. A tropical climate and high altitude produce the most prized beans and make the best gourmet brews; think of a Hawaiian Kona or a fine-aged Sumatra.
Before you can get your morning cup of Joe a lot has to happen, but in the interest of brevity, I’ll give you the CliffsNotes version. Once a year, the fruit of the tree is picked and laid out to dry in the sun. The beans are then harvested from the berries, packaged in 100-pound bags and shipped to their destinations.
An expert roaster, like a great chef, can extract the best characteristics from a crop of beans. Temperature plays a key role in discerning what flavors the roaster chooses to enhance, and the length of the roasting process dictates the body — meaning light, medium or dark roast.
Beans are roasted by one of two methods, drum or air. To keep it simple, think of the former as tumbling around a gigantic clothes dryer, and the latter as an enormous hot-air popper.
I found the production process all very fascinating and informative, but really got my socks knocked off was the coffee cupping (tasting) that followed.