Since its discovery in the late seventeenth century, coffee has become more than just a delicious beverage for most people. With the increase of exports in the 20th century, it has become a staple for countless kitchen cupboards. You would be hard-pressed to find a household that doesn’t keep a jar of their preferred roast. Not only is a cup of coffee an ideally aromatic way to start the day, it has also become essential to work day breaks and socializing at any given time. Since its conception, it has evolved to provide an endless variety of roasts and flavours, ensuring that nearly anyone will find a favorite way to consume the beloved brew. For instance, Café Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic is often sweetened with a dollop of sugar since the majority of Dominicans prefer their café hot and sweet!
As many readers are undoubtedly aware, food and drink often have the most curious of roots. Even the most basic, everyday items sometimes emerge from the most surprising of places. For instance, rum is derived from molasses, which is sourced from sugarcane; another example would be the humble artichoke that we add to our salads and pizzas. The artichoke is actually the bud of a flower that has yet to bloom which also happens to be completely edible. Needless to say, there are many examples of surprising food sources and coffee certainly falls into this category.
To give you a breakdown of the evolution from source to cup, we must start at the beginning. You probably already know that the delicious coffee you brew every morning is in fact, ground coffee bean. It’s how the bean came to be however that is far more complex than perhaps initially though. Contrary to some beliefs, the bean does not simply fall off a tree and then into a coffee container before landing on your countertop. Its journey is bit longer than that!
There are different types of beans but the 4 main types are the following: Robusta, Liberica, Excelsa and the most popular, Arabica. The source of these flavor-packed beans are in fact a coffee shrub. The shrub is a flowering plant from the Rubiaceae family. Named after the Latin word ruber (which means red) due to the color of its fruit, the Rubiaceae family of plants grow all over the world, dotting fields which are located in areas of favourable temperate climate. When a shrub is planted, it takes time before it can bear fruit. On average, it takes about three to four years before the fruits can be harvested from the tree. On average, a tree will provide around nine pounds of fruit per year. Harvesters look for the cherries which have turned ruby red as this is a sign that they are ready to be picked. The fruits that have not yet changed color are left on the shrub so that they can be harvested only when ready.
The coffee bean is actually the seed of the fruit that these shrubs birth. The fruit, which is red in color when it is ready to be picked, is fittingly called a coffee cherry.
When a cherry is picked, there is an intricate process to extract the seed properly so that will eventually become a flavourful coffee bean, since the jewel-like cherry has a few layers to get through.
The top red layer is the cherry’s exocarp. This skin is thick and bitter to the taste. Once this skin is shed, the next layer is quite pulpy and sweet and is called the mesocarp. The third layer, which feels rather like sticky honey, is the coffee cherry’s parenchyma. After this, the fourth, papery layer in which two beans are nestled is called the endocarp which is also known as the parchment that holds the beans together. The beans themselves are separated by another thin membrane known as the silver skin. The words such exocarp and mesocarp and so on are often used in botany for fruit, derived from ancient Greek, where carp is derived from karpós which signifies fruit.
To remove the outer layers, many coffee makers use the wet method, meaning that the pulpy layers of the cherry are removed after harvesting, leaving the beans within the silver skin and in their parchment. This is done by passing the cherries through a pulping machine which removes the unneeded skin and layers.
After this step is completed, they are separated by size in large drums and are transferred to fermentation tanks of water in which the mucilage clinging to the parchment naturally dissolves over the course of 12 to 48 hours. After this, the beans are dried, either under the tropical sun or in a special coffee drying machine before the milling process. It’s only when the beans are roasted when that coveted coffee flavour is coaxed through the high heat. At 400 degrees Fahrenheit, the beans change to that familiar brown color and the oil inside the bean called caffeol begins to emerge. This oil is packed with the flavour we are all familiar with therefore it is essential to carefully roast the beans to perfection.
It is said that coffee was discovered in the 9th century by the Ethiopian goatheard, Kaldi, after his goats became quite hyper after consuming the beans from coffee plants. This story, which is more of a legend than actual fact, only adds to its varied history, which is as rich as the caffeol derived from the bean. Countless years of planting seedlings, harvesting cherries and roasting beans have led us to this moment where one of the most delicious beverages in the world is readily available to people in every country. The development of the process is as remarkable as the evolution of the coffee shrub itself and will likely continue to be perfected for years to come.
