Mystique of Coffee

Legend has it that coffee was    discovered in Ethiopia in 300 AD when Kaldi, a goat herder, observed that his goats were eating “cherries” from a tree. The animals then began “bounding over the hills in a joyous frenzy.” The plant, later known as coffee (Coffea sp.) spread to Egypt and Yemen and by the 15th century, it reached Turkey and Persia and the rest of the world.

 Today, the top 5 coffee producing counties are Brazil (2.5 billion kilos), Vietnam (900 million kg.), Colombia (696), Indonesia (411) and Ethiopia (330). In terms of coffee drinking, nobody beats Ireland (annual per capita consumption, 11.5 kilos per year), followed by Aruba, Iceland, Norway and Denmark (average, 9 kilos).

Through the years, I was fortunate to collect video clips about coffee like Coffee, The Mighty Bean, Civet Coffee, Jamaica and Blue Mountain Coffee and others. Very helpful was the information derived from these videos in writing this article.

The search for the perfect cup of coffee starts with the tree and you can plant the seeds of either Robusta (Coffea canephiora) or Arabica (Coffea arabica). Arabica is preferred because Robusta tends to be bitterer and has lesser flavors. On the other hand, the Robusta plant is more resistant to diseases and has 40 to 50 percent more caffeine. Your favorite food columnist definitely needs this chemical to deliver this article, as scheduled.

In college, I drank coffee of a different species, Coffea liberica, also known as Kape Barako. It has a particularly “strong taste, powerful body, distinctly pungent aroma” and the fact that I had friends from Batangas and Cavite, free pa gyud!

When the trees start to bear fruit called cherries, only the red cherries are harvested by hand (green or yellow makes the coffee acidic) and processed immediately the same day. Coffee trees harvested by machine cannot segregate the green cherries.

These are then washed to remove the dust, leaves, etc. and then placed in a machine to remove the pulp. The kernel is then placed in the fermentation tank to remove the remaining pulp and allowed to rest. If it sleeps to long, it may start to stink; too short and some pulp sticks to the beans. Wash again and the beans are ready to be sun dried.

Next stage is roasting and the green coffee beans are transformed into the flavorful beans that are the foundation of a good cup of coffee. During the early stage, moisture from the bean comes to the surface and it looks like it is sweating. Roasting continues until the optimum (light, medium or dark levels) is achieved. Caffeine content does not change with heat; only the acidity and as the roast gets darker, the coffee is more smooth with a smoky flavor.

Temperature and duration are the key elements and a long time ago, I tried a blend of coffee (70% Arabica, 30% Robusta). I roasted it with a hint of Anchor butter and bits of tableya in the last few minutes of cooking and, excuse me, that was a nice cup of coffee.

The coffee bean must be ground and brewed. You can shear (burr mill), smash (electric grinder) or crush (mortar and pestle) the bean to achieve the desired size.

You can brew the ground coffee by several preparations: boiled, steeped or pressured. Boiling coffee produces a strong coffee while your coffeemaker brews by gravity with hot water dripping into the ground coffee. A coffee press (French press) combines the ground coffee and hot water in the machine and the plunger separates the liquid from the coffee grounds, a rather sophisticated way of boiling coffee. 

The espresso method forces hot pressurized water through the ground coffee; brewing under high pressure concentrates the coffee as much as 10 times compared to coffeemakers. From espresso, you can serve coffee in a wide range of possibilities: Café Americano (hot water topped with espresso), Café Latte (with steamed milk), Cappuccino (espresso and milk froth, 50-50), etc…

It is really difficult gyud to brew that perfect cup of coffee. Leave it to the experts na lang like the Coffee Bean& Tea Leaf Philippines (www.coffeebean.com). Its exclusive franchisee in Cebu is the Red Cherry & Silver Tips, Inc. headed by Allen Arvin A. Tan and its 3rd outlet recently opened at The Terraces in Ayala Center Cebu. It has also branches in The Northwing at SM City Cebu and at the Asiatown I.T.Park.