So.. what even is coffee anyway?

Coffee, the drink, coffee, the so-called bean, coffee, ground up powder, coffee, nature’s gift to human kind comes from a tropical tree/shrub.

Native to Ethiopia and spread around the world in the over 1,200 years since its discovery. ‘Coffea’ is an integral part of our journey into the modern era. Although there are legends of the discovery, there is no hard proof for who or when it was discovered. However there are accounts of first cultivation happening in Yemen, which is just across the strait from Ethiopia.

From Yemen, coffee spread north in the Arab world and eventually into Europe. After spreading through Europe for a hundred or so years, it found its way into South Asia by way of the European colonies. After another hundred plus years, now into the early 1700s, the French introduced the coffee plant to the new world and there is where several new varietals were cultivated. By the late 1800s coffee was being cultivated on a massive scale around the world.

The drink itself..

Coffee, the drink, can take many many forms with the various methods of brewing. From cowboy coffee to modern 3rd wave espresso. The most basic explanation of coffee as a drink is using water as a solvent to remove tasty particulates from the ground-up roasted coffee seeds and drinking that water which now has suspended particulates in it…. Soup?

The plant/bean..

Coffea is the name of the plant. It is a flowering shrub with drupes(cherries) developing along the branches. The seed(bean) inside these cherries is what we’re after, however the fruit itself is rather delicious. The cherries aren’t picked until ideally ripe as unripe seeds do not make for a great result after roasting. Each cherry normally has two seeds, but sometimes there will be only one. After picking, the cherries are put through various processing steps, then the seeds are shipped off to distributors/traders/importers, and finally from there to the roasters. The roasters do their best to bring out the best of what can be presented from each individual lot of seeds. It’s their job to not ruin all the hard work of the farmers. After roasting, we now have ‘coffee beans’ which are one/two more steps away from being ready to drink. Grinding and brewing are the final steps. Grinding has to be done specific to the method of brewing and ideally seconds before brewing. Coffee will lose a lot of flavor very quickly after being ground, so it is best to grind just before it is going to be used.

All the best,

Dane