Cup of Java

   For much of the world, one of the rituals of waking up is having a cup or two of coffee (in the U.S., 90% of adults consume some form of caffeine daily).  This can now come in many forms well beyond the dark espressos and American versions (a friend of mine called coffee here in the U.S. little more than water filtered through old socks).  Another friend roasts his own beans and disdains my taste for dark roasts saying that they taste "burnt" and bitter to him.  Ah the varieties of taste.  Among this of course, I've left out the flavored creamers and fancier (pricier) versions of macchiatos and affogatos or the more popular cappuccinos, not to mention the cold brews and iced coffees, each giving their blast of sugars and milks to add to the caffeine.  Worldwide, 52 million pounds of coffee beans are consumed daily.  Myself, a couple of hearty cups of black in the morning and I'm held over for the day.  But as with so much of the world, there was much more the discover behind this innocent but popular drink.

   I happened to be reading Alan Snow's Kitchenalia, a book explaining how everything works in an ordinary kitchen, from the microwave ovens to the blast chillers, even how top chefs choose their knives and the cladding (and heat capabilities) of today's pots and pans.  The reading was breezy and relatively quick until I came to his section on coffee which suddenly took over nearly 30 pages of his book.  Coffee?  Really?  And in keeping with his book, he dove into the many types of grinders and brewers available, as well as how to use espresso and cappuccino machines and the proper way to steam or froth the various milks.  But here was his opening paragraph:  Coffee has been drunk in its homelands of the Yemen and Ethiopia for more than a thousand years, but it spread more widely through the Islamic world about five hundred years ago.  In about 1600, coffee arrived in Venice.  At that time, Venice was the major trading center for many goods entering Europe from the rest of the world.  Coffee often traveled across Europe and quickly became fashionable.  It was taken to the New World of the Americas in about 1650 and in 1723 the French took coffee seedlings to Martinique, where it grew well and started to spread through the Caribbean, and from there to Central and South America.

   Wait.  Didn't it seem that coffee came up from South & Central America and we're only now  noticing Ethiopian and other origin coffees (at least here in the U.S.).  He goes on: Coffee is a member of the Rubiaceae family of plants, which also includes cinchona (from which quinine is extracted and madder (the oldest source of red dye).  There are about twenty-five coffee species, but only two (Robusta and Arabica) are generally used for coffee production, though Liberica and Dewevrei are grown in very small quantities.  The coffee bean is the plant's seed, and grows inside a berry that is sometimes dried and used to make a drink called cascara, which is very high in caffeine.  The beans form inside the berry, usually in pairs but in about 5 percent of cases a single bean forms, and these are known as peaberries.  Arabica, which is considered higher quality than Robusta, has two common subvarieties (Typica and Bourbon) that form the basis of further breeding...The coffee bean before it is roasted is bitter in taste from the caffeine content.  This is produced by the plant to repel insect and animal attack.  The bean also contains a huge range of other related chemicasl, and when the bean is roasted the mix of the chemicals produces a huge number of further chemicals.  By the time the coffee drink is made, there are over a thousand chemicals given off, but the main smell is derived from perhaps only a dozen detectable ones.  As coffee cools, it undergoes a process called retrograding which means some chemicals re-form.  This is why coffee becomes more bitter as it cools, and shouldn't be reheated.

    Coffee itself, and caffeine, haven't been too controversial in the past; but with the increase of energy drinks and powdered caffeine (readily available online, and unregulated as well) the statistics are changing rapidly.  73% of children in the U.S. consume a caffeine drink daily said a paper from Pediatrics in 2014 (ironically, the amount of soda consumption by children has declined, replaced by coffee and energy drinks).  A year earlier, the symptom of caffeine withdrawal was added to the official book on medical disorders.   In earlier days, such caffeinated products as No-Doz were innocently available; but now it's coming to light that a teaspoon of powdered caffeine is equal to about 25 cups of coffee.  Visits to the emergency room over the past decade suddenly doubled due to caffeine over consumption of energy drinks and other caffeinated products.  

    All that aside, coffee has quite the history, from the traditionally strong Turkish concentrates to the shots of espresso so commonly seen in Italian plazas.  In the U.S. meeting for a cup of coffee is as innocent an invitation as just meeting for breakfast or a for a quick chat (note the just ended Jerry Seinfield series of spending time with different celebrities over coffee).  And for some, the term "barista" has been parlayed into a coffee specialist by the likes of Starbucks, whether warranted or not.  But specialty beans are indeed out there, ranging from the pooped (quite literally) kopi luwak beans to the beans fair traded (as in fair to the rural farmers raising them), and their prices can easily range from $90 per pound to over $2000 per pound at auction...or about $3 per pound at Costco.  Coffee, as with whiskeys and sunglasses and perfumes can be very expensive, or very inexpensive...it's all a matter of taste and what one wants (my coffee roasting friend thinks nothing of $90 lb. coffee beans).  But all that might be changing...

   That expensive kopi luwak bean (currently about $600 per pound)?  It may have met its match through chemistry.  The firm Afineur is studying the microbes that make up the palm civet cat's gut, the same one which lends the (un)digested beans their unique flavor; and they think they might be close to creating the same flavor using much cheaper beans, said a piece in Bloomberg Businessweek.  The same magazine reported that for the coffee growers overall, at least one of the major buyers, the Austrian investment group JAB Holding (currently owning or are majority holders of Keurig, Peet's, Caribou, D.E. Masater Blenders and Mondelez coffees) are delaying paying for their beans by nearly a year, putting a strain on the small local farmers whose lives depend on getting the monies for their crops.  Add to all of that, the climate, for coffee bean growing is very limited in its temperature range; said National Geographic: By 2050 climate change could halve the land the suitable for growing coffee -- one of the world's most valuable traded commodities, with some 100 million people economically dependent of the industry...Rising temperatures also make plants for susceptible to disease (the piece notes that while the Robusta bean is considered a lesser quality bean than the common Arabica, it might take over since it is more disease resistant).  Mixed with all of this comes one bright spot for growers for the husks that were once thrown away and are more commonly known as cascara are now being converted into a tea or syrup by the likes of Starbucks and other vendors...and costing about 480% more than coffee beans!  

    Of course, one could simply jump to matcha or as its trendy name doesn't suggest, dandelion coffee.  It's rich in essential minerals but without the caffeine.  But is it coffee?  Which brings us to the name game, something even milk and meat producers are going to court over.  Is the term "coffee" limited to a beverage coming from the coffee bean?  And what of milk...is that limited to a product from an animal?  Or meat?  Soy and rice and other manufacturers are saying no, that soy "milk" or a heme "meat" burgers are general enough terms and not confusing to the public.  My how things have changed from just waking up to a nice cup of coffee...or is that tea?  And will tea be the next frontier to define and defend its name?  Are things getting too complicated?  What happened to just letting the consumer decide?  It seems that even with that nice cup of joe (a common --if of unconfirmed origin-- slang term here in the U.S.), having a leisurely morning will be a bit less relaxing...maybe it'll be best to just stay in bed.