worldoftravelling

Picture if you will a Pyramid – at the base of the pyramid can be found Robusta coffee then, as you climb up, you get Natural Arabica, then Washed Arabica, then speciality coffees – like ‘Kopi Luwak’. The price of the coffee increases the further up the pyramid you go.

Kopi Luwak (Indonesian pronunciation: [ˈkopi ˈlu.aʔ]), or civet coffee, refers to the seeds of coffee berries once they have been eaten and egested by the Asian palm civet. Kopi Luwak can be found in Sumatra, Bali, and Java and is one of the most expensive coffees in the world. The luak, a small catlike animal, gorges after dark, on the most ripe, and best cherries. It digests the fruit and expels the beans, which our collected, washed, and then roasted. A 16 ounce bag would set you back £224.00 or £14.00 an ounce.

However, Colombian coffee is a ‘single origin’ coffee and is of excellent quality and therefore more expensive than blended coffees. It is also more expensive than naturally dried Arabica because of the work involved in the washing process. From harvesting to your home can take up to 1 year. All Colombian coffee is rigorously tested, with only the best being chosen for export. The reason that Colombian coffee cannot be naturally dried is all down to the humidity here.

Coffee is not usually roasted prior to exportation. Each country has it’s own ‘unique’ blending and roasting processes, which depends on the ‘culture’ of that country. In many cases, cheaper Robusta is blended with the more expensive Arabica. Different roasters have different blending strategies. Some use only two to four different coffees; these blends can have very distinct tastes and will vary a lot year to year. Other roasters will try to keep the blend’s taste the same year in, year out. They will do this by using seven to twelve different coffees, many from different plantations in the same country and region, so as to average out the annual variations of coffees from any one plantation.

The Roasting:
Roasting is where the coffee’s flavour is fulfilled. In the majority of cases the roasting process takes place in the country that imports the green coffee (Almond Coffee).

The green coffee beans are heated in large, rotating drums using temperatures of about 550 F (288 C). The tumbling motion of the drums keeps the beans from burning. The beans first turn a yellowish colour and smell a little like popcorn. After about 8 minutes, the beans “pop” and double in size. The beans have then reached about 400 F (204 C) and begin to brown as the oils within them start to emerge. This oil is called coffee essence or caffeol. The chemical reaction of the heat and coffee essence is called pyrolysis, and is what produces the flavour and aroma of coffee. A second “pop” occurs about three to five minutes later and signals that the bean is fully roasted. Roasting changes colour due to sugar Brownings.

When coffee goes through the roasting process it produces different aromas – first like straw, hay, bread, cakes, caramel, pop corn then burnt pop corn then coffee aroma. Roasting involves heat and ventilation. Low roasting produces sweet & acidic coffee, high roasting produces bitter coffee that is less acidic. Robusta coffee contains 2% caffeine, Arabica coffee contains 1% caffeine

Coffee beans will only keep for about 2-weeks after the packet has been opened, due to oxidation. Once opened coffee is best kept in a sealed container in a fridge. Ground coffee will only last for 7 days.

Marketing Colombian Coffee:
Juan Valdez is a fictional character who has appeared in advertisements for the Federation Nacional de Cafeteros de Colombia (National Federation of Coffee Growers of Colombia) since 1958, representing a Colombian coffee farmer. The adverts were designed by the Doyle Dane Bernbach ad agency, with the goal of distinguishing 100%-Colombian coffee from coffee blended with beans from other countries. He typically appears with his mule Conchita, carrying sacks of harvested coffee beans. He has become an icon for Colombia as well as coffee in general.

Other coffee options available:

Instant coffee:
Is made in a huge expresso then the moisture is removed by:
1. Evaporation or by
2. Freeze drying, then removal of the water crystals.

De caffeinated coffee:
The caffeine is removed using one of the following methods:
1. Ethyl Acetate – removes more than just the caffeine!
2. Solvents – removes more than just the caffeine!
3. CO2 – removes the caffeine only, but is a more expensive process.

So the next time you drink a cup of coffee spare a thought for what goes into producing it. The trip coffee takes, from the crop to your cup, turns out not to be straightforward after all, but rather a turbulent and unpredictable ride through the waves and eddies of international commodity dynamics, where the product itself becomes secondary to the wash of money and power.

Harvesting:
Colombian coffee is all about ‘freshness’. Due to its location, the central region of Colombia is able to take multiple harvests. All the coffee in Colombia is harvested by hand. In other countries, where the coffee is grown in flat regions, and where there is only one main harvest, the cherries can be harvested by machine.

The pickers in Colombia collect the berries in baskets. Each time they reach the end of the field they empty their basket into a hessian sack. Each picker has a unique identification number. The pickers are paid by the amount they pick – ‘piece work’. The price they get per kg depends on the time of the season. During the high season they can pick 90 kg per day and get paid around 300 pesos per kg. Pickers can earn up-to 27,000 pesos per day. In the low season they are paid more per kg. The minimum wage in Colombia is 20,000 pesos per day. At the end of the working day the cherries are collected and taken to the processing plant.

Processing:
Colombian coffee can only be processed using the wet method, as opposed to the natural method. This is due to the humidity here. The cherries would just rot if you left them to dry naturally, and this would ruin the flavour of the coffee.

In the wet process, the fruit covering the seeds/beans is removed before they are dried. Coffee processed by the wet method is called wet processed or washed coffee. The wet method requires the use of specific equipment and substantial quantities of water. The coffee cherries are sorted by immersion in water. Bad or unripe fruit will float and the good ripe fruit will sink. The skin of the cherry and some of the pulp is removed by pressing the fruit by machine in water through a screen. The bean will still have a significant amount of the pulp (mucilage) clinging to it that needs to be removed. This is done in Colombia using the classic ferment-and-wash method. In the ferment-and-wash method of wet processing, the remainder of the pulp is removed by breaking down the cellulose by fermenting the beans with microbes and then washing them with large amounts of water.

For most coffees, mucilage removal through fermentation takes between 24 and 36 hours, depending on the temperature, thickness of the mucilage layer and concentration of the enzymes. The end of the fermentation is assessed by feel, as the parchment surrounding the beans loses its slimy texture and acquires a rougher “pebbly” feel. When the fermentation is complete, the coffee is thoroughly washed with clean water in tanks or in special washing machines. The washed coffee is then placed into silos where it is dried for 24 to 48 hours. The temperature of the driers varies between 20 and 50 deg Centigrade.

5 kg’s of cherries produces 1 kg of parchment, which produces 800 g of green coffee (almond coffee), which produces 600 g of roasted coffee beans.
Each plant produces 2.5 kg’s of cherries each year, therefore it takes 2 plants each year to produce 600 grams of coffee beans.

Is that a fact?
We drink about 1.5 billion cups of coffee a day, with the USA drinking a 1/5 of this. In 2004 the coffee plantations of the world would have covered the country of Portugal. The 17 billion pounds of coffee grown worldwide in 2004 would have formed a pyramid with a base of more than 305 metres long on each side and would have towered to a height of more than 640 metres distracting tourists from the decidedly lesser Eiffel Tower at 318 metres.

There are currently 42 coffee producing countries in the world, with Vietnam and Brazil producing 60% of the worlds coffee. The number 1 producer is Brazil, number 2 is Vietnam, Colombia is number 3 – (growing 8% of the worlds coffee), and Indonesia is number 4.

Species.
A woody shrub, coffee can reach 10 metres in height, depending on the species and growth conditions. In cultivation however, it is usually pruned to about 2.5 metres to allow harvesting. Following pollination, the flowers wither, and each is replaced by a fleshy fruit surrounding a hard seed, like a cherry. Each “cherry” usually contains two seeds or coffee “beans”, although occasionally only one seed develops (called a “peaberry”).

Although there are more than twenty species within the genus coffea only two account for the vast bulk of the coffee drunk worldwide. Coffea arabica (known familiarly as arabica) is the original coffee and is native to the highlands of Ethiopia. Coffea canamphora var. robusta (known familiarly as robusta), is native to the hotter, wetter lowland forests of west Africa. Robusta entered the general commercial market relatively recently, after World War Two.

Coffee production in Colombia.
Colombia grows 1 million hectares of coffee. There are 500,000 families relying on this crop making the average size plantation 2 hectares. Hacienda Venecia grows nearly 200 hectares, making it an extremely big player.

Coffee grows best between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn. In Colombia It is grown in the mountain regions, at 1000 to 2000 metres above sea level, where the temperature is between 18 and 25 deg C. Colombia lies about 5 degrees north of the Equator – this unique feature facilitates multiple harvests. This phenomenon is similar in Peru, Kenya and Tanzania (Mount Kilimanjaro).

Clouds pass over Central Colombia twice a year. First semester in the south, second semester in the north, therefore 2 rainy seasons and 2 dry seasons in the central region. The dry season encourages the flowering, the wet season encourages the berries to fill.

A coffee plant usually starts to produce flowers 1 to 3 years after it has been planted, and it is from these flowers that the fruits of the plant (commonly known as coffee cherries) appear, with the first useful harvest possible around 3 to 4 years after planting. The cherries ripen around eight months after the emergence of the flower. The berry changes colour from green to red, and it is at this point that they are harvested. In most coffee-growing countries, there is one main harvest a year; though in countries like Colombia, where there are two flowerings a year, there is a main and secondary crop, the main one April to June and a smaller one in November to December.

Due to the mountainous terrain, all coffee in Colombia is picked by hand.

I have been receiving a lot of questions about coffee production here in Colombia.

First a history lesson.

Used traditionally by nomadic mountain warriors of the Galla tribe in Ethiopia, where the plant is indigenous, coffee was first eaten as a food sometime between 575 and 850 AD, long before it was made into a hot beverage, in 1000-1300 AD. Originally coffee beans were crushed into balls of animal fat and used for quick energy during long treks and warfare. The fat combined with the high protein content (not present in the beverage), was an early type of “energy bar”.

One well-known legend is that coffee was first discovered by a young goatherd named Kaldi who noticed his goats behaving frenetically after eating red berries from a nearby bush. Curious and hoping to energise himself Kaldi tried some. To his delight, his tiredness quickly faded into a fresh burst of energy and he began dancing about excitedly with his goats. It’s possible that Kaldi did not enjoy the flavour and threw them in the fire, which is how they may have got roasted for the first time.

The habit that Kaldi soon developed was noticed by a monk from a local monastery. The monk tried the fruits himself, and noticing the effect, came upon the idea of boiling berries to make a drink to help the monks stay awake during their religious services. News of the drink spread rapidly throughout all the monasteries in the kingdom.

From Ethiopia (Arabica coffee) it travelled to Yemen via the harbour of Mocha. In Arabia the beans were cooked, which killed them genetically – preventing their production in other countries – Arabia monopolised and controlled the market for a long time. However, in 1600 an Indian pilgrim managed to smuggle some genetically viable beans that he took to Ceylon (Sri Lanka). Around 16 years later the Dutch also smuggled some beans out of Yemen and grew them in greenhouses (in Amsterdam). From Amsterdam they took them to their colonies in the Caribbean and that’s how coffee came to South America. The Dutch gave it as a present to the French. The French probably took it to their colonies in South East Asia, such as Vietnam.

Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, used to grow coffee but a fungus destroyed the plantations and that’s why they started growing tea.