Speaker 1: Of course, our supermarket has a cheesemonger.
Speaker 2: Our sells the milk of nineteen different mammals. What does
Speaker 2: yours of an entire aisle dedicated to venison feel?
Speaker 1: My curtains guess where they're from.
Speaker 2: Our supermarket has a granola launch. Ours has a sorbe
Speaker 2: change in Molly and soul to library. We're having our
Speaker 2: honeymoon in ours. Have another FEELI by curtains, Oh, has
Speaker 2: your supermarket got notions?
Speaker 1: If so, switch to Aldi, where you'll get all the
Speaker 1: quality with none of the.
Speaker 2: Madness the price as you'll love Aldi.
Speaker 1: It's not complicated. Oh hey, it's your brother's college roommate
Speaker 1: who does a weirdly good Marilyn Monroe impression? Ali Ward
Speaker 1: And honestly, this episode may be one of our most divisive.
Speaker 1: I don't think we've ever covered a topic where every
Speaker 1: single listener considers themselves an expert in the matter, But
Speaker 1: here we are. We're ready to just submerse ourselves dunk
Speaker 1: into the darkness of coffee, which is, according to a
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four report, the second most popular beverage in
Speaker 1: my country, eclipsed only by water. One is essential for survival,
Speaker 1: the other is essential for survival. Now depending on whom
Speaker 1: you ask. Now, we asked possibly the best expert on
Speaker 1: the matter. We looked high and low. This is the
Speaker 1: head of the research department at a trade association for
Speaker 1: coffee farmers, roasters and buristas all over the world. They live, breathe, eat,
Speaker 1: and drink coffee. And also, bonus, they're not a dick
Speaker 1: about it, so slam duck. So we're going to get
Speaker 1: to that in a moment, but first, let's say a
Speaker 1: big thanks to patrons at patreon dot com slash ologies
Speaker 1: for submitting such great questions for this episode. You too
Speaker 1: can join for as low as a dollar a month,
Speaker 1: and we also have a tier to leave audio messages
Speaker 1: which we may play on the show. So thank you.
Speaker 1: Also to everyone out there in ologies Merch, I see
Speaker 1: all your tagged photos that we repost on Instagram, and
Speaker 1: ologiesmerch dot com has all your t shirt and tote needs.
Speaker 1: Also thanks to everyone who leaves reviews for me to read,
Speaker 1: which I do weekly and I pull a new one
Speaker 1: and in this case from Bev's topical name who wrote
Speaker 1: come for the weird animals, stay for the personal growth,
Speaker 1: and they wrote I was initially drawn to ologies for
Speaker 1: the deep dives on cool animals, but have been surprised
Speaker 1: and lighted by episodes that have helped me learn about myself.
Speaker 1: So let's learn about us. Let's learn about what we drink.
Speaker 1: Let's get into coffeeology. Okay, so the name, let's get
Speaker 1: this oude of the way like funology. This is a
Speaker 1: name that frankly displeases me because it sounds like something
Speaker 1: that would be printed on a ceramic jar, on a
Speaker 1: clearance shelf at home goods. But so many people use it.
Speaker 1: We must respect linguistic precedents, and we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about the word origins in a bit. But this guest
Speaker 1: has buristood, has owned a specialty coffee shop and is
Speaker 1: now exactly the person we need to talk about. The
Speaker 1: folk stories behind coffee, the origins, roasting, chemistry, brewing methods,
Speaker 1: caffeine content, flimplam, atmospheric pressure, cold bruce dead espresso, and
Speaker 1: the best way to brew it, Why you like some
Speaker 1: more than others, non judgment, super tasting, ethical farming, and
Speaker 1: so much more. With an expert in both Java and Joe,
Speaker 1: professional coffeologist Peter Giliano.
Speaker 3: My name is Peter Giuliano. He him and I'm the
Speaker 3: chief research officer for the Specially Coffee Association and the
Speaker 3: executive director of the Coffee Science Foundation.
Speaker 1: Coffee and Science, You're right in the middle.
Speaker 3: I live coffee science, and it's sort of like applied
Speaker 3: science to this product that is so familiar to us
Speaker 3: and so beloved by so many people. One thing I
Speaker 3: like to say is making coffee is like a chemistry
Speaker 3: experiment people do in their kitchen every morning, you know.
Speaker 3: And it's true. I mean they're doing this thing. You know,
Speaker 3: They're applying hot water to this powder, which somehow creates
Speaker 3: this extraction that brings joy. And there's chemistry in that,
Speaker 3: there's folklore in that, there's history in that, there's physics
Speaker 3: in that. So anyway, that's the way I like to
Speaker 3: think about it is sort of applied science.
Speaker 1: It's interesting because some people approach a morning cup of
Speaker 1: coffee by grams and scales, and they know exactly what
Speaker 1: kind of size they've got. And then some people are like,
Speaker 1: like me, if I'm going on a road trip, I'll
Speaker 1: hit seven to eleven. I'll see whatever kind of weird
Speaker 1: stuff they got in there. Blueberry coffee six in the morning.
Speaker 1: Why not? I'm kind of the whole scope, which is
Speaker 1: horrifying to some people. But like I'll fuk with a
Speaker 1: truck stop coffee. My husband and my brother in law, however,
Speaker 1: are the measuring type.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: So in consumer research for coffee, we've got shorthand for
Speaker 3: those two kinds of people.
Speaker 1: Do you yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: The shorthand is we call them either super specialty or
Speaker 3: specialty adopters. Okay, And I'll explain those well. First of all,
Speaker 3: specialty coffee is our term for coffee that is better
Speaker 3: for some reason.
Speaker 2: So it has attributes to it.
Speaker 3: That make it more valuable or more desirable to people.
Speaker 3: It tastes better, it comes from a certain place that
Speaker 3: they care about. It's the opposite of commodity coffee.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: So coffee can qualify for being specially in a bunch
Speaker 3: of different ways. Anyway, that's why I work for the
Speaker 3: Specially Coffee Association.
Speaker 2: That's a good stuff.
Speaker 3: But when we started looking at the behavior of specially
Speaker 3: coffee consumers, we see these two groups emerge. One we
Speaker 3: call it the super specialty people, and these are the perfectionists.
Speaker 3: These are people who use the scale, you know, care
Speaker 3: a lot about the origin of their coffee or the
Speaker 3: particulars about how dark it's roasted, and really want to
Speaker 3: get into the technicalities of coffee. That's one kind of consumer.
Speaker 3: Then there's another kind of consumer, and we call them adopters.
Speaker 3: For them, coffee is a experience and it's more about
Speaker 3: self care and.
Speaker 2: It's about enjoyment.
Speaker 3: So an adopter is more likely to go and get
Speaker 3: a funny drink with ingredients in it. You know, that's
Speaker 3: me is more likely to be open to both a
Speaker 3: truck stop coffee and a high end coffee shop in
Speaker 3: a city, whereas a super has to be dialed in,
Speaker 3: you know, that's their whole thing. And so these two
Speaker 3: groups sort of coexist in an interesting way. I would
Speaker 3: say I'm more of an adopter. I'm myself. I'm like you.
Speaker 3: I'm broadly open to lots of different coffee experiences. But
Speaker 3: at the same time, I know that there is some
Speaker 3: benefit to getting technical. You know, once you start measuring stuff,
Speaker 3: it can improve things a lot.
Speaker 1: So, according to a study commissioned by the Specialty Coffee
Speaker 1: Association by an independent research group in twenty sixteen, both
Speaker 1: trashy or not snoppy open minded adopters like me and
Speaker 1: supers like my brother in law Chris, who has good taste,
Speaker 1: prefer to drink coffee in the morning, which is no surprise.
Speaker 1: But in the study of two hundred and fifty participants,
Speaker 1: the researchers noted that the majority of soupers buy whole
Speaker 1: bean coffee and prefer to grind their own fresh, while
Speaker 1: adopters go for the ground coffee. And I would like
Speaker 1: to note that before living with my husband, who grinds
Speaker 1: his fresh, I drink instant coffee, so people can change.
Speaker 1: Although like many other adopters, I tend to drink my
Speaker 1: coffee kind of like an infant wood, adding a brazen
Speaker 1: amount of milk or cream, sometimes marshmallows if I'm feeling sassy. Now.
Speaker 1: Soupers are more likely to use plant milk and natural sweeteners,
Speaker 1: if anything at all. They also probably pay their car
Speaker 1: registration on time and understand what a roth ira is
Speaker 1: or if it's pronounced ira. But let's not get ahead
Speaker 1: of ourselves. What was your first cup of coffee? Do
Speaker 1: you remember?
Speaker 3: I don't remember my first cup of coffee in my life.
Speaker 3: My grandfather was like a legendary coffee drinker.
Speaker 1: Really.
Speaker 3: I come from a big Sicilian American family and he
Speaker 3: was known in the family as being the guy who
Speaker 3: loves coffee. He would start a pot in the morning,
Speaker 3: drink it with breakfast, start another pot, and at lunchtime
Speaker 3: he would switch to iced coffee, and then he would
Speaker 3: drink coffee with us to day. And I remember one
Speaker 3: of my favorite memories with him is he would carry
Speaker 3: a thermous of coffee around with him and we would
Speaker 3: stop at a park bench, you know, when we were
Speaker 3: hanging out, and he would drink.
Speaker 2: Coffee and he would share it with me.
Speaker 3: I'm sure, so I'm quite sure that that was the context.
Speaker 3: It was my grandparents giving me coffee milk.
Speaker 1: By coffee milk. My first cup of coffee I still
Speaker 1: remember was a bottled Maxwell House affair that came on
Speaker 1: the market in high school, right as my skills in
Speaker 1: procrastination were truly developing. It was called.
Speaker 2: Capios Capio milk, a splashyled chocolate flavor capio cinnamon at
Speaker 2: an unexpected twist Capio.
Speaker 1: I consumed one around ten pm on a weeknight before
Speaker 1: a mid term paper was due, and I believe it
Speaker 1: ignited my lifelong love of what are essentially melted milkshakes
Speaker 1: for nervous adults.
Speaker 3: The other story I like to tell about, like the
Speaker 3: first cup of coffee is the first cup of coffee.
Speaker 2: That really made an impact on me.
Speaker 3: So I grew up in southern California, and I was
Speaker 3: kind of a weird kid, you know, like I was
Speaker 3: one of those kids that didn't fit in my favorite
Speaker 3: And when you were a weird kid in the beach
Speaker 3: town I grew up in in near San Diego, you
Speaker 3: spent time at a coffee shop. You know, That's where
Speaker 3: you went, That's where you were accepted.
Speaker 1: Sort of same same same same Okay, sah.
Speaker 2: Totally, you get it.
Speaker 3: So, through a strange coincidence, I wound up getting hired
Speaker 3: at this coffee shop. One day somebody didn't show up
Speaker 3: and they needed somebody and I was hanging around all
Speaker 3: the time, and the assistant manager threw me in apron
Speaker 3: said can you work a shift right now? And I
Speaker 3: was eighteen years old. I started working that day and
Speaker 3: I've never worked another job since. I've always worked in
Speaker 3: coffee ever since. But about three months after I started,
Speaker 3: I was standing at the counter, you know, at the
Speaker 3: espresso bar, and a coworker came up to me and
Speaker 3: with a cup of coffee and she said, taste this,
Speaker 3: and she handed it to me, and I remember everything
Speaker 3: about how that tasted. Yeah, eighteen years I can remember
Speaker 3: where I was standing. I can remember the way my
Speaker 3: shoes felt on my feet at that moment. You know,
Speaker 3: it's one of those moments where everything sort of becomes clear.
Speaker 3: And it tasted this coffee tasted like chocolate covered cherries,
Speaker 3: you know that you get at the candy store, you know,
Speaker 3: the chocolate, and it was so good, and I said,
Speaker 3: what is this? And it helped because I was fond
Speaker 3: of this coworker. I mean, she was somebody I liked
Speaker 3: and admired. And she said, it's Estate Java.
Speaker 2: Tell me more. And I'm like, what is a state Java?
Speaker 2: What does that mean? You know?
Speaker 3: And that's what started me on my journey right there,
Speaker 3: that sort of mystery of the origin of where it
Speaker 3: was and the impact of the flavor. So that was
Speaker 3: a profound moment for me. I still think about it
Speaker 3: all the time. And it was what thirty five years.
Speaker 1: Ago, mar Estate Java in a bit because it's a
Speaker 1: bonker story. Does that coworker know that you've made a
Speaker 1: life out of.
Speaker 2: Go oh, she doesn't know. She doesn't know.
Speaker 1: You have to find her I knew.
Speaker 3: I know I do need to find her and thank
Speaker 3: her for that, you know, because it really was a
Speaker 3: turning point.
Speaker 1: You have to send her this episode. Yeah, maybe, you know.
Speaker 1: I feel like one of the reasons why I can
Speaker 1: drink whatever is mostly just ignorance. I've been drinking green
Speaker 1: tea for a long time, and do not give me
Speaker 1: a bag of bed green tea. It will ruin my day.
Speaker 1: Don't give me a blueberry green tea. Don't give me
Speaker 1: a pomegranate green tea. Like I have preferences, and that's
Speaker 1: just because I'm familiar with it, and I feel like
Speaker 1: I have a little bit of an area of my
Speaker 1: life of just ignorance with coffee where I don't quite
Speaker 1: know what to look for when I'm tasting it. Can
Speaker 1: you describe some of the qualities that people who really
Speaker 1: know their coffee are looking for? And are those from
Speaker 1: different areas of the world. Are those from Ethiopia, are
Speaker 1: they Columbia, are they Java? Are they Sumatrin?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: No, that's a great question. So, first of all, a
Speaker 3: little bit of background here. Coffee is interesting because it's
Speaker 3: not something that we drink for calories or anything. People
Speaker 3: usually become attracted to it first because of the caffeine.
Speaker 3: We hear this story all the time, Like, you know,
Speaker 3: I started drinking coffee when I was in college, and
Speaker 3: I can stay up late.
Speaker 2: Yeah, introducing the capio, But then they don't.
Speaker 3: There's lots of ways people can get caffeine. They generally
Speaker 3: stick with coffee because they love the flavor. And so
Speaker 3: then what is the flavor about? So coffee is interesting
Speaker 3: because by itself, okay, it's the seed of a fruit.
Speaker 3: It looks like a cherry, grows as the seed of fruit,
Speaker 3: and it's processed and dried. Then it becomes a thing
Speaker 3: called green coffee, which is just this kind of pale,
Speaker 3: green looking seed. And that seed does not taste or
Speaker 3: smell like anything. Oh, it smells like wood. It does
Speaker 3: not resemble the smell or taste of coffee. At that stage,
Speaker 3: it has to be roasted. But then when it roasts,
Speaker 3: this coffee flavor appears. And this coffee flavor is mostly
Speaker 3: the product of myard reactions. You know, you know about
Speaker 3: myard reactions. So when there are sugars and proteins and
Speaker 3: heat all at the same place, you get these complex
Speaker 3: chemical reactions that create all sorts of interesting flavors.
Speaker 1: And the heat generally needs to reach two eighty to
Speaker 1: three thirty fahrenheit or one forty to one sixty five
Speaker 1: celsius for those amino acids and carbon and oxygen groups
Speaker 1: and the sugar to create polymers called melanoidins that make
Speaker 1: baked goods and roasted foods so droully to our brains.
Speaker 1: And also a side note, the man who discovered this
Speaker 1: in nineteen twelve, a French chemist by the name of
Speaker 1: Louis Camille Maillard, was working on p At the time,
Speaker 1: he was known for his kidney research. And those one
Speaker 1: thousand or so antioxidants called polyphenols that make coffee smell
Speaker 1: and taste. How it does those come out in your
Speaker 1: pea in case you ever have coffee pea. But before
Speaker 1: it gets to that Mayard related excretory business, yes, there
Speaker 1: is the mayard reaction that made you want to drink
Speaker 1: it in the first place, because the roasting creates the
Speaker 1: tastes and the smells sweet aromas.
Speaker 3: Now we're getting into the flavors that coffee lovers look for,
Speaker 3: which is sweetness, bitterness, acidity, or sourness, A little bit
Speaker 3: of pleasant sourness that comes from this thing that it's
Speaker 3: a fruit, and then all these aromatics, aromatics like vanilla
Speaker 3: or butter or chocolate. A lot of people, I say,
Speaker 3: their ideal coffee flavor is sort of similar to chocolate
Speaker 3: chip cookies. You know, chocolate chip cookies are buttery and
Speaker 3: sweet smelling and chocolate smelling. Yeah, those same things are
Speaker 3: components of coffee flavor too. Oh okay, sweetness, chocolate, dness,
Speaker 3: nuttingness often, so that's the core coffee flavor. Then coffee
Speaker 3: lovers like to stack on that other elements like extra
Speaker 3: roasted flavors, like those extra dark roasted flavors, bitterness, bitter,
Speaker 3: sweet kind of characters. Other people, especially tea lovers like yourselves,
Speaker 3: like lighter roasted coffees that don't have those chocolatey nutty notes.
Speaker 3: They've got floral and fruity notes, so they can smell
Speaker 3: like jasmine or like lemon. You mentioned Ethiopia. That's my
Speaker 3: favorite kind of coffee is coffees from Ethiopia that are floral.
Speaker 3: They smell like tea honestly, or like citrus. So, because
Speaker 3: coffee flavors can be so diverse, you have people loving
Speaker 3: different kinds of flavors in coffee all the time.
Speaker 1: You mentioned Ethiopia has more floral flavors. Is that the soil,
Speaker 1: is that, the rainfall, the shade.
Speaker 3: Well, yes to all those things you asked about the
Speaker 3: origin of coffee, and it is Ethiopia. Southwestern Ethiopia is
Speaker 3: where coffee grows wild, and it still grows wild today,
Speaker 3: and it evolved there a couple hundred thousand years ago.
Speaker 3: And this story has sort of lost a time. People
Speaker 3: started to interact with it, consume it whatever. There's some
Speaker 3: myths about that, but certainly people in southeastern Ethiopia started
Speaker 3: to consume it in some ways, but they didn't consume
Speaker 3: it by roasting it and brewing it like we did.
Speaker 3: They were eating it like a fruit or maybe making
Speaker 3: the tea out of its leaves. The roasting and brewing
Speaker 3: process happened in Yemen, right across the Red Sea from Ethiopia,
Speaker 3: So through various cultural exchanges, coffee made its way from
Speaker 3: southeastern Ethiopia up to the northeast, across the Red Sea
Speaker 3: to Yemen, and that's where coffee became the coffee that
Speaker 3: we know of it today.
Speaker 2: We call coffee.
Speaker 3: Its botanical term is cafea Arabica, and the Arabica comes
Speaker 3: from the part that that at that time Yemen was
Speaker 3: considered part of Arabia.
Speaker 1: News to me, there is not one species of coffee.
Speaker 1: I just figured, like domestic dogs or apples, we were
Speaker 1: talking a single genus and species, but a bunch of
Speaker 1: breeds or varieties. But no. In the genus coffee, there
Speaker 1: are over one hundred and twenty five species. However, most
Speaker 1: of what you've enjoyed is probably one of a few species.
Speaker 1: There's coffee Arabica and coffee Canephora, although Canephora is usually
Speaker 1: just called robusta because it's a little more bitter and
Speaker 1: it has a higher caffeine content. But Arabica, which has
Speaker 1: grown at higher elevations, tends to taste more floral and fruity,
Speaker 1: while robusta, which has grown at lower altitudes, is more
Speaker 1: on the bitter and strong and whisky and nutty side,
Speaker 1: some saying that it even tastes like scorched rubber, which
Speaker 1: I'm going to admit, as a person who loves a
Speaker 1: tire store, I'm actually into. But in blends, Arabica is
Speaker 1: the dominant bean, making up about three quarters of the
Speaker 1: blend and the rest might be robusta. Now so called
Speaker 1: commodity coffee like Folgers or Maxwell House. What you might
Speaker 1: buy at the grocery store is usually a mix of
Speaker 1: robusta and Arabica. Now this is weird in an Italian cafe,
Speaker 1: Like in actual Italy, your fancy espresso may have robusta
Speaker 1: beans too, because robusta beans have like a silkier mouthfeel
Speaker 1: and can give a creamier head on a shot of espresso. Now,
Speaker 1: Vietnamese coffee is mostly robusta, which is why it packs
Speaker 1: kind of a gut punch in both flavor and caffeine.
Speaker 1: But many coffee establishments in the States at least offer
Speaker 1: single origin Arabica. They don't even mess with robusta. Now,
Speaker 1: within those two types, of course, there are so many varietals. Now,
Speaker 1: there's also this species of coffee called coffee liburica or baracco,
Speaker 1: and it's native to western Africa, and it was popularized
Speaker 1: in the Philippines. And that shrub produces larger, more almond
Speaker 1: or tear drop shaped beans, and it may be hardier
Speaker 1: amid climbing global temperatures, so keep an eye on it.
Speaker 1: Liberica coffee itself, i've read, is described as sweet and nutty,
Speaker 1: even grassy, and it's used in Southeast Asia a lot.
Speaker 1: So to recap, Arabica is what is most commonly brewed,
Speaker 1: even in blends specialty coffee shops, you know, like the
Speaker 1: small chains or the local cafes where everyone who works
Speaker 1: there as hot and has maybe a septum piercing stick
Speaker 1: and pokes and makes your pour over coffee while you watch.
Speaker 1: Those places tend to use single origin Arabica beans because
Speaker 1: they have lighter and fruitier notes and more complexity in
Speaker 1: their flavors. Now, Robusta considered more of a buster mean
Speaker 1: and it's used in cheaper blends or maybe in European
Speaker 1: cafes for texture. And Liberica is this typically cheaper, often
Speaker 1: scoffed upon bean that is said to have lighter taste,
Speaker 1: almost like jackfruit, and it might become more popular as
Speaker 1: our planet rolls to a boil. Now, in terms of timing,
Speaker 1: there were waves of coffee trends, their first, second, and third,
Speaker 1: and your first wave coffee evokes of simpler time, with
Speaker 1: truck stop and diner coffee being the norm. Everyone drank
Speaker 1: the same stuff. Now, second wave represents mid tier coffee
Speaker 1: chains like Starbucks and Pets or nineties coffee shops that
Speaker 1: had those big, oversized couches that smelled like farts, and
Speaker 1: the menu features a lot of flavors, maybe a lot
Speaker 1: of syrups. And now specialty coffee shops are sometimes called
Speaker 1: third wave, with higher quality, more expensive drinks, maybe a
Speaker 1: more precious brewing experience, and a real emphasis on the
Speaker 1: bean origins and the tasting profiles. But let's go back
Speaker 1: in time to the beginning, back to Yemen when it
Speaker 1: was considered part of Arabia, and some folks were taking
Speaker 1: fruit pits and toasting them and getting jacked on caffeine.
Speaker 3: And they were the first ones to grind it, decoct
Speaker 3: it with hot water and drink it like we do today.
Speaker 1: Did they roast it as well?
Speaker 3: They roasted it. They roasted it in a pan. You
Speaker 3: can find all these old pictures of people in Yemen
Speaker 3: roasting it in a pan over coals or a flame,
Speaker 3: then grinding it with a mortar and pestle, and then
Speaker 3: steeping it in water to drink it. People think that
Speaker 3: happened about eleven hundred eighty. Oh wow, okay, yeah, so
Speaker 3: more recent than people might think. It's not super ancient
Speaker 3: in that way. Now, it could have been consumed in
Speaker 3: Ethiopia for a lot longer than that, we just don't
Speaker 3: have historical records on that. But coffee started it to
Speaker 3: break out of Ethiopia and get to the rest of
Speaker 3: the world around eleven.
Speaker 1: Hundred, so only about a thousand years ago. So ancient Romans,
Speaker 1: no one was designing aqueducts over a morning or a
Speaker 1: midnight coffee. They didn't even have tea, just wine, just
Speaker 1: wine all day. And coffee really began to develop and
Speaker 1: make a mark historically around the Henry the fifth was
Speaker 1: already doing this thing. Before that, people just raw dogged
Speaker 1: it for ages, no coffee, no antibiotics, was there toilet paper, No,
Speaker 1: that's another episode entirely.
Speaker 3: And then via the Ottoman Empire spread all throughout let's say, Arabia,
Speaker 3: the Eastern Mediterranean, partially because coffee wasn't alcohol in Muslim
Speaker 3: countries where there's a prohibition of alcohol, coffee was a
Speaker 3: good alternative. And in fact, some people theorize that the
Speaker 3: word our word coffee comes from an old Arabic word
Speaker 3: meaning wine. Really mm hmm, and some people in fact
Speaker 3: still call it the wine of Arabia.
Speaker 1: I've never heard that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it became the.
Speaker 3: Core drink among non alcohol drinkers and was very very
Speaker 3: associated with Islam and in fact Muslim religious practice because
Speaker 3: you can consume coffee and it keeps you up for
Speaker 3: your prayers.
Speaker 1: Really, And then when did it come to South America
Speaker 1: and then North America.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's an interesting story.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, So it became popular in Yemen, and there
Speaker 3: was a port in Yemen, and it was a port
Speaker 3: along the sort of spice trade routes. Right, So by
Speaker 3: this time there was trade with the Mediterranean and Europe
Speaker 3: that would go down through the Red Sea out into
Speaker 3: the Indian Ocean and all the way to the East
Speaker 3: Indies the spice islands where they would pick up clothes
Speaker 3: and nutmeg and things bring them back to Europe. And
Speaker 3: as they went they passed by Yemen. So Yemen had coffee.
Speaker 3: So coffee started being in these trade routes going to Europe.
Speaker 3: And in Europe they thought of it as sort of
Speaker 3: a spice at the time. You know, just as as
Speaker 3: clothes and nutmeg were cool spices, very flavorful, exotic to
Speaker 3: the European palate, same with coffee, and coffee began to
Speaker 3: be interest sting, and the consumption was increasing in the
Speaker 3: Ottoman Empire in Europe.
Speaker 1: Okay, just a side note, the Ottoman Empire, also called
Speaker 1: the Turkish Empire was hot shit from about the mid
Speaker 1: fourteen hundreds to the late seventeen hundreds, and in sixteen
Speaker 1: oh two what would become a giant multinational corporation, the
Speaker 1: Dutch East India Company sometimes abbreviated for the Dutch VOC
Speaker 1: so that's in sixteen oh two, and during its near
Speaker 1: two hundred year reign on commerce, it was granted the
Speaker 1: authority to start wars, to make treaties, to mint its
Speaker 1: own currency, and even take prisoners and execute them if
Speaker 1: it was feeling brutal. But the company nabbed some coffee
Speaker 1: plants and in sixteen ninety six planted them in Jakarta. Now,
Speaker 1: by the early eighteen hundreds, global colonialism in full swing.
Speaker 1: The world's superpowers were duking it out in the Napoleonic Wars,
Speaker 1: and one battleground was a series of islands in eastern Indonesia.
Speaker 3: So pretty soon then the Dutch went and decided that
Speaker 3: they were going to take over the Spice Islands okay,
Speaker 3: and they fought a war with the English over it,
Speaker 3: and they're like, we're going to control spices now, and
Speaker 3: they successfully did that, but just as they did, the
Speaker 3: bottom started to fall out of.
Speaker 2: The spice market. Really, spices started to get less popular
Speaker 2: and business has been so big, and so.
Speaker 3: They were like, what do we do now, And they
Speaker 3: thought coffee. So what they did was they actually sent
Speaker 3: spies to Yemen to steal coffee seeds and bring them
Speaker 3: to the East Indies and plant them. And they planted
Speaker 3: them on the island of Java.
Speaker 1: No, just a side note. Java is an island located
Speaker 1: northwest of Australia, with Bali to its east and Sumatra
Speaker 1: above it, and the capital of Java is Jakarta. Also,
Speaker 1: the name Java either comes from a word for distant
Speaker 1: or from the name of another indigenous plant that had
Speaker 1: nothing to do with coffee. If I were that plant,
Speaker 1: I would be pissed, because the coffee plant is not
Speaker 1: even native to Java.
Speaker 3: At another time, there was a legendary figure called Baba Boudanz,
Speaker 3: who was a Muslim from India who made his pilgrimage
Speaker 3: to Mecca also thought coffee, and he famously smuggled seven
Speaker 3: seeds below his belt and brought them to India. So
Speaker 3: in both cases sort of surreptitiously, coffee was stolen from
Speaker 3: Yemen and planted in India and what we now call
Speaker 3: Indonesia on the island of Java.
Speaker 2: No, so that's why we call coffee Java.
Speaker 1: That makes sense.
Speaker 2: The Dutch were.
Speaker 3: Really good at exploiting the local population to build these
Speaker 3: coffee estates, and suddenly the island of Java was the
Speaker 3: biggest producer of coffee in the world. And then they
Speaker 3: took the title from Yemen. And the port in Yemen
Speaker 3: that I keep referring to is called the port of Mocha.
Speaker 3: So that's another word that we associate with coffee, right,
Speaker 3: So you've heard of mocha Java. Yeah, Yeah, that's the story.
Speaker 3: It's Mocha is this port in Yemen, Java is this
Speaker 3: island in Indonesia.
Speaker 1: And apparently people would call coffee a portmanteau of Java,
Speaker 1: Mocha Jamocha, which legend has it has just been shortened
Speaker 1: to a cup of joe.
Speaker 3: We did it joe. Although Yemen unfortunately has been racked
Speaker 3: by war for decades at this point, but you can
Speaker 3: still get some really amazing old school style coffees from Yemen.
Speaker 3: It's almost gone it's a tradition that's almost gone. And
Speaker 3: those estates that I told you about in Java still
Speaker 3: exist really And in fact, that coffee that I told
Speaker 3: you about, my first like formational cup of coffee that
Speaker 3: was from one of those estates in Java called Jumpit
Speaker 3: in East Java, and I got to visit there later
Speaker 3: in my career. But that's another story. So now here's
Speaker 3: another interesting story. One of the other places that coffee
Speaker 3: was planted was in Ceylon, which we now call Sri Lanka,
Speaker 3: and there they noticed that the coffee leaves were turning
Speaker 3: brown and then when a coffee leave trees, lead would
Speaker 3: get this brown dust on it. The tree would die
Speaker 3: within a year. So they identified the problem and it
Speaker 3: was a disease we now call it coffee leaf rust.
Speaker 3: It's a fungal disease that affects coffee and it wiped
Speaker 3: out coffee in Sri Lanka within a few years.
Speaker 2: Well this sucks. Then it appeared in Java.
Speaker 1: Oh no.
Speaker 3: In the middle of the nineteenth century, it appeared in Java,
Speaker 3: and they're like, oh no, and it basically wiped out
Speaker 3: the coffee industry in Java. More colonists, this time French ones,
Speaker 3: brought a single seedling of coffee to the island of
Speaker 3: Martinique in the Caribbean, and that was the coffee that
Speaker 3: started Latin American coffee. Oh and so by the time
Speaker 3: that coffee sort of collapsed in Java, it was just
Speaker 3: coming up in Latin America. And that's why Latin America,
Speaker 3: you know, Brazil and Columbia are the biggest coffee producers
Speaker 3: in the world today. And it's because they were kind
Speaker 3: of at the right place in the right time when
Speaker 3: coffee sort of collapsed in Southeast Asia.
Speaker 1: And do they still retain those flavors because of just
Speaker 1: varietals or is it the environment?
Speaker 2: Yes, well both.
Speaker 3: So one interesting thing about that story I told you
Speaker 3: is remember I told you coffee was getting stolen and
Speaker 3: hidden in places. So every time that happened, that's sort
Speaker 3: of a genetic bottleneck because they're only bringing a few
Speaker 3: seedlings from place to place, and so the variet a
Speaker 3: very idiosyncratic to where these places are because they are
Speaker 3: descended from only a few seedlings except in one place,
Speaker 3: and that place is Ethiopia, which still has all of
Speaker 3: its natural genetic diversity in it. So Ethiopia is this country,
Speaker 3: It's coffee has a huge amount of genetic diversity anywhere
Speaker 3: outside of Ethiopia, the genetic diversity is much less. However,
Speaker 3: there are varieties that are out there and they, just
Speaker 3: as your intuition tells you, they do, determine coffee flavor
Speaker 3: where they're grown in addition to microclimates, so coffee is
Speaker 3: very sensitive to climate and it tends to express itself
Speaker 3: in different ways depending on what the climate is.
Speaker 1: Can you give me a quick rundown of like you're
Speaker 1: going to get these notes from this place, like if
Speaker 1: you are new to coffee, or if you want to
Speaker 1: appreciate it in more than a blueberry truck stop way,
Speaker 1: what should you look for? Because my loves coffee and
Speaker 1: I want to appreciate what he appreciates, and I just
Speaker 1: don't really know what to look for. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: coming at this like the you know, ask our people
Speaker 1: not smart questions.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you've asked a question that I love to get.
Speaker 3: This is like this, this is a great thing, and
Speaker 3: I'm going to try to do it in the most
Speaker 3: concise way because as you might imagine, there's like an
Speaker 3: infinity of this. But I'm going to try to break
Speaker 3: it down for you as much as I can there's
Speaker 3: two things. One is geography and the other is process.
Speaker 3: So like there's red wine and white wine. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 3: those are different processes, right. You know, red wine they
Speaker 3: ferment it with the skins and stuff, and it gives
Speaker 3: it all that color, but it also changes the flavor,
Speaker 3: whereas white wine they ferment the juice, and they're two
Speaker 3: big different flavor categories and different grapes and stuff too.
Speaker 3: In coffee, we've got a division like that, and it's
Speaker 3: washed coffee versus unwashed or natural coffee. And the difference
Speaker 3: there is whether they leave the skin on when it's drying.
Speaker 3: Oh So, if you take the skin off and you
Speaker 3: kind of wash the fruit off the seed and then
Speaker 3: you dry it, it's got a much cleaner, more transparent flavor.
Speaker 3: It tastes more like just coffee if you dry it
Speaker 3: within its fruit, if you just pluck it from the
Speaker 3: tree and dry it in the sun, then it sort
Speaker 3: of ferments inside that fruit and it creates these really
Speaker 3: intense fruity flavors. And oftentimes you've mentioned blueberry a couple
Speaker 3: of times. Oftentimes that coffee can taste like blueberries. Oh wow,
Speaker 3: but it's not blueberries. It's the fruit of the coffee itself.
Speaker 3: So that's a big difference. If you don't like that fruity,
Speaker 3: fermented flavor, you're not going to like those natural coffees.
Speaker 3: Some people love that. Some people, you know, you'll give
Speaker 3: them one of these things and it smells like strawberries
Speaker 3: or like blueberries and they're like, yes, this is my coffee.
Speaker 3: Other people are like no, no, no, What I want is
Speaker 3: the clean coffee like flavors of a washed coffee. So
Speaker 3: that's the first big division.
Speaker 1: So washed versus unwashed is the process, and one removes
Speaker 1: the fruit or cherry which is not actually a cherry
Speaker 1: but whatever, the beans not really beans either, but washed
Speaker 1: coffee removes the cherry before drying and the skin of
Speaker 1: the fruit. If you're like what do they do with that?
Speaker 1: It can be used as fertilizer or dried and brewed
Speaker 1: like a more mildly caffeinated kind of fruit like tea
Speaker 1: called cashier in Ethiopia, or it's called cascara, which means
Speaker 1: husk in Spanish. But what about the raw materials? Who grows?
Speaker 2: What?
Speaker 3: Where?
Speaker 1: Why? How?
Speaker 3: Then there's some geographical divisions. They produce both natural and
Speaker 3: washed coffees in Ethiopia, and they tend to be either
Speaker 3: very fruity for the natural ones or floral and fruity
Speaker 3: with the washed ones.
Speaker 1: Got it okay?
Speaker 3: Same with Kenyon coffee. Coffee can be bright, a lot
Speaker 3: of acid, a lot of fruit nottes. Latin American coffees
Speaker 3: tend to be washed, and they tend to be coffee coffees,
Speaker 3: sweet aromatics like vanilla and nuts, some fruit sometimes but
Speaker 3: not as pronounced as African coffees.
Speaker 1: So Ethiopian coffees you may taste sweeter, fruitier notes. And
Speaker 1: in South America or Latin American coffees, which tend to
Speaker 1: have the fruit stripped off before they dry, they may
Speaker 1: have more of that chocolate chip cookie vibe. And now
Speaker 1: I'm realizing from this episode, I don't really taste coffee
Speaker 1: when I drink it. I taste milk sugar. So perhaps
Speaker 1: a black coffee is just going to be my next order,
Speaker 1: so I actually taste what I'm tasting. Now, those are
Speaker 1: some flavor notes.
Speaker 3: But coffees from Southeast Asia like Indonesia still exists, and
Speaker 3: they tend to have really deep, rich body, meaning the
Speaker 3: texture in your mouth. You know that sometimes when you
Speaker 3: drink coffee and you still have that even after you're done,
Speaker 3: you still kind of feel the coffee inside your mouth
Speaker 3: and you're still tasting it, Like you're driving to work
Speaker 3: and you're still tasting it half an hour later.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like a silkiness kind of Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: Indonesian coffees have that, we call that heavy body. Classically,
Speaker 3: coffees from Sumatra and Java have that property. So when
Speaker 3: I'm talking to somebody like your husband about what kind
Speaker 3: of coffee they like, I start to ask them questions.
Speaker 3: You know, a lot of times it's like about floral
Speaker 3: and fruity, how they feel about that, how they feel
Speaker 3: about chocolate, whether they like dark roasted. Then there's roasting,
Speaker 3: of course, like dark roasted versus light roasted, and you
Speaker 3: can zero in on people's preferences pretty quickly and pretty cleanly.
Speaker 1: I understand that there's a big flimplant when it comes
Speaker 1: to blonde coffees versus like a dark French roast, where
Speaker 1: people think because it is deep and dark and bold flavor,
Speaker 1: with roast oily beans, you've got more caffeine. It's really
Speaker 1: the opposite.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is technically opposite, except the difference is very
Speaker 3: very much. Oh, Okay, the caffeine really isn't that different.
Speaker 3: What really changes the caffeine is how much coffee you
Speaker 3: decide to use to make your cup of coffee.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I guess that's a good point.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean people sometimes talk about, well it's more roasted
Speaker 3: or less roasted, that affects the caffeine. But then they're
Speaker 3: using radically different amounts of coffee when they're brewing it,
Speaker 3: you know, and that's what's really affecting it.
Speaker 1: So with a very deeply roasted coffee, people may use
Speaker 1: fewer beans because there's so much flavor, But with a
Speaker 1: lighter roast, they're going heavier on the grams of grounds. Now,
Speaker 1: are you a third wave coffee person and you're cringing
Speaker 1: at the mention of French roast. Let's talk about it.
Speaker 1: Let's unpack it. I understand coffee connoisseurs not as big
Speaker 1: a fan of the oily dark French. Like I know
Speaker 1: my husband and his friends, if they see a being,
Speaker 1: they're like, it's trash. I have other friends that are
Speaker 1: like French roast only. Yeah, matter of preference. But in
Speaker 1: this coffee science world, what is correct? Well, you can
Speaker 1: offend people it's fine.
Speaker 3: So from a science perspective, and I'll tell you this personally,
Speaker 3: science tries to be not normative.
Speaker 2: You know. Yeah, people like what they like and let
Speaker 2: them like it.
Speaker 3: And that's my own opinion too. As I've told you,
Speaker 3: I've worked in coffee a long time. When I was
Speaker 3: starting in coffee, this sort of coffee snob attitude was exactly.
Speaker 2: The opposite of what it is now.
Speaker 1: Really.
Speaker 3: Yeah, in those days, the darker the roast, the better.
Speaker 3: People had a like a sort of a gourmet ideology
Speaker 3: about that, like only bad companies roast light. Dark roasting
Speaker 3: is the way to go.
Speaker 2: All the cool kids are doing nowadays.
Speaker 3: And then just over time, because culinary trends change, the
Speaker 3: ideology totally shifted and then it went to where the
Speaker 3: coffee snobs were like, no, no, no, we don't like dark
Speaker 3: roast anymore.
Speaker 2: We'd like light roast.
Speaker 3: You know, people on both sides will explain why they're
Speaker 3: right and everybody else is wrong. But from a research perspective,
Speaker 3: it's just that people like different things, you know. To me,
Speaker 3: that's the glory of actually food science, because food science
Speaker 3: is dedicated to understanding why people like different things and
Speaker 3: understanding how they do, and of course they do, because
Speaker 3: that's why we have menus in restaurants. You know, if
Speaker 3: everyone liked the same thing, there would be no point,
Speaker 3: you know, to having a menu in a restaurant. People
Speaker 3: like different things by nature, and to me, that's the
Speaker 3: real answer. There are good reasons, I think, to like
Speaker 3: dark roasted coffees, just like there are good reasons to
Speaker 3: like you know, Cajun blackened catfish.
Speaker 1: A Bert marshmallow, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 2: That's a fantastic example.
Speaker 3: Or you know, I mean there's a similar controversy and
Speaker 3: wine between natural wines and I guess they call it
Speaker 3: traditional style or something. The funky flavors and wine, or
Speaker 3: like beer, you know, there's controversies on how happy you
Speaker 3: want beer to be or anyway, from my perspective, it's
Speaker 3: more about understanding what motivates people. Coffee purists, you know,
Speaker 3: like a coffee buyer, like somebody whose job it is
Speaker 3: to like go out and seek delicious coffee. They'll tend
Speaker 3: to like light roasted coffees because it's sort of easier
Speaker 3: to taste.
Speaker 2: The regional differences. Yeah, when it's more lightly.
Speaker 1: Roasted, well question, maybe you get this, Maybe you don't do.
Speaker 1: What's the best cure for coffee breath?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 3: What a good question I have never You mean coffee
Speaker 3: breath that other people smell or coffee persistent coffee taste
Speaker 3: in your own mouth.
Speaker 1: I would say either or both. If you've just had
Speaker 1: a really strong coffee and then let's say you've got
Speaker 1: to get a dental exam or you're going to kiss
Speaker 1: some one who does not drink coffee. Is there anything
Speaker 1: that works well for it? Because some people can drink
Speaker 1: coffee and.
Speaker 2: Don't have coffee.
Speaker 1: Just water, just water, just hydrate.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean that's not something I know. I've never ever.
Speaker 3: You're the first person ever to asked me that question,
Speaker 3: and I'm sympathetic to it. I went to the dentist
Speaker 3: last week and I had that thought, like, am I
Speaker 3: going to turn them off?
Speaker 1: You know, by now they know your job?
Speaker 3: Should I not have that second cup of coffee?
Speaker 1: Okay? This is huge, so huge, huge. So apparently what
Speaker 1: causes bad breath are volatile organic compounds like hydrogen sulfide,
Speaker 1: which smells like rotten eggs, methylware captain, which smells like
Speaker 1: rotten cabbage, and dimethyl sulfide, which smells like decaying fish
Speaker 1: or pro pain according to people who have had to
Speaker 1: do this professionally, and these are produced by bacteria. And
Speaker 1: because coffee contains caffeine around one hundred to one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty milligrams per cup for brood and about seventy
Speaker 1: five milligrams per shot of espresso, it can dehydrate you
Speaker 1: and it can lead to a drier mouth, which means
Speaker 1: that the decreased saliva is not washing away trapped food
Speaker 1: particles or the bacteria that are farting gases as they
Speaker 1: munch on your mouth debris. So it's the decrease in
Speaker 1: saliva that's a major culprit. And black coffee drinkers, perhaps
Speaker 1: supers among us sit back feel superior because guess what
Speaker 1: bacteria love. They love the proteins and sugar in cream
Speaker 1: and sweeteners, So that is really what's doing us in adopters.
Speaker 1: It's not the coffee necessarily, folks. So let me I'm
Speaker 1: as straightened lapels, and like a defense attorney on behalf
Speaker 1: of coffee. I will present evidence in the form of
Speaker 1: a twenty twenty one paper titled Efficacy of Arabic coffee
Speaker 1: and black tea in reducing helotosis a randomized, double blind,
Speaker 1: controlled crossover clinical trial which measured volunteers baseline breath with
Speaker 1: a portable oral spectrometer. Thank god it was a machine
Speaker 1: and gave them a solution that would cause malodorous bacteria
Speaker 1: to proliferate. According to the study. Then they had the
Speaker 1: volunteer swish with water, mouthwash, black tea, or black Arabica coffee,
Speaker 1: and then they measure their breath again with the gadget. Now,
Speaker 1: the mouthwash helped, the water somehow did nothing. The green
Speaker 1: tea helped. But a champion for decreasing those sulfurous compounds
Speaker 1: was yes, the plain black coffee. So long story, try
Speaker 1: drinking it straight up and also have plenty of water
Speaker 1: and don't worry as much about the plane coffee. Also,
Speaker 1: clean your mouth, brush your tongue, and your life will improve,
Speaker 1: so will other people's around you. Now, if you're still
Speaker 1: worried that your breath is dissolving the ozone layer, you
Speaker 1: should know via the twenty twenty three paper titled Succinctly Halatosis,
Speaker 1: that there are two types of bad breath you ready for.
Speaker 1: This one is genuine, in which up to eighty five
Speaker 1: percent of the cases have something to do with what
Speaker 1: mossy abominations are growing in your mouth. And then this second,
Speaker 1: more insidious type of holatosis called delusional or pseudohlatosis, in
Speaker 1: which a patient may insist they have stinky breath, but
Speaker 1: others are like, you're good man. So when in doubt,
Speaker 1: ask a loved one, and when still in doubt, pay
Speaker 1: a doctor to tell you the truth. Or I guess,
Speaker 1: get one of those gadgets. But as long as we
Speaker 1: are hanging out in your orifices, let's go a little deeper.
Speaker 1: Let's go much deeper to a question. I just had
Speaker 1: a gut feeling. I had to ask, do people ask
Speaker 1: you what is the best coffee to get you to
Speaker 1: the bathroom in the morning, Because I know that a
Speaker 1: lot of people don't like to talk about or maybe
Speaker 1: they do if they are my husband talk about the
Speaker 1: coffee just being go time.
Speaker 2: That is so true.
Speaker 3: I mean people talk to me about that all the time.
Speaker 1: What is it in coffee?
Speaker 3: There's no research I know about that predicts that same thing.
Speaker 3: This isn't so common anymore, But back when I was
Speaker 3: starting in coffee, it was a cigarette and a coffee.
Speaker 3: Oh really, people wanted a cigarette and a coffee and
Speaker 3: then going to the bathroom.
Speaker 2: Was there like thing that was the Yeah?
Speaker 1: Okay, well I know almost zero actual habitual smokers because
Speaker 1: I live in LA and people are afraid of wrinkles
Speaker 1: unless it's outside a bar at closing, when apparently no
Speaker 1: one is worried about anything. I'm often surrounded instead by vapors.
Speaker 1: And yes, indeed, vaping nicotine products will also give you
Speaker 1: VIP expedited access to a morning poop. And nicotine is
Speaker 1: a stimulant, right, It tells your intestines let's get hype
Speaker 1: butthole and smoking a cigarette delivers about one milligram of nicotine,
Speaker 1: and a forty milligram vaping cartridge is equivalent to about
Speaker 1: two packs of cigarettes. Now, if you're wondering about those
Speaker 1: nicotine pouches or snooze that everyone lately has been like
Speaker 1: talking between their lips and their gums like ZI, which
Speaker 1: side note is owned by Philip Morris, a lower dose
Speaker 1: pouch is about one cigarettes worth of nicotine and a
Speaker 1: regular dose is about three cigarettes worth of nicotine. And
Speaker 1: for more on smoking and how tobacco companies do not
Speaker 1: care if you die, you can listen to the Agnetology
Speaker 1: episode on Willful Ignorance by Stanford professor doctor Robert Proctor.
Speaker 1: But yes, if you find that these products do affect
Speaker 1: your bowels, please note that these are called nickshits, or
Speaker 1: if you're using actual chewing tobacco, then they are dipshits.
Speaker 1: I'm told I have a friend that insists stumptown every
Speaker 1: time she's got it. Really, she's feeling like her fill
Speaker 1: all back. She goes there, Yes, she gets it. She
Speaker 1: gets a cold brown bottle.
Speaker 2: You know who you are.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, okay, so I think that what's happening there
Speaker 3: is that's pretty strong coffee, meaning okay, the ratio of
Speaker 3: coffee to water is such that she's.
Speaker 2: Getting a little bit more coffee than normal.
Speaker 1: I think that's the reason that might be it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I have so many questions from listeners. Can I
Speaker 1: lob some at you?
Speaker 2: Oh? Sure?
Speaker 1: Amazing, because I figure I have all these questions in
Speaker 1: my mind too, but I might as well ask them
Speaker 1: from them. Okay, But before we take the coffee break,
Speaker 1: for sponsors and partners of the show, we will donate
Speaker 1: to a charity of Peter's choice, and this week he
Speaker 1: asked to go to Irvine, California based Coffee Science Foundation,
Speaker 1: a support organization in the research arm of the Specialty
Speaker 1: Coffee Association, and the Coffee Science Foundation aims to understand
Speaker 1: coffee and secure its future through research, knowledge building, and outreach.
Speaker 1: So a donation will go toward for the research, and
Speaker 1: that was made possible biology sponsors. Okay, we're back. Let's
Speaker 1: grind through your questions. So a totally understandable and nagging
Speaker 1: moral question was on the minds of patrons Tia Danilovic,
Speaker 1: Chandler Wutherington, Kathleen Carlson, Taylor, Clinton, beck Ally, and Julian
Speaker 1: Eric Anderson and Will who asked what labels like free
Speaker 1: trade are actually meaningful when it comes to coffee now
Speaker 1: side note, because the top coffees are grown at elevation,
Speaker 1: harvesting machines are typically not employed, but people are, and
Speaker 1: patron Gwen Kelly said, I love my coffee, but I
Speaker 1: cringe a little every time I think about all the
Speaker 1: people who have to stand all day next to a
Speaker 1: bush or tree picking it one bean at a time,
Speaker 1: which is how they do that. And another side note,
Speaker 1: each cup of coffee that you drink has about fifty
Speaker 1: five beans worth. Now patron. Maya said, oh boy, oh boy,
Speaker 1: I love, love, love coffee, and I'm sad because it's evil.
Speaker 1: So I try to buy from roasters that deal directly
Speaker 1: with farmers. Biggest question, Maya rites, is their ethical coffee
Speaker 1: and how do you find it? Let's talk sustainability and ethics.
Speaker 1: Feline Earl of Gramlekin, David the Altruistic Misanthroat, Lena Brodsky,
Speaker 1: Don w Noah, Pastana, Marine Ford, Violetta, David Barker, Nicolette.
Speaker 1: A lot of people wanted to know, in char Harrison's words,
Speaker 1: how can we reduce the exploitation of bean growers and harvesters.
Speaker 1: Filline wanted to know, is there any actual ethical way
Speaker 1: of consuming and buying coffee? What are the dynamics of
Speaker 1: the industry, what's the best way to consume it or
Speaker 1: what to look for?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's great question.
Speaker 3: So, first of all, as somebody who works in the
Speaker 3: coffee industry, this is something that the coffee industry talks
Speaker 3: to itself about all the time, because we're an industry
Speaker 3: that's based on pleasure and enjoyment of the world, and
Speaker 3: nobody likes the idea of exploitation in this system. Even
Speaker 3: the bigger companies are really actively trying to be engaged
Speaker 3: with this issue. And so what you'll find is that
Speaker 3: companies will often be engaged and will tell you about
Speaker 3: what they're trying to do about this, about ensuring the
Speaker 3: way I think the question was put was like ensuring
Speaker 3: that no one was being exploited in the production of
Speaker 3: this coffee something like that, and coffee roasters will often
Speaker 3: tell you about it. Now, because I do research, one
Speaker 3: of the things that we're interested in doing is figuring
Speaker 3: out which of these strategies is actually effective in enhancing
Speaker 3: people's livelihoods, etc. Because it's not only about avoiding exploitation,
Speaker 3: although that's important. It's about avoiding exploitation and making sure
Speaker 3: that people can prosper by their participation in coffee and
Speaker 3: figuring out you know, some people make personal visits to
Speaker 3: coffee farms a big part of like how they source
Speaker 3: their coffee, and that's good because they're present and they
Speaker 3: feel like, well, I can see it. Other people rely
Speaker 3: on certifications where third parties let go in and have
Speaker 3: a checklist and they say, can we see the places,
Speaker 3: whether the pick or sleep, can we you know, talk
Speaker 3: to them and they do and so I would say
Speaker 3: there's no one size fits all solution to this.
Speaker 2: I will say also that this is.
Speaker 3: Where technology is helping a lot, because now using things
Speaker 3: like blockchain and you know, simple as cell phones, you're
Speaker 3: able to really track the source of the coffee. So
Speaker 3: people are using these and also regulatory bodies are saying, look,
Speaker 3: you have to prove that there's no human rights abuses
Speaker 3: in your supply chain, and companies can do that because
Speaker 3: they've got the electronic tracking, you know that goes all
Speaker 3: the way back to the farm. So yeah, I would
Speaker 3: say the answer to that is ask the question of
Speaker 3: wherever you get your coffee and listen to their answer
Speaker 3: and then use your judgment if you feel like that
Speaker 3: resonates positively with you. I feel like most of the
Speaker 3: companies that are talking about it are sincere in their
Speaker 3: attempts to improve the situation.
Speaker 1: Can you say any coffee brands or growers that you
Speaker 1: admire for the way they're handling it, or are there
Speaker 1: just kind of too many on the scene.
Speaker 3: I'll mention a couple that I think are One I
Speaker 3: think is really interesting here in California is called Pacha Mama.
Speaker 3: They're in Sacramento and they're interesting because they're actually owned
Speaker 3: by coffee growers, like cooperatives of coffee growers in Latin
Speaker 3: America and Africa actually own this coffee worsting company that's
Speaker 3: in Sacramento, Wow, which is unusual. Right, it's a coffee
Speaker 3: grower cooperative thing. That's unusual, and it's interesting for that reason.
Speaker 3: But I would also say that you know, larger companies
Speaker 3: that people are familiar with that people may distress are
Speaker 3: often have their act really together and they're doing a
Speaker 3: very good job.
Speaker 2: They take it very seriously.
Speaker 3: You know, they've got their commitments and they're doing it
Speaker 3: and they're living up to their commitments. But small, smaller companies,
Speaker 3: and there's way too many to list, who are like
Speaker 3: actively engaged in their own supply chains are interesting and
Speaker 3: good do for that reason.
Speaker 1: So what measures our industry standard and are any companies
Speaker 1: doing it well? So? According to Peter's twenty twenty three
Speaker 1: paper Understanding Sustainability Interventions an Assessment of Experimental evidence in
Speaker 1: the Coffee sector, he says almost everyone in coffee is
Speaker 1: aware that coffee is an essential livelihood for millions of
Speaker 1: coffee producers, but among the more than twelve point five
Speaker 1: million farmers worldwide who rely on coffee cultivation as their
Speaker 1: primary source of income. At least five point five million,
Speaker 1: almost half live below the international poverty line of three
Speaker 1: dollars and twenty cents a day now. In a report
Speaker 1: by NBC News this past January in Brazil, officials in
Speaker 1: the international labor sector have zeroed in on major coffee
Speaker 1: chain suppliers over abusive and unsafe labor practices, including garnishing
Speaker 1: the cost of harvesting equipment from farm workers' wages, not
Speaker 1: providing clean drinking water and bathrooms, and employing underaged workers,
Speaker 1: and that NBC report continues that over a dozen workers
Speaker 1: in the last few years have been rescued from quote
Speaker 1: modern slavery by inspect in Brazil. Now, many large international chains,
Speaker 1: the ones that you might get at the airport or
Speaker 1: at the mall, they adhere to verifications and certification programs
Speaker 1: for sustainable and ethical trade coffee, but some of those
Speaker 1: certification programs are set up by the coffee chain itself. Now.
Speaker 1: Peter says that looking into your favorite coffee brands record
Speaker 1: and sources is important, or buying from known brands that
Speaker 1: are farmer owned like Pachamama Coffee or I've read good
Speaker 1: things about Brandywine Onyx mad Cap coffee, and you can
Speaker 1: also look into coffee co ops, or you can do
Speaker 1: your own research and ask local roasters or cafes, which
Speaker 1: also gives you the benefit of getting more info about
Speaker 1: the origin and the flavors of what you're drinking. So
Speaker 1: creepy practices and straight up human rights violations don't leave
Speaker 1: a bad taste in your mouth. Now, speaking of shady business,
Speaker 1: a lot of people wanted to know about shade grown
Speaker 1: Sarah Cheney, San Juan Josie, Marine flood, Molly h Is
Speaker 1: what exactly parn Sarah's words? What's the deal with the
Speaker 1: shade grown coffee and why is that considered more environmentally friendly?
Speaker 1: I don't know what shade grown coffee means.
Speaker 3: I'm so encouraged to hear that question, because I'm sometimes
Speaker 3: skeptical that that's something that we talk about in the
Speaker 3: industry but people don't know about outside the industry. And
Speaker 3: it's so great that your listeners know about it. I
Speaker 3: guess I shouldn't be surprised, but it's wonderful to hear.
Speaker 3: So here's the deal. Shade coffee is indigenous to Ethiopia,
Speaker 3: as I said, and it evolved as a understory shrub
Speaker 3: under larger canopy of trees. So it's sort of evolutionarily
Speaker 3: likes some protection from direct sun. So coffee can be
Speaker 3: farmed in that way where you either don't cut a
Speaker 3: forest down, you just sort of clear the underbrush and
Speaker 3: plant the coffee underneath the big trees. You can do
Speaker 3: it that way, or you can intentionally plant coffee and
Speaker 3: then all so plant shade trees over it. Now, there's
Speaker 3: a body of evidence that's very persuasive that shows that
Speaker 3: these kinds of shade grown coffee plantations are positive from
Speaker 3: an ecological point of view.
Speaker 2: In other words, native species use the trees.
Speaker 3: It might not be exactly the same as like an
Speaker 3: untouched forest, but it's pretty good. There's lots and sometimes
Speaker 3: in some cases even better. There's lots of wildlife in
Speaker 3: these shape grown plantations.
Speaker 1: And while some folks say they don't taste a noticeable
Speaker 1: difference in shade grown coffee, others insist that since the
Speaker 1: fruit matures more slowly in the shade, the beans inside
Speaker 1: take on a sweeter and more fruity taste than those
Speaker 1: grown in full sun, which can cause a plant to
Speaker 1: overbear fruit, and Peter explains.
Speaker 3: Now there's another alternative. The other alternative is take away
Speaker 3: all the trees and just grow coffee in full sun.
Speaker 3: Breed the coffee so that it's tolerant to full sun,
Speaker 3: and you get more productivity that way, But of course
Speaker 3: you don't get all of the environmental benefits, right, Okay,
Speaker 3: So shade grown is a positive thing, and from an
Speaker 3: environmental perspective, there's one little small caveat which is if
Speaker 3: you're growing in full sun. And there's some farmers that
Speaker 3: take this approach is, look, I'm going to grow in
Speaker 3: full sun over here, but I'm going to leave the
Speaker 3: forest untouched over here, and rather than integrating them all together,
Speaker 3: keep them separate, do full sun.
Speaker 1: So think of those like a hybrid car of sorts.
Speaker 1: But yes, shade grown in general makes for a happier
Speaker 1: ecosystem if you were to ask the birds and the
Speaker 1: bees and the bats.
Speaker 3: It's broadly thought of as being an environmentally positive way
Speaker 3: to grow coffee. The challenging part about shade it's a
Speaker 3: little bit subjective. You can call it a farm, a
Speaker 3: shade grown farm with only a few trees, or with
Speaker 3: lots of trees, and that's where you know, people in
Speaker 3: the industry kind of argue with each other, but in general,
Speaker 3: shade is a positive thing.
Speaker 1: How do you feel about goats? Did someone asked? Several
Speaker 1: people asked, Hither Crane, Patrick Duffy, hr Harrison, Meghan Walker,
Speaker 1: Danny Kirby, What animal when it comes to coffee is
Speaker 1: the greatest of all time? Getting back to the origins
Speaker 1: a little bit, if there is, Meg and Walker says,
Speaker 1: just a story about the goats acting funny after eating
Speaker 1: coffee berries have any chance of being true?
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, flim flamma's is not the word I would choose.
Speaker 3: It's a mythos. Let's call it a mythos. Okay, I know, Okay,
Speaker 3: I'm actually really interested in this. I actually have a
Speaker 3: little bit of a background in folklore. I'm interested in
Speaker 3: folklore as a subject. And one thing that I learned
Speaker 3: while investigating this question for myself is there's kind of
Speaker 3: a lot of myths in the Mediterranean and East Africa
Speaker 3: and Arabian stuff about goats discovering things. Okay, and here's
Speaker 3: one example there. There's a Greek story about a shepherd
Speaker 3: with a goat, and the goat starts acting funny and
Speaker 3: around the hole in the ground. There's a hole in
Speaker 3: the ground and gases are coming up from it, and
Speaker 3: the goat is acting funny. And it turns out that
Speaker 3: when people come over this hole, they start to have visions,
Speaker 3: and they wound up building the Temple of Apollo at
Speaker 3: Delphi on the site that was the discovery of the
Speaker 3: Temple of Apollo at Delphi. So that's almost exactly the
Speaker 3: same as the goats discovering coffee story. You know, you
Speaker 3: call them motifs and folklore. It's the motif of goat
Speaker 3: discovering something that turns out to be a good thing
Speaker 3: to a human, And so in that sense it's probably
Speaker 3: has some truth. There's lots of ghats in southwestern Ethiopia.
Speaker 3: Anyone that spent time with goats knows that goats will
Speaker 3: eat anything.
Speaker 2: Same.
Speaker 3: But I sort of doubt that the story went down
Speaker 3: exactly as it's told. But it's a good myth.
Speaker 1: It's a great myth. A few people cole figment Rachel
Speaker 1: von Morrigan first time question Oskar when Constantini and Nicolette
Speaker 1: wanted to know about cold brew, Cole asks, does cold
Speaker 1: brew really have less acid? Is it better? For you,
Speaker 1: and Figmut wanted to know why does it last forever
Speaker 1: without getting bitter? And Rachel asked, what's the difference in
Speaker 1: tossing your hot brew in the fridge and the chemistry
Speaker 1: of brewing cold?
Speaker 2: Funny you should ask. Okay, we're just so.
Speaker 3: In the Coffee Science Foundation, we've just now finished three
Speaker 3: years of research on exactly these questions.
Speaker 1: Stop it, stop it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I'll take the questions in order. One of
Speaker 3: the papers we published has the title cold brew Coffee
Speaker 3: is Less sour And there is some evidence that shows
Speaker 3: that if you brew coffee with cold water instead of
Speaker 3: warmer water, that you're going to reduce the sourness. So
Speaker 3: notice I'm careful in saying sourness instead of acidity.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I was wondering if that was a misspeak, but no,
Speaker 1: no it wasn't.
Speaker 3: I'm being careful about this because we associate, of course,
Speaker 3: sourness is our sense of taste that's associated with acid, right,
Speaker 3: and food science has known this for a long time.
Speaker 3: You can't just measure acids and know how sour something
Speaker 3: is going to be. For some reason, perceived sourness is
Speaker 3: more complicated than that. We perceive certain acids is less
Speaker 3: sour than others. Other compounds interfere and change things.
Speaker 2: So our perception is that cold brew.
Speaker 3: Often when it's brewed, is less sour. Now is it
Speaker 3: less acid? Yes, slightly less acid in part because the
Speaker 3: dynamics are different at different temperatures. I'm being a little
Speaker 3: bit careful about this because, just like anything in science,
Speaker 3: it gets really complicated, unbelievably complicated. So to answer the
Speaker 3: question is, well, if I had cold brew versus if
Speaker 3: I hot brew and I throw it in the refrigerator,
Speaker 3: are they going to taste different?
Speaker 2: The answer is.
Speaker 1: Yes, uh huh.
Speaker 3: But it's not just the temperature of the water that's
Speaker 3: changing there. You're also changing a lot of other things.
Speaker 3: Like it takes overnight to brew the coffee use in
Speaker 3: cold brew, whereas it only takes five minutes to brew
Speaker 3: with hot water. That time difference is meaningful as well.
Speaker 1: Okay, so cold brew, there's a good chance you're just
Speaker 1: drinking more of it. Also, it's usually prepared by making
Speaker 1: a concentrated brew and then diluting it with fifty percent water,
Speaker 1: but different establishments may have different math, they may tinker
Speaker 1: with that proportion, and if you are just tossing cooled
Speaker 1: down room temperature brewed coffee over ice, you're going to
Speaker 1: get something more dilute with less caffeine for the same
Speaker 1: liquid volume. So first time question asker Whin Constantini, who asked,
Speaker 1: why do I feel okay drinking iced coffee, but when
Speaker 1: I drink cold brew, I feel like I'm having an
Speaker 1: anxiety attack? When what are you me? Now? When it
Speaker 1: comes to nitro cold brew, tiny nitrogen gas bubbles are
Speaker 1: kind of infused into the coff just like a draft
Speaker 1: stout beer like guinness, to create this smoother, creamier mouthfeel.
Speaker 1: And the reason why it bucks you up is because
Speaker 1: there's not even ice for it, so the volume is
Speaker 1: greater than the same sized coffee over ice. Now, why
Speaker 1: don't the big coffee chains serve large sizes of cold brew?
Speaker 1: Some people say it's because it contains enough caffeine to
Speaker 1: stun a moose, but that is a lie. It's just
Speaker 1: that in bigger cups, if you get a nitro cold brew,
Speaker 1: the gases will dissipate before you're done drinking it, and
Speaker 1: then people will complain that it got flat. So you
Speaker 1: can get two smaller ones because they don't want you
Speaker 1: saying this sucks because you took too long to drink it.
Speaker 1: Now my trick, here's my trick. If you have anxiety
Speaker 1: and you like iced coffee, but you also hate it watery,
Speaker 1: but also you don't want to go to the er
Speaker 1: thinking that you're having a cardiac episode, this is what
Speaker 1: I do. I just order a single shot, not a
Speaker 1: double shot. It's half a caffeine over a giant cup
Speaker 1: of ice with a splash of cream or almond milk,
Speaker 1: and it turns out out like a nice cold, icy
Speaker 1: Vietnamese coffee. Or if it's really hot out then it
Speaker 1: kind of turns into an Americano on its own. It's
Speaker 1: not too watery. But that's just my preference. Now, since
Speaker 1: you're not me, you do not have to like it.
Speaker 3: So the point is there's certainly lots of differences between
Speaker 3: cold brew and hot brew. If you like cold brew,
Speaker 3: that's great, keep doing it. If you like hot brew,
Speaker 3: that's great, keep doing it. But there's no clear winner,
Speaker 3: Like one is not clearly better than the other. It
Speaker 3: really is a matter of taste.
Speaker 1: H I love that there's research going on right now
Speaker 1: behind coffee fueled research happening. Yeah, And if you've just
Speaker 1: enjoyed a Venti cold brew and your brain needs to
Speaker 1: chew through some research. Please enjoy the Coffee Science Foundation's
Speaker 1: new paper, Sensory Analysis of full immersion coffee. Cold brew
Speaker 1: is more floral and less bitter, sour and rubbery than
Speaker 1: hot brew. So let's say you're over bitter, sour, floral
Speaker 1: and rubbery. What's next? What's hot? You have a question
Speaker 1: you are praying that we will ask, and some of
Speaker 1: you are patrons Megan Steadman, Sarah Cheney, Erica Bennarski, Ashlyn,
Speaker 1: Jim Breunnberg, Jennifer Lemon, Roslin has Me, Felicia Chandler, The
Speaker 1: Joyful Spitfire, Delli Dames Hope, Madeline, Laura Wood, Nissa, Niehause,
Speaker 1: Flesh First, Zoe Lett and Cecily Templeton, Mary of the Grapefruit,
Speaker 1: Amber Panita, Alexander Cattoul and first time askers Meg McDaniel,
Speaker 1: Susan Dawson and Rachel von Morgan, as well as Tara
Speaker 1: ward On behalf of will Ward and a guy named
Speaker 1: Jared Sleeper who is legally my spouse and who happened
Speaker 1: to text me during this interview. All of you asked
Speaker 1: about the coffee beans, that are harvested in a clump
Speaker 1: that looks exactly like that peanut covered candy bar a Payday.
Speaker 1: So let's get into it. Sariah Manns in all caps, says,
Speaker 1: civet poop coffee. Please discuss Sonya bird wants to know
Speaker 1: if you've tried it. I suppose it's called kopelwok?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 1: Is that correct? Aaron White, talk to us about the
Speaker 1: one that gets pooped out of a cat? Please? Just why?
Speaker 2: Yeah? This I knew this.
Speaker 3: This question comes up all the time, and it's a
Speaker 3: fascinating one. So there's this animal called the civet, the
Speaker 3: palm civet, and people.
Speaker 2: Call it a cat. It's not really. It's more like a.
Speaker 3: Raccoon, and it's common in Southeast Asia. When there's coffee around,
Speaker 3: this civet will consume the fruit and digest the fruit
Speaker 3: part and pass the seed part.
Speaker 2: So you'll find these.
Speaker 3: Little poops around that are just coffee beans. And so
Speaker 3: at some point somebody decided to collect that and roast
Speaker 3: it and brew it. Now, the civet is interesting for
Speaker 3: another reason. It's got a gland in it that is
Speaker 3: used for perfume. You've heard of civet as being a
Speaker 3: and it's the same animal, and so people had already
Speaker 3: sort of focused on this animal as being valuable, you know,
Speaker 3: And I think for that reason, they thought, well, the
Speaker 3: coffee coming through a civet must be valuable in the
Speaker 3: same way, you know, as it passes right by that
Speaker 3: gland on its way out. You know, I've seen civets
Speaker 3: in the wild. I've seen civet They have civet coffee
Speaker 3: processing things where they keep the civets in cages and
Speaker 3: feed them coffee and collect the thing. I've tasted this coffee.
Speaker 3: I don't find it especially memorable. I think it's it's
Speaker 3: a curiosity people. People think it's neat or interesting or
Speaker 3: you know, there's all these.
Speaker 2: Dare foods in the world that people.
Speaker 1: Eat, yeah, you know, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: And it's I think of it as sort of like that.
Speaker 3: But I mean it's a legitimate, genuine specialty of Southeast Asia.
Speaker 1: So civet poop coffee also called weasel coffee or formally
Speaker 1: kopie luwac, and it is an expensive dare, essentially costing
Speaker 1: upwards of six hundred dollars a pound, and sometimes these
Speaker 1: poor sweet little creatures are kept in cages and just
Speaker 1: fed the cherries to churn out these golden turred ingots
Speaker 1: as fast as they can. And the taste has been
Speaker 1: described as earthy and rich, like an espresso, but other
Speaker 1: than that, not much different from regular coffee that did
Speaker 1: not come out of a butt. But it's not like
Speaker 1: you have to taste this at least one time before
Speaker 1: you die. I don't feel in your opinion.
Speaker 2: I would never know. I do not feel like it's
Speaker 2: a bucket list thing.
Speaker 1: Jenna, first time question asker love this one says. My
Speaker 1: Italian family insists that espresso is healthier than drip coffee.
Speaker 1: Any truth to that or do my relatives just want
Speaker 1: to show off their collection of mocha pots a mocha pots.
Speaker 1: I noticed one of those cool stovetop espresso carafts, and
Speaker 1: many of you wanted to know about espresso, such as
Speaker 1: David Clark, Caitlin Schwartz, Jess Sutner, whose dad is in
Speaker 1: the roasting business, Danielle Sucher, and barista Noah Bartley, who
Speaker 1: kindly begs that you stop calling it espresso. But coffee
Speaker 1: versus espresso, let's go.
Speaker 3: I generally don't comment on coffee and health things because
Speaker 3: I'm not a really an expert. There is some evidence though,
Speaker 3: that coffee brewed through a paper filter has heart been
Speaker 3: fits over coffee that's brewed in a metal filter.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, it's a.
Speaker 3: Small effect, but it suggests that coffee brewed with a
Speaker 3: paper filter is somewhat healthier from a coronary perspective.
Speaker 1: For more on this, you can see the twenty twenty
Speaker 1: three study Impact of Coffee Consumption on Cardiovascular Health, which
Speaker 1: found that moderate coffee consumption resulted in decreased risk of
Speaker 1: coronary heart disease and heavy coffee consumption resulted in increased
Speaker 1: risk of coronary heart disease. Also, unfiltered or boiled coffee
Speaker 1: has more compounds called deterpenes that inhibit bile acid synthesis,
Speaker 1: which then can lead to raised cholesterol. So yes, the
Speaker 1: filtered stuff can be better for your bile and heart,
Speaker 1: but moderation is your friend. As with most things.
Speaker 3: That said, the general consensus is that coffee drinkers of
Speaker 3: all kinds live longer than coffee than people who drink
Speaker 3: don't drink coffee.
Speaker 1: Does that include people who pour a lot of hydrogenated
Speaker 1: oils into their coffee See myself or is that only
Speaker 1: for black coffee.
Speaker 3: This is why I don't like to comment on any
Speaker 3: food and health thing because the confounding variables are just
Speaker 3: drive you crazy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, with coffee.
Speaker 3: The big problem with cigarettes people so many people in
Speaker 3: the sixties and fifties would drink coffee and cigarettes together
Speaker 3: that they couldn't tell you.
Speaker 1: Know what was good for you, what was going on.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's right.
Speaker 1: Speaking of death. First time question asker Michael Garcia wants
Speaker 1: to know if you believe shots of espresso dye. I
Speaker 1: imagine is this a leave it out too long before
Speaker 1: drinking it and it goes bad?
Speaker 4: Or yeah this is borista slang. Okay, So what happens
Speaker 4: when you're making espresso shots is in the espresso machine,
Speaker 4: the coffee powder is pressed into a cake and then
Speaker 4: hot water is forced under pressure. Nine bars of pressure,
Speaker 4: nine atmosphere is worth of pressure is forced through this coffee.
Speaker 4: And the coffee has carbon dioxide in it in the
Speaker 4: matrix of the coffee itself, so when it comes out,
Speaker 4: it gets forced to the coffee.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's movie.
Speaker 3: When it comes out, it's got all this carbon dioxide
Speaker 3: dissolved in it. But because the pressure goes down because
Speaker 3: now it's out of this high pressure environment, it foams up.
Speaker 3: And that's why coffee when it's coming out of the
Speaker 3: espress machine is all foamy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we call it crema. It looks like the
Speaker 2: head on a beer. Yeah, And that's pretty much what
Speaker 2: it is. It's the same thing in beer.
Speaker 3: Carbon dioxide in the beer creates a foamy layer on top.
Speaker 3: In coffee, same deal, carbon dioxide in it creates a
Speaker 3: foamy head on top.
Speaker 1: Just a fun side note, those tiny nitrogen bubbles that
Speaker 1: are in cold brew and in a super compressed espresso
Speaker 1: with the creamy top is not unlike divers getting the
Speaker 1: bends if they ascended too fast and have decompressions where
Speaker 1: nitrogen under pressure has dissolved into their blood and tissues
Speaker 1: and then forms bubbles as the pressure goes down and
Speaker 1: they get closer to the surface. But do not get
Speaker 1: too much in your head thinking about it. Let's focus
Speaker 1: on the foamy espresso. I'm sorry that I said anything.
Speaker 3: That foamy head will go away over time. Now, why
Speaker 3: should you care. The answer is that when you drink
Speaker 3: that espresso, all those little bubbles create a sensation of
Speaker 3: creaminess in your mouth and they Actually, there's actually science
Speaker 3: about this. There have been studies about what is going
Speaker 3: on with this matrix of bubbles, and it turns out
Speaker 3: that it enhances people's flavor perception of the coffee.
Speaker 1: Ah.
Speaker 3: And the same deal with the milk. When you steam
Speaker 3: the milk and you create those light, tiny little bubbles,
Speaker 3: it makes the flavor of the coffee actually more perceptible.
Speaker 1: Well, okay, question about the barometrics. Because we have an
Speaker 1: espresso maker that we love, use it every day, and
Speaker 1: sometimes we cannot get bars of pressure, and sometimes we can.
Speaker 1: We're like, is that the grind of the bean? Is
Speaker 1: that how humid it is? Is that barometric pressure outside? No,
Speaker 1: that's a great, great question.
Speaker 3: Well that's not I don't think it's barometric pressure outside.
Speaker 3: If you grind too fine, you know, it kind of
Speaker 3: chokes the machine and it won't work. If it's ground
Speaker 3: too corus, it flows through really quick and it doesn't
Speaker 3: work properly. So the grind is important, but without seeing it,
Speaker 3: I can't really tell.
Speaker 1: Maybe we just needed a d scale, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: Express The machines are designed to deliver that beautiful nine
Speaker 3: bars of pressure, and that's what creates.
Speaker 2: This really beautiful.
Speaker 3: Achille Gadja, who invented this process in Italy, call it,
Speaker 3: i'll claim at the cafe, the cream of the coffee.
Speaker 3: And he thought of it like you know how cream
Speaker 3: rises to the top of milk.
Speaker 2: That was the idea.
Speaker 3: It was like, it was like, this is how you
Speaker 3: get the best of the coffee by it under pressure
Speaker 3: in that way.
Speaker 1: So I figured that this was in the sixteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: of course, but no, it was in nineteen oh one.
Speaker 1: Roller coasters have existed longer than espresso. I need some
Speaker 1: time with this. I'm still in a state of shock. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: let's talk beans, shall we? Patrons Figmunt, Amber Dickerson, Jeff Petters, Wailo, Aaron,
Speaker 1: Josef Lindsay Bartholomew and Magzaroni who asked, what is the
Speaker 1: actual difference between coffee beans and espresso beans? Can you
Speaker 1: use the same beans or should you be using a
Speaker 1: different type of roast for espresso?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Usually people, you can use the same beans. I mean
Speaker 3: you can, but as a person who's developed a lot
Speaker 3: of espresso in my life, you change things. The espress
Speaker 3: machine is like a magnifying glass. It amplifies all the
Speaker 3: flavors in the coffee, So if you've got any like
Speaker 3: pronounced flavors, it will distort that. So you've got to
Speaker 3: be really carefuble about balancing flavors in an espresso blend.
Speaker 2: And that's that's why they exist.
Speaker 3: Create it in such a way that when it goes
Speaker 3: through the process it comes out as a balanced coffee,
Speaker 3: rather than if you use just a regular coffee that
Speaker 3: was intended for filter brewing, it might be distorted.
Speaker 1: Oh that's good to know. Yeah, And if you've been
Speaker 1: wanting to leave us voice questions don't be better, you
Speaker 1: can upgrade your tear on Patreon if you like like this.
Speaker 1: Next listener, Hi.
Speaker 2: This is Spencer Parks. What is it that people like
Speaker 2: about the bitterness? What have you found? Personally? I hate
Speaker 2: the bitterness, so of course I need to add in
Speaker 2: a bunch of extra stupid sweet crap to make it tolerable.
Speaker 1: This was also asked by Dylan Vee and Rick T.
Speaker 1: Sam Why first time question asker Kaitlyn comment and Denny
Speaker 1: wants to know about the bitterness in coffee and Kaitlyn
Speaker 1: had a great question saying, I've heard that some folks
Speaker 1: who's lemon juice or salt to cut the bitter in coffee?
Speaker 1: Whoa is that possible? And what are the ways to
Speaker 1: drink freshly brewed coffee and avoid bitterness? And we did
Speaker 1: a Gustatology episode on Taste not that long ago about
Speaker 1: super tasters, and there's this feeling that it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: I drink my coffee black. Obviously I'm very tough, but
Speaker 1: apparently people who are super tasters tend to not like
Speaker 1: super bitter things because their perception is heightened. Yeah, coffee
Speaker 1: and with beer, what is it that makes coffee bitter?
Speaker 1: And do people I understand people have a twist of lemon,
Speaker 1: which seems absolutely bonkers to me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there are various chemicals in coffee. A lot of
Speaker 3: it is chlorogenic acid that creates bitterness in coffee, but
Speaker 3: there are other sources too. So, like one source that
Speaker 3: we've talked about already is the roasting process. As you roast,
Speaker 3: you know, some of the sugars and stuff and other
Speaker 3: compounds get dark and there are bitter compounds created there.
Speaker 3: So there's roasting associated bitterness, and there's bitterness in the
Speaker 3: coffee itself, and the bitterness in the coffee itself can
Speaker 3: vary according to the kind of coffee it is, where
Speaker 3: it was grown, how it was grown, what species it is, etc.
Speaker 1: Now, remember those two main species are that very popular
Speaker 1: and more delicate tasting Arabica and then the more caffeinated
Speaker 1: and bitter Robusta.
Speaker 3: There are some coffees that are very bitter as the
Speaker 3: coffee itself, and then there are coffees that are less bitter,
Speaker 3: and then a good roaster will be able to modulate
Speaker 3: that bitterness. So that's where the coffee. The bitterness comes
Speaker 3: from from chemicals, generally healthy chemicals by the way, in coffee,
Speaker 3: antioxidants that taste better to us. Some of it just
Speaker 3: comes from the plant, and then some of it can
Speaker 3: be modulated through roasting.
Speaker 2: Then what do you do with it.
Speaker 3: There's a couple different ways to reduce bitterness in things.
Speaker 3: One interesting feature of taste is a lot of them
Speaker 3: interact with each other negatively. So if you are perceiving
Speaker 3: something as too sweet, you put something sour in it
Speaker 3: and they'll seem less sweet at the same time as
Speaker 3: you get sour. So a lot of tastes interact with
Speaker 3: each other. One of those so saltiness will modulate bitterness
Speaker 3: down and sourness will too, so, and sweetness does. And
Speaker 3: sweetness is the most common thing.
Speaker 2: That people use. People put sugar in the.
Speaker 3: Other thing that people do, of course, is they put
Speaker 3: milk in bitter coffee, and that interferes with the perception
Speaker 3: of bitterness too. Milk is good at that, and you know,
Speaker 3: you put milk in chocolate, you get milk chocolate and
Speaker 3: it reduces the bitterness by a lot.
Speaker 2: Same thing with coffee. Now, I will say, though, especially.
Speaker 3: Now, there are a lot of non bitter coffees out
Speaker 3: there if you just look for them, meaning that there
Speaker 3: are some roasters that do an excellent job of sourcing
Speaker 3: coffees that are very low in bitterness to begin with,
Speaker 3: and then roasting them in such a way that the
Speaker 3: natural sweetness that's in the coffee is amplified, and those
Speaker 3: coffees are like magically non bitter and are lovely.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a lot of people, if they have a supertaster
Speaker 1: who's not that down with coffee, they nudge them toward
Speaker 1: either cold brew or Ethiopian light roasts. And again, for
Speaker 1: more on super tasting, we have this great Gustatology episode
Speaker 1: that explains how your taste buds work. So get into that. Oh,
Speaker 1: on the other side of the coin. We also have
Speaker 1: a disgustology episode to learn why you might wretch at bitterness.
Speaker 1: I have a question from a few people. I thought
Speaker 1: this was great. Emily McBride, first time question asker, as
Speaker 1: well as Magzaroni and Goule next Door want to know.
Speaker 1: In Emily's words, can you explain how reheating a cup
Speaker 1: of coffee the microwave alters the taste? My very tired
Speaker 1: mom's self would love to know, and Google next Door asked.
Speaker 1: They say that why does it taste different when it's
Speaker 1: cool down and then reheated. They also say that they
Speaker 1: feel they can taste a difference if they drink it
Speaker 1: outside versus inside. But maybe that's all in their head.
Speaker 1: But microwave and coffee reheating it, what's happening?
Speaker 2: Good question, Thank you. This is an interesting question.
Speaker 3: There's also a similar phenomenon with coffee that stays in
Speaker 3: an airpot for a long time. In other words, if
Speaker 3: you keep it hot for a long time, it changes
Speaker 3: its flavor.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, And we've actually done some research about that
Speaker 3: and it's been very hard to replicate. The published research
Speaker 3: on this phenomenon is not very clear, and the limited
Speaker 3: research that we've done has been very hard to duplicate
Speaker 3: in a laboratory setting where you can actually, you know,
Speaker 3: quantify what people are tasting. Yeah, I would say I
Speaker 3: am not doubting that this phenomenon exists.
Speaker 2: I've experienced it myself.
Speaker 3: Where you put a cold cup of coffee in the
Speaker 3: microwave and it tastes different after you do it, then yeah,
Speaker 3: really did it.
Speaker 2: But I don't actually know what is happening there.
Speaker 1: I wonder. I mean, if I keep tea in a thermos,
Speaker 1: especially something metal, it tastes like it's oxidized. It tastes
Speaker 1: metallic to me. But I don't know. I mean, a
Speaker 1: great mystery. But if it's helping you stay up in
Speaker 1: your attired mom, then drink away or enjoy.
Speaker 3: I have no judgment against people that do that, by
Speaker 3: the way, Yeah, go for it. I mean, but I
Speaker 3: do want to say one more thing that because it
Speaker 3: was from the person that was talking about drinking coffee
Speaker 3: outside versus inside.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really important.
Speaker 3: I think one of the things that coffee science has
Speaker 3: taught me is the importance of and we call these
Speaker 3: extrinsic attributes in coffee Okay. Intrinsic attributes are the material
Speaker 3: attributes of the coffee itself, whatever is going into your
Speaker 3: mouth and doing the chemical reaction with your smell or
Speaker 3: your taste. But then there's all the extrinsic attributes and
Speaker 3: those are actually really important too. The environment, who you're with,
Speaker 3: the shape of the cup, all of these things, the
Speaker 3: things you know about the coffee. Like, there's this phenomenon
Speaker 3: in coffee. We sometimes call it the honeymoon effect where
Speaker 3: people go on vacation on their honeymoons to a place
Speaker 3: that grows coffee and then they love that coffee the
Speaker 3: rest of their life, like ConA or Jamaica or Costa Rica,
Speaker 3: you know, and that becomes their favorite coffee for the
Speaker 3: rest of their life. That's something that they know about
Speaker 3: a coffee that really enhances their sensory enjoyment.
Speaker 1: So first time question askers Curly and DH, Caitlin Comet
Speaker 1: Perry c I hope that helps with your regional questions
Speaker 1: and Don w Emily McBride and Grace that might be
Speaker 1: why you three love your Hawaiian coffee so much. Just
Speaker 1: some to think about and that's.
Speaker 3: Not an illusion, that's like, that's a real phenomenon that's
Speaker 3: happening in their brain. They've actually studied this in food products,
Speaker 3: you know, sodas and things like that. What you know
Speaker 3: and what you're perceiving externally about a food is just
Speaker 3: as important as whatever chemical reaction that's happening. Yeah, this
Speaker 3: idea of enjoying coffee more when you're outside versus inside
Speaker 3: and tasting different. It probably does taste different, and you
Speaker 3: should embrace that. And people should not judge that as
Speaker 3: if it's an illusion.
Speaker 2: It's not. It's a real thing. In Italian we say
Speaker 2: you eat first with your eyes eatchi bos uh huh,
Speaker 2: And that's true in all of our.
Speaker 3: Food and drink. It's an important part. The extensic stuff
Speaker 3: is important part of any foods enjoyment.
Speaker 1: Now, for more on this, you can see the twenty
Speaker 1: twelve Journal of Physiology and Behavior paper titled you Eat
Speaker 1: with your Eyes First, which straight up finds that visual
Speaker 1: cues modify the way that taste and flavor are perceived.
Speaker 1: Learned associations create influences that can modify how you perceive flavor,
Speaker 1: and that flavor is affected depending on the strength of
Speaker 1: your association to it. And I will say I thought
Speaker 1: about it all right. My favorite cup of coffee I'm
Speaker 1: going to bring you with me. It was maybe six
Speaker 1: years ago, and it was probably like a store brand
Speaker 1: can of whatever, brewed in an old mister coffee with
Speaker 1: white sugar and powdered creamer. It was made by my
Speaker 1: dear aunt Margo in a tiny cabin built by my
Speaker 1: great grandmother on a Montana prairie. And I held this
Speaker 1: cup of coffee in the seven am dawn as it steamed,
Speaker 1: and I walked around in this grayish blue light by
Speaker 1: myself on these acres that my family has worked now
Speaker 1: for six generations, and I saw fresh antelope poop as
Speaker 1: the sun rose in the sweet grass, and it just
Speaker 1: tasted the best. I probably wasn't a lot to do
Speaker 1: with the coffee itself, but it was the best tasting
Speaker 1: cup of coffee I've ever had. Speaking of best, I
Speaker 1: always ask hardest part, worst part, easiest, best part about
Speaker 1: your job. But in this instance, I am going to
Speaker 1: ask a challenge about your job. But then I'd love
Speaker 1: to know the best way to make a cup of coffee. So, okay,
Speaker 1: hardest thing about your job, and then best way to
Speaker 1: make a cup of coffee.
Speaker 3: The hardest thing about doing coffee as a job is
Speaker 3: I think it's a hard part for anybody that works
Speaker 3: in something that they love. Like, if your work is
Speaker 3: something that you love, then every day you get to
Speaker 3: do something that you love, which is a good thing,
Speaker 3: but it also turns the thing that you love into
Speaker 3: your job, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: So this is what I learned.
Speaker 3: I loved going to coffee shops when I was younger,
Speaker 3: and then I started running coffee shops, and now when
Speaker 3: I go to a coffee shop, all I can see
Speaker 3: is the dishes that need buzzing, or or they make
Speaker 3: you know, they're steaming the milk wrong or something like that.
Speaker 2: You know, it kind of ruins it for me. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and that's true for coffee now.
Speaker 3: It's it's very hard for me to just enjoy a
Speaker 3: cup of coffee because I always have to be analytical
Speaker 3: about it and that drives me crazy about that. I
Speaker 3: wish I could just have a simple enjoyment of a
Speaker 3: cup of coffee. So that's that's the only bad part
Speaker 3: about my job to me, is that it's my job.
Speaker 3: It's a job.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: It's hard for me to listen to podcasts I get
Speaker 1: us yeah.
Speaker 2: Exactly exactly, I get it.
Speaker 3: Or like actors say that they don't like to watch
Speaker 3: their movies, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Exactly, but I love it.
Speaker 1: But yeah, okay, best way to brew a cup coffee?
Speaker 3: I am a minimalist, so I do pourovers in my home. Okay,
Speaker 3: but I also love espresso. I just don't do it
Speaker 3: in my house. I to me, espresso is something that
Speaker 3: exists in a coffee shop.
Speaker 2: You know, mm hm, So espresso is special.
Speaker 3: You know. You're not going to get me to choose
Speaker 3: a brewing technique because to me, they're like children.
Speaker 2: That'd be like choosing my favorite kid.
Speaker 1: You know, I know, but I feel like parents do
Speaker 1: have favorite kids and they just don't.
Speaker 2: But the truth is, I do a pourover for myself
Speaker 2: every day. You do every day? That's what I do?
Speaker 1: Do you wait it out? What temperature water? Do you
Speaker 1: weigh out the grams?
Speaker 2: Wow? Thank you for asking.
Speaker 3: I have a grinder that sort of automatically I said
Speaker 3: it to how many grams I want it to do,
Speaker 3: and it does it?
Speaker 2: You know, So I do.
Speaker 3: I do weigh the grams technically. Luckily it only takes
Speaker 3: me a push to a button. Fancy, fancy, and then
Speaker 3: I use Right now, I'm using eighty eight eightio degree
Speaker 3: celsius water because that's the low end of what we've
Speaker 3: done the research on.
Speaker 2: I know, god, this look well.
Speaker 3: Water temperature does affect coffee taste, not as much as
Speaker 3: a lot of people think, but it does.
Speaker 1: About one hundred and ninety fahrenheit Americans.
Speaker 2: But that's what I do.
Speaker 3: I've also got a kettle that I just said it too,
Speaker 3: But that's not the important part. The temperature, the and
Speaker 3: the grams they're fixed, but that's not to me the
Speaker 3: important part. The thing I love about pour over is
Speaker 3: not that it's precise. The thing I love about it
Speaker 3: is it's something I get to do.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: It's like I grind the coffee, I put it there.
Speaker 3: It's my little moment. It's like a little meditative ritual
Speaker 3: for me. And it's not about precision.
Speaker 1: For me.
Speaker 3: It's about ritual, you know, And that's something I actually
Speaker 3: really love. I've also, you know, I've lived with people
Speaker 3: who's goal it is to have somebody come and pour
Speaker 3: coffee in their mouth while they're stilling there. I mean,
Speaker 3: that's the you know, that's some people's dream, and I
Speaker 3: respect that too.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: But yeah, for me, the little cooking moment that I
Speaker 3: do with my coffee in the morning, you should lamp
Speaker 3: by myself is really nice and that's.
Speaker 2: What I love.
Speaker 1: Do you have a bean, a type of bean that
Speaker 1: you like, a type of filter you like, and also
Speaker 1: do you or it over and let it bloom for
Speaker 1: a minute? And then yes, port over? Is that the
Speaker 1: importance of a goose neck?
Speaker 3: Yes, that the whole blooming thing that's real, And what's
Speaker 3: happening in the blooming is that carbon dioxide that I
Speaker 3: was talking about earlier. The hot water sort of softens
Speaker 3: the coffee grounds, it allows it to release some of
Speaker 3: that carbon dioxide. It foams up and it sort of
Speaker 3: it's softening everything and getting it ready to be extracted.
Speaker 3: We sometimes call it pre extraction for that reason, and
Speaker 3: that really does work. So doing a blooming thing, it's
Speaker 3: easier with a gooseneck kettle will make the coffee a
Speaker 3: little bit better. Plus it smells great, and that's the
Speaker 3: other reason I like a porover. I'm standing there to
Speaker 3: smell that as it's releasing all that around my end of.
Speaker 2: My kitchen, and I love it.
Speaker 3: I am lucky that I get to be exposed to
Speaker 3: coffees from all over the world, and I love the
Speaker 3: diversity of coffee flavor from all over the world. Ethiopia
Speaker 3: is a special origin to me because it's the origin,
Speaker 3: but I also love just like the honeymoon effect. I've
Speaker 3: got my own personal affection for the country of Nicaragua,
Speaker 3: where I did a lot of my early coffee travel.
Speaker 3: Indonesia's always been an s Matra especially. It's always been
Speaker 3: a fascinating place to me in my mind, and that
Speaker 3: gets reflected in the in the coffees.
Speaker 2: That I love.
Speaker 1: I'm not done asking questions, what about filter, gold filter?
Speaker 2: Well, I like paper filter.
Speaker 3: I like paper filter, but I'm not really picky about that.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I also value, and I think a lot of people do.
Speaker 3: I value to be able to brew coffee under whatever conditions,
Speaker 3: you know. In other words, I don't have a meltdown
Speaker 3: if I can't get my favorite filter, if I'm at
Speaker 3: somebody else's house and they don't have exactly the kind
Speaker 3: of machine I like. I look at it as a
Speaker 3: cool challenge to try to meet coffee under challenging circumstances.
Speaker 1: You know, I love camp coffee. I love drinking coffee.
Speaker 1: When you're camping exactly, even if it's like a busted
Speaker 1: percolator or something, you know what I mean, Like that's
Speaker 1: the best. Like coffee outside in the morning is my favorite.
Speaker 2: I love it too.
Speaker 3: And when I go camping, I bring one pot. You know,
Speaker 3: It's like I cast on one pot and I try
Speaker 3: to do everything with that one pot. For I bacon,
Speaker 3: hit water, for coffee, everything, you know.
Speaker 2: I love that sort of challenge.
Speaker 1: Well, you're in southern California, you should go camping sometimes.
Speaker 2: Well, yes, let's do it and drink.
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk about coffee.
Speaker 2: I'll bring the coffee, you bring the tea.
Speaker 1: I love it. I can assure you I will be
Speaker 1: drinking much coffee for that. So ask captivating people deffinated
Speaker 1: questions and to learn more about Peter and the Specialty
Speaker 1: Coffee Association as well as the Coffee Science Foundation, you
Speaker 1: can see the links in the show notes, or you
Speaker 1: can head to Aliward dot com slash ologies slash Coffeeology.
Speaker 1: Peter is also on Instagram as Peter Geodesik, and we're
Speaker 1: on there too, at ologies as well as on x
Speaker 1: We're at ologies there. I'm Ali Ward on both and
Speaker 1: if you'd link kid friendly versions of Ologies. We launched
Speaker 1: a new show Calledsmologies, which has its own feed and
Speaker 1: is linked in the show notes, or you can search
Speaker 1: for it wherever you get podcasts. Also, if you're finding
Speaker 1: that our shows aren't auto downloading lately, it's because of
Speaker 1: Apple's updated podcast app function, But other apps don't seem
Speaker 1: to be having that issue, so switch to Spotify or elsewhere.
Speaker 1: Hot tip. Also, we have Ologies merch available at the
Speaker 1: link in the show notes. Aaron Talbert admin's Theologies podcast
Speaker 1: Facebook group. Aveline Malik makes our professional transcripts. Kelly ar
Speaker 1: Dwyer makes the website. Noelle Dilworth is our faithful scheduling producer.
Speaker 1: Susan Hale managing directs the whole Shabang Jake Shay, lovely
Speaker 1: editor and lead editor on Decks is the always warm
Speaker 1: and sweet Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio. Nick Thorburn made
Speaker 1: theme music. And if you stick around to the end
Speaker 1: of the episode, I tell you a secret, and I
Speaker 1: have two for you, and one is that I forgot
Speaker 1: to tell you how coffee is decaffeinated. So I'm gonna
Speaker 1: make this quick. That's part of my secret because I
Speaker 1: forgot to fit this in. Okay, So caffeine dissolves in water,
Speaker 1: so they can treat a green, unroasted bean with a
Speaker 1: chemical agent like ethyl acetate. So they soak the beans,
Speaker 1: they get out a bunch of flavor and caffeine, and
Speaker 1: then they treat that leftover caffeinated water and then they
Speaker 1: reintroduce just the flavors from that now decaf water back
Speaker 1: into the beans. Or they can treat the beans directly
Speaker 1: with a chemical solvent that breaks down the caffeine. That
Speaker 1: chemical solvent mostly leaves the beans when they're roasted. There's
Speaker 1: also using CO two pressure to extract caffeine. Or there's
Speaker 1: this thing called the Swiss water process method where they
Speaker 1: soak the unroasted beans in hot water. They get out
Speaker 1: some of the flavor and the caffeine from them, and
Speaker 1: then they reintroduce the leftover water, which is called green
Speaker 1: coffee extract, to the now decaffeinated beans, and they keep
Speaker 1: doing that, washing them with this tasty water that no
Speaker 1: longer has caffeine. That's a long and short of it.
Speaker 1: It wasn't the best explanation. It's a secret. At the
Speaker 1: end of the episode, cut me some slack, go google it.
Speaker 1: If you really want to know more? Okay, cool Secret Alley.
Speaker 1: Also second Secret. This episode is dedicated to my friend
Speaker 1: Bruce Dennis, who is a really wonderful guy, someone I
Speaker 1: love very dearly, who passed away on Thursday. He had
Speaker 1: multiple maloma, which is the same cancer that my dad had.
Speaker 1: So a bunch of love goes out to his gorgeous,
Speaker 1: wonderful family. And Bruce loved the jazz music that they
Speaker 1: played at this coffee roasting place in Pasadena, California. It's
Speaker 1: called Jones Coffee Roasters, and they have jazz music in
Speaker 1: the mornings he would go to. He called it church
Speaker 1: for him. And so if you're in the Pasadena area
Speaker 1: and you feel like catching some coffee and jazz there,
Speaker 1: you can raise a cup to Bruce at Jones Coffee Roasters. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's it for my secrets. Thanks for listening. Brush her tongue,
Speaker 1: Bayebye pack germantology, homeiology or doo zoology, lithology, new technology, meteorology, paratologynthology, seriology, selenology.
Speaker 2: You know this is excuse me, a damn fine cup
Speaker 2: of coffee.