Coffee

How it all began:

Since the history of coffee before 1500 is rather vague and lacking actual data, richly adorned stories entwine the origin of coffee. The basic motif of these legends is the discovery and the utilisation of the stimulating effect of coffee.

In the legend that was written down in 1671 by the Maronite monk Faustus Naironus Banesius, a native Syrian, coffee is discovered because of the conspicuous behaviour of a herd of cattle. Shepherds from Kaffa in Abyssinia complained to the monks from a nearby monastery that their animals found no rest at night and did not show any signs of fatigue. On the spot where the animals usually grazed, the monks found a dark green plant with green, red and yellow cherry-like fruits, which the animals had nibbled. The monks prepared an infusion for themselves and would you believe it? They could stay awake the whole night and pray or talk without any need for sleep!

In the Orient, coffee was already drunk in the 15th century. In 1554, the first coffeehouse on then European soil was founded in Damascus (today’s Syria). Within the next few hundred years, coffee slowly found its way into the big European cities. In 1645, the first coffeehouse was opened in Venice. After that, business with coffee boomed in Europe and many coffeehouses sprang up, as was the case in Vienna. Nevertheless, coffee only became a popular beverage during the last hundred years.

Cultivation and Harvest:

The plant Coffea Arabica grows up to 4 metres in height, but in coffee plantations it is kept shrub-like by constant cropping. Short-pedunculate, evergreen, oval leafs are distributed along virgately spread out branches. They feel like leather and they are dark green on the top and light green on the bottom side. The leafs are 8-15 cm long and 4-6 cm wide.

The plant has a taproot, which extends 1-2.5m into the soil and numerous nutritive roots that spread near the surface.

The tropical coffee plant makes high demands on its environment. Geographical conditions, temperatures, sunshine, precipitation, wind and the nature of the soil have to fit together in a certain way in order to guarantee excellent quality and high yields. The two varieties Arabica and Robusta have different demands.

For the best coffee, the ripe berries are picked individually by hand. This is very time consuming and labour intensive, but guarantees a high level of quality. This harvesting method is used especially for the Coffee Arabica, which is processed using a wet method. The selective picking has to be repeated every 8 to 10 days, until all fruits are harvested.

Directly after the harvest, the coffee berry is neither suitable for consumption nor for long transport or storage. To produce a marketable coffee, the entire covering around the real coffee bean has to be removed. This can be achieved by drying. The whole berries are dried until the beans can be peeled out without any residues. The obtained beans are packed and exported.

One of the most important steps to a good coffee is a good roasting. In this process, the beans are heated with dry heat until they reach the desired degree of blackness. The exact process, the length of the roasting and the ratio of the different types of coffee are a secret of the particular coffee producer.

Coffee Seen Through the Eyes of a Chemist

The roasted coffee bean consists of many different components. Many of these components are responsible for the taste of the coffee. Citric and acetic acid are responsible for the slightly sour taste, for example. The typical taste of coffee results from different derivatives of the caffeic acid. Surely caffeine is the best-known component.

An exact analysis of roasted coffee revealed that approx. 730 compounds are responsible for just the smell!