Decaffeination

Last week, I had a number of questions from both Partners and customers about a subject I don’t really like to talk about.  This post will deal with that and hopefully answer these questions.  The topic?  Decaf coffee.  I know, death before decaf and all that, but we do have a number of customers who require that their coffee has a minimum of caffeine. Minimum is a key word, since in North America, 97% of caffeine is removed, in Europe that figure is 99%.  I would even go so far as to suggest if the customer is under doctor’s orders to stay away from caffeine to try another beverage entirely.

Starbucks currently offers three different decaffeinated coffees.  Pike Place Decaf, Sumatra Decaf and Espresso Decaf.  On a limited time basis and usually only available at Roasterys are Reserve Decaf Costa Rica Bellavista.  Though there are four different methods used in decaffination Starbucks uses two.  With the Sumatra decaffination is achieved using the Swiss Water Method, the Pike Place and Espresso Decafs use a carbon dioxide extraction. One important item to remember is that any process employed makes the beans difficult to roast.

 

 Swiss Water Decaffination:  This particular method of decaffeination is different from what we’ve so far seen in that it does not directly or indirectly add chemicals to extract the caffeine. Rather, it relies entirely on two concepts, namely solubility and osmosis, to decaffeinate coffee beans. It begins by soaking a batch of beans in very hot water in order to dissolve the caffeine. The water is then drawn off and passed through an activated charcoal filter. The porosity of this filter is sized to only capture larger caffeine molecules, while allowing smaller oil and flavor molecules to pass through it. Consequently we end up with beans with no caffeine and no flavor in one tank, and caffeine-free “flavor charged” water (aka “Green Coffee Extract”) in another tank. And here’s where the magic happens. The flavorless caffeine-free beans are discarded, but the flavor rich water is reused to remove the caffeine from a fresh batch of coffee beans. Since this water already is saturated with flavor ingredients the flavors in this fresh batch can’t dissolve; only caffeine moves from the coffee beans to the water. So the result is decaffeination without a massive loss of flavor.

Carbon Dioxide Decaffination:  In this method of decaffeination the beans are steamed for about 30 minutes in order to open their pores. Once the coffee beans are receptive to a solvent, they are repeatedly rinsed with either methylene chloride for about 10 hours to remove the caffeine. The caffeine-laden solvent is then drained away and the beans are steamed again to remove any residual solvent. Although methylene chloride, is a solvent, its use as a decaffeination agent is not considered a health risk. While the FDA regulation allows up to ten parts per million (ppm) residual methylene chloride, actual coffee industry practice result in levels closer to one part per million. Furthermore, while it is probable that traces of the solvent remain in the decaffeinated beans it seems very unlikely that methylene chloride would survive the roasting process. This colorless liquid is highly volatile and vaporizes at 104 degrees F. Now if you take into consideration that coffee is roasted at a minimum of 400 degrees F for at least 15 minutes, and that proper brewing temperature is at about 200 degrees F, it seems unlikely that much if any methylene chloride would end up in cup of coffee.

There you have it, the two decaffeination methods employed by Starbucks, the Swiss Water Method and the Carbon Dioxide Method. Though often mocked. Decaf coffee is an important part of our product line. 

The Story and Development of the Hario V 60

A brand which has gained a great popularity with its coffee-brewing equipment all over the world has a rather short history dating back to 1921 when the company was founded under the name Hiromu Shibata Works. Back then, it was a heatproof glass manufacturer, and to this day, it remains the only Japanese manufacturer with a factory.

photo – Hario

Since 1921, the range of products that the company is making has developed. From first producing laboratory glassware, the company launched its first coffee-brewing device that caught the attention of households and the coffee industry, the coffee syphon, in 1964. At that point, Hario Co., Ltd., a separate glassware division, was established. Since then, many years had passed before the launch of the pourover method we are interested in today. 

Hario was founded in 1921, photo – Hario

Hario is the King of Glass

Since the beginning, the company has established itself as the leader in the glass-manufacturing market. The name given to the division producing the 1st-grade hardness glass was HARIO, meaning, the King of Glass. 

The company has taken pride in producing glassware of the highest quality. Their heatproof glass is made of silica sand, borax, boric acid, alumina; all refined natural minerals. An electric heating system is used at their factory, which means, there are no chimneys necessary. The King of Glass is thus also taking care of their environmental impact. 

The Iconic V60 Brewer

Although Hario’s production has always been focused on glassware, its most famous product is actually made of porcelain. The brewer can be found all over speciality cafe bars in its signature white or red colours. The ceramic brewer of an elegant, conical shape is undoubtedly one of the most popular brewers in our industry. But how was it invented, and how is it produced now?

Research proved to provide scarce information, but we found that in the 1980s, the market was so dominated by immersion brewers, rather than pourovers, that the “Hario’s designers wondered whether a parabolic shape would help to achieve a cleaner-tasting cup by allowing water to pass through the grounds rather than steeping them,” the UK Hario website informed us. The designers were onto something. We know that now, but their idea was met with some obstacles and a few years of lay-back before the V60 came to life. 

What the designers came with at first was “a conical dripper using wire rods to support a paper filter.” Unfortunately, this brewer failed to gain much popularity against the big instant-coffee wave. The idea was not forgotten, only put on ice until 2004.

A Design Only 14 Years Old

The design of the shape of the V60 is, as Hario put it, a shape of nature.
In other words, y = x². Which really means, that at the beginning of the V60’s design there was a parabola.
V60's name comes from its letter V shape, which is under the angle of 60 degrees. 

y = x², the origin of the V60's shape

The resulting cone was designed to hold a paper filter, had a large drip hole and the inner side of the brewer had spiral ribs, allowing the air to be released while brewing. These are the standard features of the V60. Almost nothing has changed from the original design that came to reality in 2004. It is still produced today, with the addition of other design features, manufactured with high-quality materials.

One Shape, Multiple Sizes and Colours

The original ceramic V60 is manufactured using Arita yaki, a Japanese porcelain brand. Arita yaki is porcelain made from fine clay, that results in unclouded, clear ceramic, giving it a sleek finish. This Arita yaki method of ceramic production is 400 years old and has been followed to this day. The V60 is still produced in the town of Arita, which is known for its ceramics.

Production of V60 in Arita, photo – Hario

Additionally, the cone has been produced in various materials, including glass, metal, plastic, there are even two special editions, one with an olive wood base and the famed Copper edition. The 2018 limited edition of the ceramic V60 promises several new colours, with the first one, pink, already showcased at the London Coffee Festival 2018. We won’t lie, the indigo blue is our favourite, it would fit perfectly on our shelf! 

We think the V60 is so popular thanks to its (beautiful) design features that can deliver bright clean cups. We also believe that there are differences in the way one must brew coffee when using V60s constructed from different materials. This versatility in brewing means there’s not only one way to enjoy a cup.

Although we love the feel of the ceramic V60, travelling with it can be a bit tricky. Not to mention that dropping it on the floor is out of the question, and the fact that porcelain is usually more difficult to preheat due to its thickness. If you prefer for your water temperature to remain as stable as possible, the plastic brewer, compared to the ceramic one, has a low heat-retention. This makes the brewing water drop down in temperature only minutely. And we must say, our plastic V60 has hit the floor hard a few times already.

The metal versions are more suitable for the purpose of travelling, and the design was brought to help the extraction, but copper sits on the cost-heavy side of the scale, and thus remains the last one we would recommend for a home set up.

Are you surprised that the plastic V60 has so many advantages? We were too, but after using it at home daily, we understood. No burnt fingers or chipped corners, an easy transport to a friend’s house, it is the brewer to grab for almost any occasion. Well, maybe not for the competition stage, where it seems, the white ceramic cones have always been the chosen ones!

V60 – competitors’ brewer of choice

The boom of the V60 brews being offered at speciality cafes comes hand-in-hand with the brewer appearing regularly in Brewers Cup Championships presentations worldwide. Looking at all the past rankings, the World Brewers Cup Championship was won with a V60 in five out of seven cases.

World Brewers Cup winners:
2017 Chad Wang of Taiwan
2016 Tetsu Kasuya of Japan
2015 Odd-Steinar Tøllefsen of Norway
2014 Stefanos Domatiotis of Greece
2013 – Erin McCarthy of USA – won with a Kalita Wave brew
2012 – Matt Perger of Australia
2011 – Keith O’Sullivan of Ireland – won with a Chemex brew

We wanted to know how much can a recipe differ with this simple brewer, so we searched for advice with two coffee professionals who made great videos about their methods for all of us to learn from. 

Scott Rao

Scott Rao needs no introduction. If we keep the credits related only to V60, he is the father of the Rao spin, and he recommends the one-pour or two-pours method of brewing with a V60. 

You can read his full blog post, while the following is just the summary of the most important facts. 

Coffee dose: 20-22 g of coffee
Pre-wet water: 3 times the weight of the coffee dose
@ 00:45 – do the main pour up to 360g and give the brew a gentle stir
@ 01:45 min – ‘Rao spin’ – grab the filter on the sides and give the slurry a spin, it prevents the grounds sticking to the wall and helps flatten the bed of the coffee

Tetsu Kasuya

Tetsu is the 2016 World Brewers Cup Champion, who invented his 4:6 method that brought him the win and has until now been watched over 66,000 times on Youtube.

Tetsu says that you can adjust the taste of your coffee by dividing the brew water into a 4:6 ratio. 40% adjusts the sweetness and acidity, while the leftover 60% adjusts the strength.

Coffee dose: 20g
Grind: The coarsest grind size
40% of the ratio: 3 times as much as the coffee dose, poured five times (5×60=300ml)
45 sec breaks between pours
60% of the ratio: 3 equal pours of 60ml of water

Explore the full routine of Tetsu Kasuya here

V60s production in Arita, photo – Hario

No matter what type of V60 brewer you prefer or decide to get it will always bring out a clean cup, and based on your recipe, it will have a wide potential of flavours. Enjoy the experiments!

K-Cup Coffee is Stupid

Individual pods of coffee are expensive, bad for the planet, and don't even taste good. Why does the madness go on?

I’m not here to regale you with the history of Keurig K-Cup coffee pods or bombard you with statistics about the plastic they waste. Other TreeHugger writers have already done that. They’ve even done actual research! (See related stories below.)

No, my children, I’m here just to gripe. Or really, I’m more confused than annoyed. I don’t understand why anyone would ever use those things.

“But they’re so quick,” people tell me. “And you don’t even need to clean anything.” To that I say, “Have you ever made coffee?” Because making regular coffee takes, like five minutes. At least, French pressed coffee does. I never did figure out how to use those contraptions that brew drip coffee; they’ve got too many parts considering that you’re just putting hot water on coffee grounds. But I digress.

And sure, you don’t have to clean the actual K-Cup (unless you want to recycle it, see photo above). But you still have to clean the machine. Which, again, just seems like a whole unnecessary thing. You know how you clean a French press? You rinse it. Soap it down for a minute if you’re feeling fancy. Man, I love French presses.

Don LaVange/CC BY 2.0

Now, these obvious flaws could be forgiven if you were getting some sort of superior coffee. But K-Cup coffee doesn’t actually taste good. I mean, sure. If you’re comparing it to instant coffee, or coffee that’s been sitting out all day, or lite beer (America, I love you, but your beer is embarrassing), then K-Cup coffee is fine. But it cannot hold its own to the regular stuff.

And after all that, the machines are expensive! Some go for over $200! And that’s before you pay for all the individually wrapped pods. But don’t take my word for it. In the words of the guy who actually invented K-cups: “I don't have one. They're kind of expensive to use.”

Oh, and did I mention all the plastic? That stuff goes straight into landfills. I know I said I wasn’t going to do research, but I’m so stirred up (har har) at this point, I’m opening Google. I’m finding that the K-Cups in landfills could circle the globe over 10 times. And that stat is four years old.

You know what that K-Cup inventor said after he realized how much environmental damage his inventions were causing? “I feel bad sometimes that I ever did it.”

To make things even more annoying, the company keeps pretending to be green. They come out with "recyclable" versions that you may not actually be able to recycle. But even if you could, stop pretending a single use product is sustainable, Keurig. Just stop.

Costa Rica Once Grew Chile’s Best Coffee

In the 1830’s, Costa Rican coffee came from Chile. It really did. As the commercialization of coffee growing began to take hold in Costa Rica, producers struggled to find markets. For a time, most Costa Rican coffee was being exported to Chile, where it would be re-exported to Europe as a Chilean product: “Café Chileno de Valparaíso,” named after the port town from which it shipped.

For us, looking backward, it’s hard to imagine the circumstances. Why didn’t Costa Rica just export coffee directly to Europe? Well, as in most business, it was a matter of who you know. Costa Rican coffee producers didn’t know anyone with a ship that sailed to Europe. It’s almost that simple. In the parlance of our times, Costa Ricans may not have been the best “networkers” back in the day. When Mexico declared independence from Spain after 10 years of war in 1821, the rest of Central America piped up and said “yeah, us as well then.” Costa Rica was taken a little bit by surprise. It wasn’t that Costa Ricans didn’t care about independence; they cared about it so much that they had essentially been operating as an independent country already. This independence was reflected in an ongoing reluctance if not outright unwillingness to join attempts at forming a larger Central American state, like the post-independence “Federal Republic of Central America,” which Costa Rica didn’t quit so much as it just stopped showing up for meetings and then changed its phone number.

Coffee drying patio in Costa Rica by Todd Mackey

This is simplifying the reality only slightly. As for coffee, it’s difficult to put ourselves in their shoes nearly 200 years later, but imagine you live in Costa Rica in the early 19th century and you’ve decided to grow coffee. First, good for you. This is a brave journey you’ve undertaken, having to wait five years after planting to realize your first harvest. Compared to almost every other cash crop being grown in Costa Rica at the time, waiting five years from planting to first harvest required some intestinal fortitude. Once you have coffee, what will you do with it? Bring it to the nearest port and sell it (or ship it on consignment). Sell it to who? Someone with a ship. Where will they take it? You don’t know. You sold your coffee, that’s what you know. If there are better prices to be had by shipping the coffee elsewhere, how would you know this? You wouldn’t.

As a coffee grower and seller in Costa Rica, or anywhere, in the 1830’s, you would have no idea what your coffee was actually worth to the end user and thus no way to reverse engineer the value of your coffee on the dock. And if there are only one or two buyers on the dock, it doesn’t matter anyway. Reality is defined by your options, the empty ships waiting in the harbor at Puntarenas inside the Gulf of Nicoya on the Pacific coast.

Although ships had been sailing through the Strait of Magellan at the southern tip of South America for more than 300 years, one still needed a good reason to do so. It may have been worthwhile to bring coffee 9,000 nautical miles from Valparaíso, Chile, to London, but sailing to Costa Rica added an additional 2,500 miles and 22 days to the trip. It appears the added expense was greater than simply purchasing the coffee in Chile. And this was the complaint of coffee farmers in Costa Rica. They were growing more coffee than they could sell and at the mercy of shipping companies when it came to expanding their market.

When coffee first came to Costa Rica is the subject of some debate. On the more romantic side is the pleasant notion that coffee came to Costa Rica directly from the coffee motherland, Ethiopia. More likely, and less intriguing, is the idea that coffee came to Costa Rica from the Johnny Appleseed of coffee, the Caribbean islands, the most productive coffee region in the world in the late 18th and early 19th century. Coffee came to Costa Rica as early as 1779 and within 50 years was generating more revenue than any other crop but they were growing more coffee than the middlemen heading for Chile or a few buyers in Panama could take. And virtually no infrastructure existed for transporting even a small amount of green coffee to the east coast of Costa Rica (where London was a mere 5,000 miles away).

Oil painting; Captain William Le Lacheur, artist unknown. Photo cred: Guernsey Museum.

Apparently, the distribution woes of Costa Rican coffee producers were known in the region, as far as Mexicali, where news met the ears of an up and coming shipping magnate named William Le Lacheur in 1841. Le Lacheur was owner and captain of the three-mast barque ship, Monarch, which had just been launched in February of that year. Captain Le Lacheur had experience sailing in the Atlantic and Mediterranean, but with his new and large ship he sailed to Texas, Brazil, around Cape Horn, Chile, and Mexico, where he learned about Costa Rican coffee producers hoping to trade directly with Europe. On Christmas day, 1841 he sailed into port at Puntarenas, Costa Rica. It’s not clear whether or not he loaded coffee at that time, but when he arrived back in London in September of 1842 he stayed for only month, setting sail again for Costa Rica in October of that year and arriving back at Puntarenas in March of 1843. Costa Rican coffee now had a direct connection to London and all of Europe. When Le Lacheur returned to England later in 1843, the Monarch carried more than half a million pounds of coffee. Other than 72 hides, there was no room for anything else.

Wisely, the Costa Rican government set aside some of the profit from coffee sales to purchase technology, which Le Lacheur brought back on his return voyages. In the cargo hold there sewing machines sitting next to the latest farm and coffee milling machinery. Although Le Lacheur & Co. had shipping business in other places, Costa Rica and coffee really built the company. William Le Lacheur’s devotion to Costa Rica seems to have gone beyond making a profit and his protestant Christian missionary zeal.

He made friends with coffee farming families and arranged for their children to receive education in England. In 1846 he built a home in San Jose. In 1850 he launched another three-mast ship, the Costa Rica, which was designed specifically for transporting coffee. In 1856, an American with delusions of grandeur and a belief that manifest destiny should extend to the tip of South America, attempted to invade Costa Rica. His name was William Walker and in exchange for a promise that any new American states he established would be slave states, his adventures were financed by wealthy southerners. He’d already taken over Nicaragua. But his march south was halted when William Le Lacheur turned over his ships (which were in the process of loading coffee at Puntarenas) to the Costa Rican military so they could quickly transport troops to the northern border, where they defeated Walker.

Costa Rican 10 Colones banknote featuring one of Le Lacheur’s ships

In 1861—four years after William retired from the sea and his son, John, had taken over operations in Costa Rica—Le Lacheur & Co. launched a ship more than twice the size of the Monarch. Named the Costa Rica Packet*, the ship was the largest to ever be used in the coffee trade and could sail from Costa Rica to London without making port anywhere else.

England would purchase most of Costa Rica’s coffee for 100 years after William Le Lacheur first sailed into the Gulf of Nicoya, until World War II, when shipping to Europe was disrupted and the coffee had to find another destination. As celebrated as Le Lacheur is in Costa Rica (ships of Le Lacheur & Co. have, at times, appeared on Costa Rican money), it was the determination of Costa Rican coffee producers that brought Le Lacheur to their port, the idea that there was a better way and they wouldn’t settle for being coffee from Chile. This attitude also led to Costa Rica remaining at the cutting edge of coffee processing technology and agronomic practices. For this reason, Costa Rican coffee was celebrated as special even before special was a coffee word.

 

 

How To Support Specialty Coffee

As Stephen Satterfield explores in his feature in the May/June 2018 issue, the coffee world is at a crossroads where environmental, political and cultural challenges are forcing producers, roasters and retailers to reconsider the way they do business. Many large companies and organizations are tackling these issues head on, but there are also steps coffee drinkers can take to effect change. Mindful drinking is a win for everybody, says James McLaughlin, president and CEO of Intelligentsia Coffee. “If everyone knew how delicious coffee could be when grown well, and what kind of difference they could make for farmers simply by choosing to pay for quality, the impact of their decisions would transform the coffee industry.”

Here are a few tips from McLaughlin and other coffee pros.

Buy Traceable Coffees 
“The best coffees are produced by specific farmers and roasted by people who care a lot about preserving even the most delicate flavors in the bean. If you buy traceable coffees you’ll have a product that’s fresh, tastes great and benefits the people growing it,” says McLaughlin. This often means looking past the marketing surrounding certain coffees. “If you take a minute or two to browse the websites of coffee companies but they don’t offer much detail about the coffees or their sourcing methods, be skeptical,” he says. “Those who are doing real work to support farmers and develop exceptional quality are usually very excited about describing it. And trust your taste buds—real quality is self-evident.”

Engage Your Local Café and Be Part of Their Change
Climate change is one of the main threats to coffee farms, and cafés produce up to 50 percent of coffee’s carbon footprint. To help combat this, Hanna Neuschwander, communications director at World Coffee Research and author of Left Coast Roast, says consumers can be more demanding about sustainable practices in cafés. “There are a lot of things a café can do to reduce its carbon footprint, and coffee companies can make meaningful investments in efforts to help farmers adapt to climate change—they can support the work of World Coffee Research, or make investments in their own supply chains. All of it matters,” she says. “Companies respond to consumer demand and pressure. It works. So reach out and ask your favorite café what they’re doing, and ask them to do more. Also, take your mug with you to the café! Paper cups are atrocious on almost every level.”

Get Fresh
Coffee is a seasonal product, and Geoff Watts, vice president at Intelligentsia, thinks customers could do a lot of good by buying with that in mind. “If you wouldn’t eat a peach or tomato out of season, don’t drink coffee out of season,” he says. “Disrupt the all-too-common notion that coffees stay fresh year-round by drinking coffees grown in countries north of the Equator between March and August, and ones from countries south of the Equator between September and February. The shorter time off harvest, the more vibrant the natural sweetness and flavors will taste.”

Think Globally
“Learning the name of an individual farmer can be a powerful tool to create a sense of connection, but rare success cases can belie the reality that the average coffee farmer’s income hasn’t risen in 40 years,” says Specialty Coffee Association chief sustainability officer Kim Elena Ionescu. One way to help that is by creating demand. “Choose coffees from a variety of countries and regions of the world, not only because it’s fun to explore diverse flavors but also because demand is a key driver for investment at every level, from farmer to government policy.”

Pay for Quality
Specialty coffee can sometimes seem pricey, but producers like Jon Allen of Onyx Coffee Lab want to challenge drinkers to embrace that premium. “There’s a range of quality, rarity and work that goes into producing all coffee, but that’s especially true in high-end and specialty coffee,” he says. “Try to think of another product that’s price has essentially stayed the same for 40 years. Today’s commodity price for coffee is $1.16. In 1978, it was $1.80. This baseline price to producers for coffee is borderline shameful. If your coffee is inexpensive, it’s not ethical, in my opinion.”

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Zen and the Art of the Pour Over

Daily it seems, new coffee gadgets are being introduced that promise, the greatest cup you will ever make.  While some of these gadgets are useful, a very simple method of brewing coffee, the pour over, continues to be a very efficient, economic and simple way to brew our favorite beverage.

     Pour over coffee starts with freshly ground coffee, a filter, and a filter holder, usually called a “pour over dripper”.  At the most basic level, pour over brewing involves pouring water over and through the grounds to extract the coffee flavors into your cup. Sounds simple, but there is more involved.

     All coffee brewing methods involve the same general phases:  wetting, dissolution and diffusion.  Each phase is linked to the others, and they affect what comes next in important ways.

     Pour over coffee continuously replenishes the liquid surrounding the coffee grounds with new, fresher water.  This promotes a faster, more efficient brew.  Though, fresh water also has a tendency to extract more from the surface layers of the grounds.  Pouring one stream of water, rather than a dozen or more little streams from a coffee-makers shower head, results in a brewing environment that’s a few degrees higher, just from reducing the surface temperature loss from those narrow water streams.  Temperature and water quality affect the overall reaction of coffee chemistry.

     Wetting the coffee is exactly that.  Your coffee is dry and you make it wet.  Sounds simple but once again, let’s go a little deeper.  One of the major byproducts of roasting coffee is carbon dioxide gas. For lighter roasted coffees, that carbon dioxide is literally trapped in the cell structure of the coffee bean, and leaches out slowly over weeks.  With dark roasted coffees, the roasting process has physically blown a hole in every cell and most of the CO2 is out within a few days. 

When you hit the coffee ground s with hot water, the CO2 is able to escape and it bubbles out.  The problem is that if carbon dioxide gas is going out, water isn’t able to get in.  So as you start your pour over brew, you’ll want to add just enough brewing water to wet all of the grounds, then stop and let the gas escape for about 30 seconds.  You will see the bed of grounds swell and expand, resulting in what coffee geeks call a “bloom”.

     The word “dissolution” looks similar to dissolve, actually that is what its all about.  Once the coffee grinds are fully wetted, the hot water will dissolve the solubles in the beans’ cells.  Part of what makes great coffee brewing difficult is that the complex cocktail of organic substances in coffee includes both pleasant and unpalatable types.  Lucky for us, it’s one of the convenient facts of coffee chemistry that the desirable and tasty solubles dissolve in water more readily than the unpleasant-tasting substances.  So, brewing a good cup of coffee is all about stopping the brew at the perfect moment. 

     Diffusion is about taking that dissolved stuff and transporting it out of the coffee grounds via osmosis.  The cell wall structures of our coffee grounds are semi-permeable membranes, so the osmosis pressure drives the brew out of the highly concentrated chambers of the coffee grounds out to the more watery surrounding environment.

     Most of the roasted coffee bean, about two thirds of the bean’s mass is insoluble cellulose.  The other third is dissolvable in water. Of that soluble third, most of it is the good stuff, particularly various organic acids and sugars.  The rest are longer chain molecules that we associate with astringent and bitter tastes.  Where we find the happy balance is at the 19-20% point.  If we extract the first 19-20% of the mass of the coffee, we tend to find the best flavor balance.  More than that and you’ll find those astringent and bitter flavors start to dominate.  Less than that and you’ll find the resulting flavors thin and unbalanced, and with lighter roasted coffees, unusually sour.  Timing, then, is what makes or breaks a cup of coffee.

     Tuning your pour over brewing means finding the right combination of grind size (coarser or finer) recipe (ratio of coffee to water) and brew time.  How quickly the water will drip through your coffee depends on how much the coffee bed itself slows down that flow.  More coffee or finer ground coffee will result in a slower flow, and the opposite is true as well. 

     While pour over brewing doesn’t require a special pouring kettle, a narrow spout does make it easier to control what you’re doing.  Having a narrow-spout kettle helps maximize control, and direct water right where you need it to go.  You can eke a few more degrees out of the brews temperature by maintaining a fully wet brew bed.  Letting your coffee bed dry out can drop your effective brew temperature by 5 degrees or more.  A higher temperature keeps the chemical reactions speedy and while it’s technically possible to have your brewing water too hot, you’re going to be fine in most situations.

     Pour Over Technique:  1. Start with a grind size around that of course sugar ( like Sugar in the Raw).  Most pour over drippers work best when they’re between one half to two-thirds full of coffee grounds.  Any less and there won’t be enough coffee to restrict the flow.  Any more and your dripper may overflow.  A good ratio is between 60-70 grams of coffee per liter of water.  2. Get your clean brew water ready.  You’ll be using water that’s about 30 seconds off the boil.  Temperatures should be 205F for medium to light roasts and about 10F lower for darker roasts.  3. Start your clock and add enough water to soak all of the coffee.  Wait for the coffee bed to stop the initial swelling (about 30 seconds) before adding more water. 4.  Continue your brew.  Try to pour quickly, gently and evenly across the surface of the coffee, pausing between pours to pace your brew time to your target.  The distance that your brew water drops can affect brew temperatures, as well as increase or decrease the amount of agitation that the falling water creates.  In general, the lower you pour from, the better, if for no other reason than it’s the easiest to create and maintain consistency. When you stop adding water, your dripper will continue to drip for between 20 and 60 seconds. Your total target brew time is about 2.5 to 3 minutes for dark roasted coffee, and 3 to 4 minutes for medium to light roasted coffees.  This includes the dripping time after you stop adding water.

     Two and half pages to describe how to brew coffee using the pour over method, seems just a bit extreme.  What I quickly found though was that by paying attention to the four fundamentals of coffee brewing, the result is always a very tasty cup of coffee.  One example, while working on this I ground coffee at two settings, paper and a number four. The cup that resulted from the number four grind was far superior. Same beans, same water, same temperature but different grind. I guess that is why this four factors are called fundamental. 

The Unique People and Coffee of Huehuetenango

If you meet a new immigrant to the United States, there’s a chance that their native language might be French, or Korean. But there is a better chance that their native language is Mam. In 2016, Mam was the 9th most frequently spoken language among immigrants, occurring more often than French (11th) or Korean (17th).

The Mam language is spoken by the Mam people, whose history stretches back to the Classic Mayan Period (200-900 AD). As part of the Mayan Empire, the Mam lived throughout what is today northwestern Guatemala and southern Mexico. The Mam not only lived in this region during the Classic Mayan Period, but the Pre-Colombian Mayan Period, and the colonial period, and the post-colonial period, and every period since. Up to 75% of the population in the Guatemalan department of Huehuetenango are indigenous Maya peoples and the region is home to more Mam than any place in Guatemala.

Families attending a show during the annual fair of San Antonio Huista, a village in Huehuetenango.

Regardless of how U.S. immigration officials may choose to classify Mam immigrants from rural communities, the chances are pretty good that their Spanish is not a whole lot better than their English (but much much better than our Mam). Among rural Mam, Spanish is a second language, and often a distant second. Demand for Mam interpreters within U.S.  immigration courts is high.

Not many of us, especially in the United States, can claim to live on land occupied by our ancestors for thousands of years. Although the Mam were at times forced into slavery by Aztecs (in part, because they were such good farmers, especially of cocoa, which Aztecs used as currency), they had their own kingdom, the capital city being Zaculeu, just outside of the present-day city of Huehuetenango where it is now a tourist destination. Although the Mam language is one of the most commonly spoken among Maya people in Huehuetenango, the region is as linguistically diverse as it is culturally unified.

Kape – Mam for “Coffee” (also “Q’amex”)

Ajual – Mam for “Farmer/Grower” (also “Ajkojol)

Chi k’ul – Mam for “Mountain”

Ma’b’et – Mam for “Road” 

Chq’iq’ – Mam for “Wind”

Tala’ – Mam for “Stream”

For all the fascination with and focus on coffee and volcanic soils, great coffee does not grow in volcanic soil exclusively, and exhibit one in this regard could be Huehuetenango (Huehue). It might be said that what coffee producers lack in terms of volcanic soil in Huehue is more than made up for in altitude and climate. The porous clay soil is rich in nutrients, drains well, and does still include volcanic dust from nearby eruptions over time.

These lands were farmed by Mam and other Maya peoples long before the Spanish arrived and they used traditional farming practices even after the arrival of coffee in the late 20th century. For example: using grazing sheep as the only source of fertilizer, taking advantage of significant changes in altitude over short distances to plant a wide variety of crops, allowing significant portions of land to go fallow for many years and recover, and cooperative harvesting.

To taste coffee from Huehue is to taste what amount to foothills of the Sierra de los Cuchumatanes, a mountain range covering over 6,000 square miles and reaching heights of 12,500 feet (over 3,800 masl), the highest peaks being in Huehuetenango. The Cuchumatanes are the highest non-volcanic mountains in Central America and more than 10% of the range sits above 9,800 feet (3,000 masl), offset by deep valleys and canyons. “Cuchumatanes” brings together two Mam words and is accurately if not precisely interpreted as “united by a strong force,” which is a good description of how mountain ranges are made.

Despite invasions and dictatorships, the remoteness of the region kept many Maya people relatively isolated until the late 1940’s, when a change in government, an increase in missionary activity, and construction of the Pan American Highway opened up the region to more outside influence.

It is said that the unique climates of Huehuetenango (the Chuchumatanes are home to several distinct biomes) results in part from the clash of cool air from the high mountains and warm air from the Gulf of Mexico, blowing across the hot lowlands of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. This causes “tropical highland” conditions and permits coffee growing upslope from traditional coffee cultivating altitudes, as high as 2,000 masl, and protects the region from frost. Although the highlands of Huehue are dryer than most Guatemalan coffee growing regions in terms of rain, the area is rich in rivers and streams and is home to cloud forests.

Laq – Mam for “Cup” 

Kapeyil – Mam for “Drink Coffee”

Wensil – Mam for “Toast Grains”

Kompalb’aj – Mam for “Godfather”

Tk’ok’jil – Mam for “Flavor”

Tz’ub’aj kyikyiw – Mam for “Chocolate”

When coffee growing came to Huehuetenango, it soon became a necessary part of the morning meal (one of two meal each day … lunch is more of a snack), the coffee being roasted on the same flat pans used for making tortillas. As coffee became increasingly important to the economy of Huehuetenango, it became suitable as a gift on special occasions. Coffee is a common gift following a baptism. When a man and woman are to be married, the godfather of the young man will visit the family of the bride-to-be and coffee is one of the traditional gifts he brings. At the departure of relatives or close friends, coffee is considered a good gift. When families cleared and planted subsistence crops on communal land, this often included coffee for personal consumption, gifts, and barter.

Traditional preparation is to boil coffee with cane sugar. Although the diversity of altitude and climate can produce a wide range of flavors, the fruitiness often tends toward stone fruits and berries, and the sweetness is often on the savory side (dark chocolate, caramel, toffee). Huehuetenango may only have a “dusting” of the volcanic soil famous in many coffee regions, but a myriad of unique micro-climates and cultivation at unusually high altitudes produces some truly unique coffees, distinct even in a country known for distinctive coffees.

Article: Mike Ferguson