In which Tim learns about coffee...

Last week I celebrated three months of being a PCV. Rather than giving us a party, Peace Corps mandates that we attend a week of training to "process" our first few months at site, and to brush up on whatever technical skills we feel we might be lacking. It was refreshing to spend several days with so many of my friends, speaking English, telling stories, dozing through lectures from PC officials, and getting into mischief.

One day of our training was dedicated to learning all about all of the processes that take coffee from being a tiny seed in the tropical soil to that flavorful caffeine filled beverage that American society depends on for productivity. The bean is first planted in sand, where it sprouts and grows to a tree of about six inches. It is then transplanted into soil where it takes about two years to reach the point of bearing fruit that looks like this:


The fruit is harvested, and dumped into tanks of water where it is allowed to ferment. Later it is dried, and processed to remove the shells. The result is something that looks like this:



The beans are then judged for quality, shipped, roasted, sold, ground and consumed. Apparently there are very strict guidelines (weight, bean size, color, shape) that govern the quality of coffee. The highest quality coffee here is sold for export (that's the Dominican coffee that we snobby, French pressing using types can get at our expensive stores in the US). The medium grades end up in the cheap brands that folks buy to put in the drip machines. The low grades are deemed not fit for sale.

We were given a lesson in quality control by a gentleman who we were told is one of the "fifteen top coffee experts in the country," whatever that means. I expected him to give us two mugs of coffee, and say "this one is good, and this one is bad" and the taste would be self explanatory. Coffee is just coffee, right? Wrong.

There are a few steps that the coffee critic must take in order to judge the goodness of a given bean.

Step # 1 - Bean Sniffing
This is exactly what it sounds like. One holds the bean close to the nose and sees what sort of flavor can be detected.

Step # 2 - Grinding and Ground Sniffing
The beans are ground to the desired coarseness, stirred up, and smelled very VERY closely (I mean you get your nose within a quarter inch of the grounds). There are layers upon layers of flavor in this stuff. With good coffee (like I have heard about good wine) you can smell fruit flavors, nut flavors, sweetness, acidity, spice, and even more. One of the ones we smelled was a bit like beef stew. At first I thought "don't they all smell like coffee?", and they did. But there was a surprising amount of variety.

Step # 3 - Brewing and Brew Sniffing
Hot water is poured into the bowl of grounds, and allowed to sit for a few minutes. The grounds form a layer on top of the water. The sniffer gets his nose close, and uses a spoon to swish away the layer of grounds. A wave of aroma bubbles up, and is strongest for only a few seconds. The complexity of the aroma tells the sniffer much about the quality of the coffee.

Step # 4 - Tasting
Each part of the tongue is responsible for a different part of taste. The tip of the tongue detects sweetness, another part looks for saltiness, acidity, etc. The point is that in order to get a full sense of what something tastes like, the food has to make contact with as many parts of the tongue as possible. Professional coffee tasters make this happen by slurping the coffee in such a way that it enters the mouth as a fine spray, making contact all over, giving a very good sense of the flavor.

I thought this whole exercise was a little bit silly at first, but it turned out really interesting. All the coffees we tried were very good (and expensive), but also very different. It seems that certain varieties are more popular in various parts of the world. The fruitier/subtler kinds do very well in Australia and Scandinavia. Continental Europeans and Americans think highly of the nuttier and more robust flavors. Our guide told us that serious coffee drinkers tend to look down their noses at the coffee favored by Italians to make espresso and stuff like that. It reminded me that I really live in a pretty neat world. There is tremendous variety and beauty everywhere we look, even in something as simple as what we drink for breakfast.

Where does your coffee come from? What is special about it? Who grew it? Look into it. It is probably more interesting that you suspect.