Fundamentals Of Coffee

There are many ways of handling coffee. Knowing the fundamentals of coffee is essential to be able to bring out the best out of the coffee.

Coffee Cupping

Cup-testing is the most important part of quality control, some other important parameters to consider are:

Moisture Content

Having a too high moisture content indicate incomplete drying of the coffee at origin. If this reaches to about 14 % or 15 % it can then lead development of off-flavours of a musty nature. Here, there is also the economic aspect of buying large quantities of very useless water which is not beneficial in any way.

On the other hand, having low moisture content is undesirable in that beans being brittle tend to break up during handling, thus causing it to burn too quickly when roasted and this affects flavour.

Size Of Bean

The size of the beans plays a big part during the roasting process. A roasted charge of unevenly sized beans results in an unevenly coloured roast, affecting the quality and the taste of the coffee.

Colour Of The Bean

The colour of the raw bean is correlated with its quality. Some examples of colours which the raw bean comes in are blue, yellow and brown.

The best quality beans are predominantly blue, while yellow and brown are indicative of poor quality. Knowing the colour of the beans would provide better knowledge towards knowing the quality of the coffee from which it is being made from.

Roasting

Roasting is a key factor to excellent coffee. The bean loses a good deal of its moisture, for instance, which means it weighs less after roasting than before. It loses some protein, about 10 to 15 percent of its caffeine, and traces of other chemicals. Sugars are burned, which creates color and some body to the cup.

The beans must be heated and kept moving constantly so that they do not burn or roast unevenly, and cooled, or quenched when roasting ends. Getting hold of the right technique and timing for roasting is extremely difficult, but once it is achieved, top quality coffee is produced.