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CAFE' ELENA
Arabica
know.
Truly Great Coffee
WHAT IS COFFEE?
Coffee is a plant (Coffea) and the name of the drink that is made from this plant. The coffee plant is a bush or tree that can grow up to ten meters (about 32 feet) high, but is usually cut shorter. Coffee plants originally grew in Africa, and now also grow in South America, Central America and Southeast Asia. They are an important crop for the economies of many countries.
The drink is made from the seeds of the coffee plant, called coffee beans. Coffee is usually served hot, and is a popular drink in many countries. Coffee contains a chemical called caffeine, a mild drug that keeps people awake.
To make a drink from coffee beans, the beans must first be specially prepared by drying the beans and then roasting. The beans are dried a short time after they are picked. This preserves them and makes them ready to be packed or roasted. Before the beans are made into a drink, they must roasted or ground (crushed into tiny pieces in a coffee mill). When the ground coffee is placed into boiling water, the flavour and dark brown colour of the beans goes into the water. Making coffee is called brewing coffee. There are several different ways that coffee can be brewed.
Introducing
Pour-over Coffee
taste.
Pour over coffee is having a moment. The method involves slowly steeping coffee by manually pouring hot water over the grinds, one cup at time. Devotees–including trendy coffee companies like Blue Bottle and Intelligentsia–will tell you that the process extracts a smoother, richer flavor from the beans.
Here to pretty up that process is Canadiano, a set of wooden coffee-brewing blocks from Toronto-based group Fishtnk Design Factory. The standard pour-over gadget is a simple porcelain cone that sits atop a mug, and holds a paper filter for the ground coffee. Like those porcelain cones, the Canadiano makes a single cup at a time. Unlike the porcelain cones, the Canadiano uses a washable metal filter, and doesn’t need paper cone filters.
But what really sets the Canadiano apart is that it’s smart (in an analog way!). The coffee maker learns about and responds to its user’s preferences over time. “Different types of wood will age with your coffee based on your preferences,” the designer, Mani Mani, tells Co.Design. “The wood will remember the last cup you made.” Over time, she says, the wood retains more and more of the oils and can influence the flavor of the brew.
The blocks come in three kinds of wood: maple, cherry, and walnut. Because maple and cherry are harder woods Mani says they’re optimum for lighter, citrus-infused coffee beans. The closely knit wooden grain absorbs the oils slower over time, so that milder coffees don’t become immediately overwhelmed by the leftover oils. Walnut, on the other hand, is less dense and can absorb more flavor, resulting in a more complex coffee. The Fishtnk team recommends pairing beans from Western hemisphere countries with the first two kinds of wood, and coffee from Southeast Asia with the latter.
care.
A Guide to Buying Ethical Coffee
New studies show that, despite the skyrocketing price of coffee in the past few decades and the seemingly impressive rise in coffee drinkers who seriously care about their drink, coffee farmers are not seeing much benefit. Coffee, as a luxury good, has the potential to make huge changes in the way farmers are treated and paid. But how do you know if you're supporting good coffee or contributing to the problem?
“People are more aware of sustainability issues with coffee because, you know, this isn’t food,” says Kim Elena Ionescu, the director of sustainability for the Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) and a former coffee buyer for renowned North Carolina-based roaster Counter Culture Coffee. “It’s non-nutritive, not something you need for survival. This is something that we consume for pleasure.” Because of its status as a sort of luxury or specialty item, unlike, say, eggs, coffee consumers have the ability to demand more from their coffee producers than simply low prices.
And that’s important, because coffee farmers are among the worst-treated in the world. Largely coming from developing nations in Central America, Latin America, Africa and Asia, coffee farmers are faced with legendarily hard work, low prices and a crop that’s subject to rampant price pressures as well as various forms of blight and disease.
There are some forces working to make things better for coffee farmers, and some of those are quantified with various labels, slogans and certifications. But it can be hard to figure out what to trust and what to look for; some nice-sounding phrases turn out to be legally meaningless, and some really great certifications are saddled with terrible names that undersell their value. Ionescu led us through how to buy coffee in a way that ensures, to the best of your ability, that farmers are being paid and treated fairly.
By Dan Nosowitz, Modern Farmer
September 25, 2015
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