Coffee comes from the seed of a coffee plant, which is processed and then roasted according to various specifications. The best coffee in the world comes from the Coffea arabica plant, which grows at high altitudes throughout the equatorial regions of the world.
Originally discovered growing wild in Ethiopia in ancient times, this plant was taken to Yemen by the Arabs and cultivated there as early as the sixth century. In the early 1700s, the Dutch began cultivating descendants of these original plants in Java, and from that time on, the cultivation of the C. arabica plant spread to many areas of Central America, South America, and Africa.
Another species of coffee plant, Coffea robusta, is also grown commercially (primarily in Africa), but this plant is used mostly for the lower grades of coffee that are on the market today. Depending on where in the world your coffee is grown—from Indonesia to Central and South America to Africa and the Middle East—it will have its own distinct taste and body. Coffee from Java, for instance, is earthy tasting and full bodied, while beans from Costa Rica produce a lighter, more tangy cup of coffee.
Columbian and Brazilian coffees are more middle-of-the-road types, providing a mild taste that can easily be blended with other beans. Coffee from Kenya, on the other hand, has a strong, winy taste. Indeed, coffee from various regions of the same country will have its own unique flavor, depending on such factors as altitude, rainfall, and soil quality—and coffee from different plantations within the same region will even taste different from each other. Therefore, today’s specialty coffee wholesalers and retailers send coffee tasters all over the world in search of the best-tasting coffee crop from each region.
After the green coffee beans are shipped to the United States, they must be roasted. This involves heating the beans at around 400°F for about 5 to 15 minutes (depending on the temperature), while rotating them in large bins. Most beans are light or medium roasted, producing a light- or medium-brown color and mild taste. Viennese or dark-roasted coffee produces a darker brown bean and an almost burnt (yet tangy) taste. The darkest roast (called espresso, Italian, or French) has a dark brown to almost black color and a burnt to charcoaly taste.
Coffee beans can also be blended to create desired effects. The combination of Mocha (a mild bean from Yemen) and Java, for instance, has become synonymous with the coffee drink itself. Other blends use a variety of different tasting beans from various parts of the world, along with a variety of roasts. Hence, an excellent morning-coffee blend might include a majority of Viennese roasted beans, along with half as much Mocha and a little bit of espresso roast just to spice things up. A good after-dinner blend, on the other hand, might include 50 percent Mocha-Java along with 25 percent each of Colombian and Costa Rican. The proliferation of specialty coffee shops over the last few years has produced another new trend—that of flavored coffee beans.
Thus, you’ll find names such as Vanilla Nut, Chocolate Almond, and Irish Cream labeling bags of specially weighed and packaged coffees at your local shop. Of course, you can always add flavorings or extracts to regular unflavored coffee after it’s brewed, as the recipes that follow will indicate.
Conversely, you may wish to use flavored coffees in any of the following recipes, being careful not to mix tastes that don’t go together well. In recent years, the quality of decaffeinated coffee has been rising significantly —at least on the gourmet level. Whereas in the past, lower-quality beans were commonly used for decaffeinated varieties, today there is no reason why you can’t find a good-tasting decaffeinated coffee at a specialty coffee shop or elsewhere.
There are two basic types of decaffeination processes: one uses a solvent (most commonly methylene chloride) that clings to the caffeine and is then flushed away; another (the Swiss water process) uses repeated flushings of water to wash away the caffeine. The first process is generally acknowledged to produce a better-tasting cup of coffee (with virtually no chemical residue), while the Swiss water process is becoming increasingly popular because it uses no chemicals.
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