Coffee beans are seeds that grow inside of a coffee cherry. We usually only use beans from the cherry but actually a lot of the taste of the coffee comes from the fruit. During recent year or so, the coffee world has realized that we are able to use the fruit as well. I think we’re on a verge of a real game changer.
Pairing wine and food has been done for centuries. Fine dining restaurants have specific persons, usually called sommeliers, doing that job so why wouldn’t cafés do the same thing?
How to brew good coffee? This is the most common question that I get asked when I tell people what I do for living. So I decided to make a blog series where I go through different aspects of brewing good coffee. Let’s start with the fundamentals. These three things are always important when brewing good coffee, whether we are talking about filter coffee, espresso or traditional pot coffee.
Coffee is a very complex and multidimensional thing and just like in human relationships, you must really get to know it before you can understand it. There are a lot of things that affect the taste of your coffee, and I wanted to tell you shortly about some of those things. So sit back, relax and start deepening your relationship with coffee.
Coffee beans from African countries are my favourite. What triggered me when I first tried African coffee beans, was that the coffee did not taste like coffee at all. Africa, more specifically East Africa, produces some of the world’s most distinctive coffees characterised by vivid floral, fruit, and wine tones with rich acidity. All in all, African coffee beans are packed with taste! I encourage everyone to start exploring and enjoying African coffees because of their wide taste profile.
Have you ever wondered what happens in a coffee farm before the beans are roasted by a coffee roastery? Coffee farms come in different sizes and all have different methods of farming and processing but here is one example from Kenya where I visited early 2019.
Processing coffee so separating the coffee cherry’s fruit flesh and skin from the coffee beans is one of the most crucial aspects of farming coffee. How to coffee is processed can have a dramatic effect on the resulting cup and nowadays roasters and baristas are concentrating on coffee processing to describe the coffee. Also, lately it has become more and more popular that the farmers have started to experiment with new coffee processing methods such as anaerobic fermentation. Let’s go through the most common coffee processing methods.
