Immersed in the world of coffee (Part I): The roasting process.

Since I entered -as a visitor and very fanatically I must say- the world of coffee, my desire to explore and learn has increased with incredible voracity. My environment is currently defined by people very immersed in this aromatic world in the city of Buenos Aires, so much so, that I can say that it has allowed me to experience firsthand the wonders of this world; completely changing my perception. Knowing and distinguishing the virtues and defects of a coffee is within the reach of anyone with an open mind and sense of curiosity. Expanding our vision spectrum and asking what is behind the coffee rate you enjoy in the morning or behind that latte that you enjoy in company, is what makes all this interesting.

We know that coffee is the beverage that is obtained from the roasted and ground grains of the fruits of the coffee plant. It's a highly stimulating drink because of its caffeine content. It's usually taken during breakfast, after breakfast or even as the only breakfast, although it is also customary to take it after meals or dinners, to enter into conversations or just out of habit. It is one of the most socializing non-alcoholic beverages in many countries. The most popular ways to take it are black and milk (with or without sugar); You also usually add cream or cream, condensed milk, chocolate or some liquor, depending on the recipe there are different ways to prepare it. This weekend, I had the opportunity to attend a specialty coffee tasting and a roasting session of the coffee beans, it was an incredible experience that allowed me to know a little more about this "elixir of life" that we drink in a cup.

The cupping of coffee is fun and can be very interesting, it's a time of tasting where to reflect and speculate. On the other hand, its description should be more important than a reiteration of a book definition. Learning to distinguish the roasted is a first step, relatively simple to learn to taste. The next step is to discover characteristic notes and know the differences of the coffees by country or region of origin, and here we are entering an ambiguous field. For mortals like me, this can be very overwhelming; I can barely distinguish smells and aromas, but it's difficult to put a name to what I just smelled. The coffee tasting goes beyond sharpening the sense of smell, in this process your sense of taste must be very sharp too.

First thing we learned is the difference between "a good coffee grain", made for specialty coffee and a regular one (the one that's used for instant coffee or coffee capsules; when you see it the grains, you'll never have one of those again! The whole coffee process requires a lot of work, it goes from cultivate it to select it manually (most of the cases, of course big companies have machines, but that's why their coffee isn't that special). Once you got the green grains, you have to toast them. They taught us about the selection, the conditions needed to store the grains and even their packaging! I never imagined it required that much work and attention. For example, the green coffee grains (before toasting) must be preserved at certain temperature (depends of the country of harvest and their conditions, but they said the most used is 20°C to 23°C) and humidity to keep their internal water quantity intact, so they don't grow fungus of dehydrate.

After talking about the basic process before the roasting, we finally got to meet the huge machine who makes all that possible. There are a lot of variations of this process, but the results at the end (without taking about flavor) are always the same: the green coffee grain gets toasted (also called roasted). The roasting of coffee is the heat treatment to which the coffee seed is subjected (green coffee) to obtain a brittle product, easily grinded, from which the coffee drunk is infused in water. During roasting, the transformation of the sensory, chemical and physical properties of green coffee beans into roasted coffee products takes place. The changes go from the weight loss caused by the loss of moisture (water) and to increase in volume, since the gases and water vapor that form inside the coffee cells, causes the pressure inside the cells to increase, breaking the cell membrane of the grain, causing it to swell. Depending on the origin and the point of toasting, the coffee beans increase their size between 50 and 100%.

Coffee is a complex drink capable of more than 800 aromas, however, the variety of nuances and their possibilities is not usually paid attention. As I said initially, knowing and distinguishing the virtues and defects of a coffee is within the reach of anyone with an open mind and sense of curiosity. It requires mainly practice to discover the characteristics of each grain by comparing and evaluating some specific points that will guide us: the aroma, acidity, body, taste and aftertaste. Of course, I wondered what the hell they were talking about when they mentioned all this at the moment, but with a bit of cunning (and thanks to the incredible explanation of the "coffee specialist, I managed to understand the concepts.

I believe this post got quite long, so I decided to divide it in two parts. Here you learned a bit about the process of roasting the beans and got to actually see the beans in different conditions. In the next one I'm gonna tell the story of how bad I was at the tasting. Also, I'll define the concepts I mentioned before, what a better way to learn? I believe that this deserves attention, in order to appreciate the cup of coffee we love, so read it carefully!