Coffee is a very familiar beverage, but it takes a complex process to make that cup, from growing coffee trees to harvesting, roasting, and brewing the beans. Thinking about these processes when you drink coffee can help you appreciate its flavor and aroma more deeply.
Few beverages are as familiar to us as coffee. Whether it’s waking up in the morning, feeling sleepy after lunch, or working late into the evening, many of us naturally reach for a cup of coffee. We even casually exchange the phrase, “Want to grab a coffee?” when we plan to meet up with friends or coworkers. But while you’re drinking coffee, have you ever stopped to think about how the cup of coffee in front of you came to be? You steeped the beans, or dissolved the coffee mix in water. That’s probably what most people think of as a simple process. But the truth is, it’s not that simple. In fact, it’s a process that takes a very long time and involves many different steps. The process of making a cup of coffee can be broken down into three main stages Growing, roasting, and brewing the coffee.
The first step is to grow the coffee plant. The coffee plant is a tropical plant that grows in semi-tropical regions between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Cancer. The seeds of the fruit that opens on the plant are called green beans, which are the raw material for coffee. The seeds of the coffee plant are first planted in pots, and when the shrub reaches a height of about 60 centimeters, they’re transplanted to cultivated land. After three or four more years, the plant is mature enough to bear fruit, and after another 611 months, the fruit ripens to a reddish color. These are called coffee cherries. After harvesting the coffee cherry, the beans need to be separated from the fruit. There are three ways to do this. The first is air-drying, which is the traditional method of drying the harvested cherries in the sun to remove moisture and break the outer skin of the fruit to get the beans. The second is called washing, which involves placing the coffee cherries in a water tank of a specially designed machine and using the moving surface of the machine to peel the skin off the cherries. This method is more expensive than air-drying in terms of cost, but it is more appreciated in terms of quality, as it preserves the original quality of the beans and allows them to be processed immediately. The last is the semi-dry method, which is a compromise between washing and drying, in which the outer skin is removed using a machine and dried in a drying chamber.
In order for the green coffee beans to become what we think of as “beans”, they need to be roasted. Today, this process is carried out using roasting machines, and although there are many different types of machines, they are all based on the same principle: drum roasting or hot air roasting. The drum method, which means that the beans are placed in a drum and heated to roast, is the most popular method. A stirring device is installed inside the drum to ensure that the beans are evenly heated. The hot air method, on the other hand, cooks the beans by injecting hot air into the vat containing the beans. The advantage of this method is that it provides a steady supply of heat to keep the roast stable, which allows you to get a large quantity of beans. However, it also has the disadvantage that it’s harder to express flavor through roasting than with the drum method.
Roasting is not just a process of cooking green coffee beans, it’s an art of creating various chemical changes within them. The color, aroma, and flavor all change as the various components in the bean react to the heat, so the roaster’s sensitivity and skill play an important role. Even with the same beans, the roaster’s experience and senses can give the coffee a very different flavor. This is why coffee professionals consider roasting to be an art form. Roasting, a key step in determining the flavor and aroma of coffee, is a process that requires in-depth research and experimentation.
The final step in making coffee is to brew the coffee from these beans. There are many different ways to brew coffee, but the two most familiar to us today are using a drip filter and using an espresso machine. The drip filter method is what you might see when you order hand-drip coffee at a cafe. You grind the beans to a medium coarse consistency, place them in a filter, add boiled water, and brew the coffee. Although the method itself is very simple, the flavor of the coffee changes depending on the temperature and volume of the water poured, the speed at which the water is poured, and so on, so it takes a lot of experience and training to get the best flavor. To make coffee other than hand-drip coffee, you need to use an espresso machine. It has a metal pot with a bottom that you pour water into and attach to the machine with a filter basket filled with finely ground coffee beans, and the boiling water vapor passes through the coffee powder and out the top pot. This way, you get espresso, a strongly flavored coffee liquid, which you can mix with other ingredients to make different types of coffee, such as Americano, caffe latte, caffe mocha, etc.
At first glance, an Americano, which is what we usually drink in cafes, seems like a simple drink that comes out in less than a minute after ordering. But behind the scenes, it takes nearly four years of waiting for the coffee tree to bear fruit, separating the beans from the fruit, and carefully roasting the beans to make the beans. It’s a long and elaborate process that goes into every cup of Americano we drink. We usually drink it without thinking about it, but don’t you think that too much time and effort has gone into getting it in front of us to be so mindlessly consumed? When you have another cup of coffee tomorrow morning, it’s worth taking a moment to think about the process that went into making it. It will also make the time you spend enjoying it that little bit more special.
