So Star cafe is becoming one of those cafe’s in Toowoomba that expats from BrisVegas, Sydney and Melbourne are dying for! Gone are the days of settling for below average coffee at above average prices.
We have decided to follow the evolving niche market of specialty coffee and grab as many interesting single origin and estate coffees as we can. These are batch roasted in small quantities and we serve them with a recommendation as to how to drink.
We are roasting one a week and serving them as our ‘S.O. of the Week’. To Give our local market a ‘heads up’ on what exactly we are talking about this post is to give some clarity as to the reason why we are doing this.
It’s surprising just how little people think about the coffee bean when they go about drinking their morning cup. Just like a good wine growing region, coffee bean growing regions around the world will have dramatic nuances in the end result of flavour. Coffee to the average drinker can be likened to fine wine drank by a beer guzzler wearing a four and twenty stained singlet.
Then there’s a group of people who know zero about coffee, but they do know about their wine or their chocolate. They can relate to you when you talk about the nuances in coffee and nod knowingly when you tell them that coffee is different from country to country. These people can also understand that just like wine, coffee trees grown on one side of the hill can yield a different tasting bean to the other side of the very same hill.
Believe it or not, millions of people are employed around the world just to sort coffee, and grade it according to its size, shape and number of defects. Ethiopia alone, employs over 12 million people in the industry. Buyers of green coffee beans are really geeks – they crave consistency and understand that quality and price necessarily go hand in hand.
Because of such a change in the end result, coffee beans can influence an espresso in so many ways: strength, mouthfeel, aroma, amount of crema produced, crema colour and thickness and aftertaste.
So why do different regions wield differing flavours?
It is largely known that beans that come from just one country are called single origin coffee. Simply put, coffee can be classified as Brazilian, Colombian, Costa Rican, Guatemalan etc. But as suggested previously, the classification is much more complicated than that. Brazilian coffee can be further broken down into size and quality. For example, a coffee roaster may order Brazil Cerrado NY - 2 Screen – 17/18 – Washed Arabica. Most of this is self explanatory apart from “Cerrado” which simply refers to the region where the beans were grown (a dry-flat savana) and “17/18” which refers to the “screen size.” Green beans are sieved to separate out different sizes. Everything falling through the 17/18 sieve is too small to be classified as 17/18 and everything that sits above the sieve must be large enough to attain that status (and therefore accompanying higher price).
Single Origin Coffees – What Defines Them?
The soil in which the coffee trees grow can obviously impact on the flavour of the coffee beans just like terra rossa is to wines. Different pH levels, mineral content and even what crops coffee grows next to on a plantation will affect taste, aroma etc. For example, coffee that is grown in India sometimes takes on a spicy undertone as it grows under the forest canopies next to pepper trees. Coffee from the highlands in Mexico can take on a slight chocolaty aftertaste as it grows near cacao trees that are used to produce chocolate.
Climate will also impact on coffee and is one of the main reasons that single origin coffees taste different to each other. Countries with distinct wet and dry seasons will often have a shorter maturation period than countries with slightly less temperate climates.
There are two main species of coffee tree that grow commercially around the world: Arabica and Robusta. Arabica coffee refers to coffee that grows on a tree. It is generally more difficult to grow than its poor cousin Robusta, but Arabicas are generally better tasting than Robustas and hence command a higher price in the market place. Robusta coffee grows on a wild shrub or a vine and although they are easier to grow than Arabicas and their yield is higher, they often yield a bean that produces bitter espresso that dries out the drinker’s palate.
Altitude plays a large part in taste as well. Generally, the higher the altitude, the better the Arabica coffee that is produced.
It surprises people but the method of processing and the individual farmer will have a huge impact on a coffee’s taste, aroma and depth of quality. A plantation that cuts corners when it ferments its coffee cherries or dries the green beans artificially/too quickly or stores them in their hessian bags incorrectly will produce inferior-tasting coffee compared to the farm next door that does these things correctly.
What to Buy
Generally you will purchase a blend when you purchase your coffee, but if you are at the stage or experimenting with the often-costlier single origins, the better-known ones include Ethiopian Yirgacheffe (the home of coffee), Kenya AA, Costa Rican SHB and Colombian. We can put you into contact with some amazing coffee geek that will point you in the right direction. We are continually buying new single origin beans for the cafes consumption and would love to teach you more.