(upbeat music)
It's more than just something you need
to get going in the morning.
Although, that helps.
(cafe patrons chatting)
The American coffee culture supports
a $48 billion retail industry
with an estimated 400 million cups of coffee
consumed each and every day,
served at home, on the job, and on the go.
(upbeat music)
But Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and now California,
they're the only American coffees.
So the overwhelming majority must be important.
Almost 20% of the total world production.
So my coffee travels have taken me all over Latin America
and then in Africa, Ethiopia, Tanzania,
Kenya, Zambia. As the buyer
from Milwaukee-based Colectivo Coffee Roasters,
Al Liu travels the world looking for coffees
that fit the company's specialty profile.
Specialty coffee is a higher-end product,
a one that at least in North America
has become very readily available.
(upbeat music)
But what makes different coffees
taste the way they do?
(contemplative piano music)
The answer is complex.
And like any agricultural products
includes multiple factors all the way
along the supply chain:
weather patterns, processing decisions,
and finally, roasting.
(contemplative piano music)
There's so many gems in so many different places.
We get to have the pleasure of discovering these coffees,
and we get to choose what we like,
and what we want to feature.
(Al speaking faintly) Finding unusual products
can be rewarding,
but in the end, business decisions revolve
around finding a buzzworthy beverage.
(cafe patrons chatting) Coffee people will drink.
We have to do a cupping.
Just look at the bones of the actual coffee.
Ultimately, the coffee has to hold up on its own in the cup
for us to say, "Yes, we're gonna buy that."
(playful whistling music)
A cupping is a tasting ritual.
Not unlike a wine tasting,
complete with prescribed procedures
designed to get to the heart of a coffee's character.
Smelling the dry fragrance and the wet aroma
are our first two steps during cupping
to evaluate the fragrance.
Notes are copiously taken
each step of the way. (ominous music)
(deep bass music) As the cupping evolves
into a symphony of slurps, (slurps sharply)
(deep bass music) (slurps sharply)
(liquid sloshing) spits,
and more slurps. (slurps sharply)
When these professional tasters do a cupping
and they're slurping, they're really aerating that coffee
so that those molecules become volatile
so they leave the liquid and come up through their nose
so they can really experience that flavor more.
Matt Hartings is a professor of chemistry
at American University
and author of "Chemistry in Your Kitchen."
He says that the concept of terroir used in winemaking
to highlight regional environmental influences
applies to coffee as well.
The flavor of coffee comes
from a number of different places.
Certainly, where the coffee is grown has a big effect.
Not only in the mineral content of the soil
where the trees are growing,
the microbiome, the local microflora of the region
where the coffee is grown
are gonna digest the fruit
on the outside of that coffee bean,
and as they digest that fruit,
they're making their own molecules.
Tiny molecules have big flavors, big aromas,
and they make some really interesting notes
that make very unique coffees.
There's this whole pantheon of different flavors
and taste out can be discovered in coffee,
and there's actually a coffee taster's wheel.
It's like a chart (exotic music)
with all these different flavor notes
that can be found in coffee and often are.
Chocolate, milk chocolate, dark chocolate,
baker's chocolate.
We're looking at fruit, peach, cherry,
yellow cherry, rainier cherry,
bing cherry versus dark cherry.
(exotic music)
A hint of this, a suggestion of that,
but no real grapes or blueberries were harmed
in the making of this coffee.
Turns out, they're just simple reference points
we can all understand.
They're just flavor notes, that's not like
there's any additive or flavoring agent, natural artificial
that's added to a coffee during processing
to give it that flavor.
Like a papaya. (sharp slurping)
Yep, a little mandarin orange.
Of course,
taste is always subjective. (sharp slurping)
(exotic music) (men laughing)
(motorcycle revving) (bright piano music)
(business owners chatting) Making connections
with small-scale farmers and coffee producers,
Liu experiences firsthand
how their decisions can impact the final product.
You can take out a coffee from the same place,
process it different ways,
and what you end up with in the cup,
you wouldn't know that it started
with the same base, the same fruit.
(farmers chatting) That's right,
fruit picked off the tree when ripe.
The coffee bean is actually the seed.
(farmer chatting) And processing refers
to the different methods to remove the anatomical layers:
pulp, mucilage, and parchment
to get to the core.
(energetic jazz music)
Natural processing is perhaps simplest,
usually resulting in fruit-forward full-body coffees.
The cherries are left to dry kind of like raisins
until they turn dark and harden,
and then they're sent to the mill
to strip the dried skin and fruit and parchment shell
off of the coffee seed or bean, if you will.
(bouncy beat music)
Washed coffees are depulped first
and then fermented in a bath of water,
typically for 12 to 36 hours to remove the sticky mucilage.
The beans are then dried and sent to the mill
to remove the parchment.
Generally speaking, wet processed for washed coffees
tend to have higher acidity
and can also pick up a lot of fruit notes in washed coffees,
citrus especially, grapefruit, lemon,
and also floral notes.
Typically, processing decisions
are based on traditional practices,
but sometimes, producers experiment,
and create new ways of doing things
(upbeat guitar music) like honey processing,
pioneered by Colectivo's Costa Rican supplier,
Beneficio Las Lajas.
Honey processed coffee has nothing to do with bee's honey.
We don't use honey to process it.
We definitely don't use honey to roast it.
A middle-ground method.
Honey actually refers to that sticky mucilage
which remains on the bean
after depulping and a short wash,
and then is allowed to dry before the milling.
(upbeat guitar music)
In a way, processing can reinforce the environment
where a coffee is grown,
providing roasters the raw material and flavors to work with
and hopefully, enhance.
The process of roasting a coffee bean,
you are reacting the proteins in the bean
with a sugar that's in the bean.
Every roaster has their own way that they do things,
but if you can get interesting flavors from the bean itself,
some of those flavors are going to remain in the coffee bean
during the roasting process
and you can make something
that a consumer might really enjoy,
something that surprises them.
Light roasts tend to retain
more of the original bean, varied and distinct flavors
from its origin and processing,
and may be more likely to satisfy the growing thirst
for new options, long a hallmark of the specialty market.
(upbeat music)
Specialty coffee consumers are interested
in trying new things because specialty coffee
at one point was a new thing.
It wasn't the same coffee that you would get at,
let's just say, a convenience store, or a gas station,
or out of your grandmother's cupboard.
It was something unique and something
with a different flavor profile.
so when you have that next cup of joe,
be it a pour-over,
espresso,
or a latte,
drinking all the goods
into making a seemingly deep black void full of flavor.