Pursuing the Perfect Cup of Coffee

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I did something heinous. After receiving a cup of Dunkin' Donuts Coffea arabica that had clearly exceeded the 15-minute half-life from coffee to sludge, and after abandoning Starbucks where the maker of my venti-no-fat-no-whip-mocha-valencia forgot the shot, I went home and mixed beans from both sources, grinding into intimate contact the helpless slivers of endosperm, mindlessly obliterating the embryos within. I don't know the farmers who grew the brew, whether it was fruity or bold, or if it hailed from Sumatra or the eastern highlands of Papua New Guinea. It just tasted good.The sheer complexity of caffeine addiction nowadays drove me to my drastic act of mixed beanery. A little research revealed that coffee preparation is a highly refined science, involving ecology, botany, chemistry, and biotechnology, not to mention economics, politics, and linguistics, as well as history.Coffee cultivation began in Ethiopia before the 14th century, then spread to Yemen and Egypt, evolving from leaf-chewing to bean-brewing. In 1616, Viennese priests urged Pope Clement VIII to ban Arabian coffee, the drink of infidels, but the good pontiff had a sip and declared coffee a sin-free libation. By 1650, coffee was being brewed on the British Isles, and descendants of a single Yemen-to-Amsterdam tree spawned further spread.1Fast-forward to the 1960s, where coffee adaptively radiated from Peet's Coffee and Tea in Berkeley (1966) to Seattle's Best (1970), to Starbucks (1971). Big companies dominated coffee production, but in recent years fair-trade beans have made a dent, guaranteeing small-operation growers a livable price.Why caffeine exists is a matter of speculation: like cocaine and nicotine, it presumably protects plants from mammalian predators. But their loss is our gain: caffeine hits the human bloodstream in minutes. And it's wending its way through a lot of bloodstreams. In 1999, 54% of the adults in the United States drank coffee everyday, an average of three cups each.2Coffee "cherries," which ripen a few at a time, each house two beans; the rare single bean is the prized and pricey "peaberry." Trees bear fruit after three years and may continue to do so for four decades. (They flourish midway in the forest canopy; high altitudes slow ripening, compacting the bean's gastronomic wonders.) After the cherries are picked, the beans get separated, washed, sun-dried, stripped of their coats, and roasted for 10 to 15 minutes, between 392° and 446°F, in rotating cylinders. A caffeine curiosity: the longer, hotter, and darker the roast, the weaker the caffeine but the flavors are stronger. Within the bean, starches beget sugars as oils volatilize.Brewing options abound. While espresso forces pressurized steam through grounds, "an old-fashioned Mr. Coffee is as good as anything," says Dean Cycon, guru of Dean's Beans. "The temperature is key, which should be 198°F, and the beans should be ground to the proper consistency of good beach sand."3Not all is delicious in coffee land: Making instant coffee, let alone drinking it, is akin to inflicting cruel, gastronomical punishment. Giant percolators pressurize coarsely ground beans; this action refluxes the flavors out, and then they're added back. The resulting goop is pressure-sprayed up high and allowed to rain down, magically becoming a powder to which further abominations impart a fake "natural" appearance. Add water and presto: brown liquid.And since we're on the subject of abominations, there's decaf. Its existence, in my mind, makes no sense whatsoever. Why bother?Decaf once came courtesy of nasty organic solvents such as methylene chloride; today it is "nonchemically" water- or CO2- extracted. Enter "Frankenbeans," a term some Web sites evoke to denote the transgenic transgression of silencing a gene. Researchers in Japan have used RNA interference to dampen one of the three genes in the caffeine biosynthetic pathway, achieving in a year what would take 25 years to breed.4 Integrated Coffee, of Waialua, Hawaii, also is developing a genetically modified (GM) decaf, as well as antisense mRNAs directed against two of the enzymes in the biosynthetic pathway of ethylene, a plant hormone.5 Spray a tree, and its cherries ripen in stunning synchronicity, although saving seeds for next year's crop won't work without an ethylene bath. Again, why bother?If someone feels the need to create a Frankenbean, then I'll put my order in: I'd like a GM coffee that combines the flavors of fresh Dunkin' Donuts French vanilla and Starbuck's vanilla latte.Still in search of the perfect brew, I am confronting a coffee conundrum: Is it better to drink the first drops, which traverse virgin grounds but linger the longest near the burner, or to await the final drops, which skirt the burner yet contact used grounds? Dean gave me his answer, but I'm still experimenting.Ricki Lewis rickilewis@nasw.org is a freelance writer in Scotia, NY.

Pursuing the Perfect Cup of Coffee

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