[bobaloo]

A little quick background on the coffee industry. There are two types of coffee bushes, Arabica and Robusta.

Arabica is what most people think of as coffee, it is the high quality product typically grown in mountainous areas of the tropics and semitropics, where the climate is cool year-round but without freezes. Real Colombian, Kenyan, Guatemalan, etc., are examples of Arabicas. Good Arabicas typically sell for $2-$3 per pound at the wholesale level, green. They're expensive, but they taste great.

Robusta on the other hand grows in more tropical lowlands. During the last 20 years Viet Nam has become the world's leading coffee producer by planting huge plantations of Robusta beans. Note from the article that they're talking wholesale prices of 50 cents per pound. The only problem with Robusta is it tastes like crap most of the time. There's a few premium Robustas that are used as additions to blended coffees, particularly espresso blends, but generally you wouldn't want to drink them.

If you buy a can of Folgers for example, what they do is buy Vietnamese Robusta beans, steam them to take out most of the flavor, then soak them in coloring (Robusta beans tend to be very pale colored, even after roasting) and flavoring, dry them and grind them for sale. They may throw in one or two percent of Arabica beans, so they can legally call it a "Colombian Blend" or whatever, but the vast majority is the cheap Robusta.

Incidentally, Robusta beans have about three times as much caffeine per unit weight as Arabica beans, so a cup of Folgers will have far more caffeine than a cup of good Arabica coffee.

Probably more than anyone wanted to know, but I've become a bit of a coffee geek the last few years, roasting beans, making espresso blends and generally enjoying it while I can.

Oh, about the detrimental effects of caffeine. I once was working a medical floor at a large teaching hospital when we had a fellow come in with seizure and cardiac arrhythmias. Couldn't figure out what was wrong. Finally a med student took a good history and asked him if he drank coffee. He said yes, 50-60 cups per day. Turned out he was a cop who worked a desk job on night shift and drank 5-6 pots of coffee per shift! Weaned him off the coffee and he was fine.

[Lore]

First the orange juice goes, now the coffee, what's next for breakfast?

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]The Coffee Apocalypse Is Nigh: Brutal Brazilian Drought Forces Starbucks To Pause Purchases

The worst drought Brazil has seen in fifty years is pushing coffee bean prices to new heights. As a result, Starbucks, the largest coffee company in the world, has halted coffee purchases over the past few weeks, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Brazil is the world’s largest producer of coffee. Arabica coffee futures, the most common bean variety sold in the US, have soared nearly 90 percent over the past year, and reached the highest price in two years on Tuesday. The surge was prompted by estimates that Brazil’s arabica crop, which was decimated by this year’s drought, will miss expectations by 18 percent. Overall, the world’s harvest is expected to fall short of demand by 11 million bags, — meaning coffee lovers may be forced to pay more for their morning cup.

Besides destroying coffee crops, the prolonged drought has wreaked havoc on Brazil’s water and electricity supplies. Now, the nation is bracing for El Niño, which promises an epic downpour that will be even worse for bone-dry coffee plantations. Some regions may lose over a third of their crops.

The cycle of drought and deluge is becoming all too familiar to farmers all over the world, and will only become more common as climate change brings more extreme weather patterns. Other commodity crops like cocoa and tea are also facing dire conditions as the climate becomes more unpredictable.

What’s more, warming temperatures are exposing arabica beans, which grow at an elevation range of 3,500 to 6,000 feet above sea level, to new pests and diseases that previously would not have been able to survive at those heights. Some agricultural researchers predict that the arabica bean will face extinction in a few decades.

Starbucks’ head of coffee told the Wall Street Journal the company has no current plans to raise prices, and is simply waiting to see if the price surge will subside. But if prices stay at their current exorbitant levels, Starbucks — and their customers — may have to accept a new normal.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/0 ... e-drought/

[Pops]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Lore', 'O')verall, the world’s harvest is expected to fall short of demand by 11 million bags, — meaning coffee lovers may be forced to pay more for their morning cup.

[Synapsid]

bobaloo,

Thanks for this. One question: Caffeine is highly soluble. It Robusta beans are steamed to get the flavor out, I'd expect most of the caffeine to go too. If so, would a cup of Robusta (as opposed to Robusta beans) still have three times the caffeine of a cup of Arabica?

Just curious--I don't drink coffee. Far as I'm concerned, coffee is a great flavoring for chocolate cake.

[Synapsid]

pstarr,

Well, crap, he did post that a long time ago. I didn't check. Guess I won't wait for an answer.

My question remains, though. An example of what I referred to is de-cafeinating tea (though I don't see why anyone would do it): Put tea into press pot (I use a press pot), add boiling water, wait five to ten seconds, pour off water + caffeine, add boiling water, let steep as usual.

Coffee is also a fine addition to a dark bread, just like to brownies. And you use espresso to make Kahlua (cut the sugar in the recipe by two thirds.)

Now you've got me thinking about brownies.

[AgentR11]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', 'I')sn't it funny, the comment isn't: "many coffee lovers will go without",
it's: "they'll be forced to pay more."
It just doesn't click that a lack of supply means someone will not be supplied.

[Serial_Worrier]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Lore', 'O')verall, the world’s harvest is expected to fall short of demand by 11 million bags, — meaning coffee lovers may be forced to pay more for their morning cup.

[Lore]

I'll wager the Maya Empire thought the same thing back in 800 A.D.

[Shaved Monkey]

Coffee grows pretty well hear as an under story plant
Nice looking and nice smelling flowers apparently the fruit is sweet too.(and full of anti oxidants, more than blue berries)
Its a lot of effort to get a cup though
I dont have any yet but I am growing tea (camellia)
A good alternative to coffee is roasted wattle seeds and we have plenty of those.

[dinopello]

What zones would coffee grow in as an understory plant ? Is coffee grown anywhere in the continental US ? I drink so much I should know these things (I know, google it!).

I remember from my civil war history that coffee substitution was a widespread phenomena. Here's a short description.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'C')offee Houses, homes and armies extended coffee with other ingredients or used no coffee beans at all because of availability or to economize. Some described adulterated coffee as delicious, others as nauseating. An 1853 'receipt' book said that no coffee substitute had been found to have the flavor of true coffee.

Doctor Thomas F. Wood noted that the hotels in Richmond were not providing genuine coffee but only miserable rye substitutes. In the North:

The diet-kitchen manager of a large military hospital in Madison, Indiana, discovered that the surgeon-in-charge was tampering with the hospital coffee supply, having kitchen workers dry and reuse the grounds, which they occasionally mixed with logwood. Wittenmyer appointed a USCC woman colleague to the task of determining if charges were true....Ultimately, the investigation resulted in the surgeon's resignation.
In 1833, Mrs. Child offered alternatives for the 'frugal housewife'- roasted dry brown bread crusts, rye grain soaked in rum, or peas the same as coffee. Chicory was used as substitute by poor classes or to improve flavor. Acorns, barley, beans, beets, bran, chestnuts, chicory, corn meal, cotton seeds, dandelion, okra seeds, sweet potatoes, peas, peanuts, persimmons, rice, rye sorghum molasses, sugar cane seeds, watermelon seeds and wheat berries were parched, dried, browned or roasted to make ersatz coffee.

[Subjectivist]

Coffee is one of the things I would really miss if it were gone, but you can buy it in vacuum pack bricks that are in foil and will store indefinitely if left sealed. I used to buy them when they went on sale and store them in a stack, when the price was high I would just open the oldest brick and dump it in the canister. It much more about planning and stocking a bit ahead of demand than going crazy over a price spike.

[Lore]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')
Coffee (whole beans from bulk bin)
2-4 weeks in air tight container
Vacuum pack and freeze (3-4 months)

Coffee (ground, in can)
2 years
Refrigerate after opening (2 weeks)

Coffee (instant)
1 year
Refrigerate after opening (2-3 months)

Coffee Creamer, Powder
6 months
6 months

http://www.demesne.info/Home-Maintenance/Pantry.htm

[Lore]

According to this link it looks like it doesn't. This relates to the green bean, but coffee's freshness deteriorates even faster after roasting.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]About Vacuum Packaging

Vacuum packaging does not make coffee last forever, in fact there have been some coffees that we've pulled from shrub because of them showing a little wear on the cupping table.

This whole vac-packing coffee endeavor is rather new and still largely experimental. Most of the in depth research on it is twenty or more years old and was done to determine shrinkage and loss, and not on a possible way of maintaining a coffee's quality. We are still learning about how to best preserve a coffee in its raw state. Vac-packing is used to try to keep a green coffee as fresh as you can for as long as you can and it does succeed in extending its life in its best condition, but even this can't keep it forever. Coffee ages, which has always been one of the things that makes working with exceptional coffees both frustrating and exciting. In my opinion, I don't feel that vac-packing has added any unnatural length to the lives of these coffees, only given them a fighting chance to last as long as they could. This really creates a whole different insight into the use of the buzz word "seasonality" for selling coffee. We need to embrace the things like this that make coffee such a unique product and work to better understand them, rather than use language that simplifies all of these complexities without really explaining the processes.

http://coffeeshrub.com/shrub/content/ab ... -packaging

[Subjectivist]

I am not a coffee snob by any means, but vacuum packed bricks are good for at least a year if stored with common sense, and it routinely takes me a couple months to use up a three pound can of coffee because I just don't use it that fast. If you close the lid and put it in your fridge or freezer a can of opened coffee is good for two or three months, not two weeks. Too each their own, but I have never been wealthy enough to waste food the way some people recommend. Throwing away a brick of vacuum packed coffee two weeks after opening is nuts IMO.

[dinopello]

To answer my own question through google research - no, coffee is not cultivated as an outdoor crop anywhere in the continental US. Some people report success growing coffee indoors or as an indoor-outdoor plant in containers. I thought that was pretty cool.

[Lore]

I'm going to miss the Arabica bean. I believe it's true though that some people will still get it. Packaged like an expensive bottle of vintage port.

[KaiserJeep]

For what it's worth, coffee prices basically quadrupled since the thread started. But the main problem was not rising temperatures, the problem was unusually cold weather at altitude several times in South and Central America from 2008 to 2011, which frostbit the trees.

It makes me grumpy to pay $30 per pound for my favored organic Kona medium roast.

[jedrider]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('bobaloo', 'I')f you like coffee, roast your own. It's dead easy, been doing it for a couple of years. First, you can buy some of the world's finest estate-labeled coffee, in an amazing variety, for $3-$5 per pound (green). Second, it keeps for many years in the green state without deteriorating, so you can squirrel away a 25 pound sack and it'll still be good in 3-4 years. Finally, it makes the best coffee you've ever had.

I've been using just a Poppery hot air popcorn popper, just picked up one of those metal basket dealies with a stirring device, also designed for popcorn, going to give that a try to do bigger batches.

For more info visit SweetMaria's