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Brews-ed But Unbowedby Brian Martell Did you ever wonder what technological evolutionary link came before the things we now have? My children look at me perplexed when I use the term “dial” with respect to the phone as they have never seen a phone with a dial on it before. In much the same way, I must have had a bewildered look when my father would ask me “not to crank the engine over too much” when he was teaching me to drive. I knew what he meant, but why did he use the word crank when cars didn’t have them since the 30’s? Current language sometimes doesn’t keep pace with technology, but does offer an historical reference to where we were way back when. Over the course of coffee’s history, we have seen many changes in the way we have enjoyed this, one of the world’s favourite beverages. Changes through evolution have played a part as have the cultural influences in taste and method in coffee preparation. The following a brief history of those techniques and where it may yet lead us. In the beginning…coffee was primarily a fruit where the method of consumption revolved around the pressing of the fruit for the juice and/or the pulp of the coffee cherry. This was probably the method used by the legendary monks who benefited from the discovery of the (mythical?) goat herder Kaldi. Ironically, the first method used to process coffee is completely opposite to our current method where we now discard the fruit and its juice in favour of keeping the seeds (beans). Probably through some campfire accident, coffee beans ended up being roasted, which meant they were only one step away from being brewed with hot water. Once that historical step was made, coffee took on the rarefied status of medicinal panacea for its times (being somewhat of a traditionalist, I still think it is!). While this method was jealously guarded for decades if not centuries, once coffee took on the aspect of popular beverage, the types and methods of brewing became divers. Initially, coffee was brewed using the method used by the Turks who controlled the trade routes to the Middle East where coffee was first cultivated. This involved using coffee that was ground using mill stones into a fine powder and then pouring hot water into a tall clay pot. There were no filters so the coffee grounds were allowed to gently settle into the vessel before being served. Variations on this method were adopted by the closest European cousins to the Turks; the Greeks. Using a brewer called a Briki, the traditional Greek method was to put a finely ground coffee into the briki, pour water on top, and bring to a boil three times before serving. The foam of the coffee would rise to the mouth of the briki when boiled and then descend again when the briki was removed from the heat. As trade routes became more open and coffee trees were smuggled to various royal plantations and botanical gardens, brewing methods also changed. Early European coffee houses, while still using mainly Turkish and Greek methods of brewing did start to prepare coffee using the implements available in early European restaurants, thus changing the flavour and characteristics of the prepared coffee. To increase the speed in which coffee could be brewed, cloth filters were introduced to remove the grinds from the pot. This allowed for the coffee to be served once it was steeped in hot water without waiting for the grinds to settle to the bottom. Newer methods of brewing coffee became popular with the advent of metal filters to catch the grinds in the latter part of the 19th century. This led to the inventions of the percolator and the espresso machine; two brewing methods that could be seen as being on the opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to speed. As the 20th century approached, other forms of brewing coffee became available. The French Press utilized flexible metal screens to capture coffee grinds and separate them from the finished brew. While this method was conceptualized a lot earlier, it only became practical with improvements in materials at the end of the 19th century. From the late 19th century to the mid 20th century, restaurateurs popularly used the vacuum pot method of brewing coffee. Essentially, the coffee was brewed using the physical forces of a vacuum created by the condensation of water. The machine resembled an hour glass with a glass tube fitted with a rubber stopper joining the two glass bowls. Water is forced up the tube by the heat of the burner to mix with the coffee grounds in the top bowl; and when there is no more water left in the bottom bowl, the whole unit is replaced from the heat. The ensuing vacuum created by the condensing of steam in the lower bowl then draws the coffee in the upper bowl down. The top part is removed and the coffee is served. While these machines produced an excellent pot of coffee, if they didn’t work right, they could cause much grief for the serving staff (read: isn’t my coffee ready yet!?). In the 50’s a new brewing method was devised using paper filters and brew baskets, much the same as the types of brewers we see in restaurants today. This made coffee brewing easier for foodservice establishments and provided the jumping board to a whole new industry, OCS. The biggest contributors to the brewing methods of early OCS were these new pieces of equipment that were easy to use and maintain. Later advents to the OCS brewing repertoire were thermal servers using basically the same method of brewing, but a new method of holding coffee. In the late 70’s and early 80’s, new OCS equipment started to appear that looked more like mini vending machines: the counter top cup-by-cup machine. Using fresh ground coffee (as opposed to instant) these machines offered office staff a fresh brewed cup of coffee one at a time. While slow to get started, these machines made a niche for themselves and created a whole different way of selling coffee to offices. These machines could be viewed as the precursors to the cartridge style of brewing coffee which are now part of the OCS lexicon. The idea of the cartridge machine is to offer a greater choice of coffees to office staff and charge a premium for the choice. The latest brewing innovation, which has made significant in-roads in European retail markets, is the pod brewer. As with the cartridge brewers we see in North American OCS environments, pods offer choice of flavour in a single cup brew. The real test will be if the pod brewing systems will be able to establish a clear standard and if they can find their market niche in the quality-price equation. © 2005 Brian Martell Questions or comments? Reach Brian at Brian@heritage-coffee.com
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