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A Coffee OdysseyCopyright 2004 Brian Martell For science fiction buffs, J.S. Bach’s “The Waltz of the Blue Danube” will evoke memories of the second scene in director Stanley Kubrick’s magnus opus; 2001–A Space Odyssey. After the apes had their say in the first few frames of the movie, the drama takes us to a revolving space station with a Howard Johnson’s for the weary traveler to float around in. What’s interesting about the whole movie is the ideas generated in the sixties about what life would be like in the 21st century. Obviously, the mark was not quite hit bang on (thank God we don’t have a bunch of HAL’s running around!). But there were several prophesies that were fulfilled, as well as events that were totally unimaginable to the flower power generation. Observe the power of desk top computing today along with the advent of ubiquitous cell phones, cropping up in children’s school lockers. The World Wide Web and the use of GPS also offer advances that Kubrick would never have thought of as being available to the masses a mere 35 years ago. But they are here, and their impact on how we conduct our lives has been profound. So how has the coffee industry changed in the last 35 years? What ground breaking revolutions have occurred that have made the beloved beverage of North Americans more relevant than before? To be sure, not a lot has changed fundamentally in the coffee industry for almost 500 years (not at least in a revolutionary sense). Coffee is still roasted using heat, the finished product is then ground into smaller particles which are then brewed through extraction using hot water; much the same as it was done back in the first coffee houses half a millennium ago. But while we do not have a cellulose valley to compete with silicon in San Jose, steady technological advances have been made in the coffee processing/roasting industry. Technology that heretofore was out of the reach of all but the largest of multinationals has become more accessible to smaller firms. Roasting technologies revolving around profiling with heat modulation has added a new dimension to the ability to roast coffee in unique ways, enhancing the breadth and depth of flavour profiles available. This fascinating aspect of newer roasting equipment allows for greater control over the entire process, allowing the roaster to vary the intensity of heat in the chamber at different critical points, as opposed to setting a bean temperature to which the roaster will shut down once achieved. The end result is greater control on consistency of roast, and taste profiles that are more complex than coffee roasted using traditional methods. Beyond the actual roasting process, technology has played a large part in the development of product consistency. Coffee is an agricultural crop and, as such, is subject to changing climatic conditions which will affect the ultimate flavour development from crop to crop, year to year. Roasters will mitigate the differences through artful blending and roasting, but require the tools necessary to determine what the critical differences are. Coffee labs, therefore, are established in most roasting operations to verify, among other things, the performance of the roasting equipment through proper colour development (usually using an Agtron™) grind consistency using a Rotap, and humidity testing, to name but a few. As the consumer of coffee becomes more sophisticated, the testing done in the QA department becomes more complex. Recently, Heritage Coffee was asked to account for the amount of OTA (Ochratoxin A) in our coffee that was destined for export. This demand was made by the government of the importing country which, like almost all countries, is looking for ways and means of limiting imports to favour the domestic market who do not need to submit to these types of expensive tests. As mentioned in an earlier article, OTA is a naturally occurring fungal organism that can be found in baked goods, beer and coffee. The amount of OTA found in coffee is so small as to negate any ill health effect, but in a world of zero tolerance, testing is becoming mandatory for certain markets. Fortunately, Heritage Coffee labs are equipped with HPLC (High Performance Liquid Chromography) which is able to detect organic compounds in virtually any sample base on a quantifiable molecular basis. In essence, what would have been a complex and expensive outsourced QA test, taking more than a week to complete, can be achieved in house in Heritage’s own facility. The original HPLC machines, dating back to the late sixties, were immense and cumbersome, often requiring the doting care of more than one lab technician. While current HPLC is much easier to operate, it still requires qualified and experienced personnel to run and maintain (as an example of current complexity, Heritage’s HPLC requires lab grade oxygen, helium, methanol, distilled water and isopropyl alcohol to operate). While HPLC is not as readily available as laptops are, they definitely are more accessible than they were 35 years ago. And as coffee roasters are required to hold their products to higher and higher standards, it is likely more roasters will adopt these new testing procedures. Questions or comments? Reach Brian at Brian@heritage-coffee.com
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