COFFEE TALK

We’re adding a new topic to our newsletter called Coffee Talk, here we’ll discuss and explore the world of coffee and stories of those who make it all possible. 

FROM COFFEE CHERRIES TO GREEN COFFEE BEANS:

Coffee is technically a fruit and the brown coffee beans that we roast are the seeds of a coffee cherry that grow on coffee trees.

These days, coffee as a commodity is available almost everywhere at any time, yet it is grown and harvested at only specific times of the year and there is a long chain of processes and people that make it all possible.

Coffee requires specific temperatures and moisture levels and is usually grown in high altitude mountainous areas where mechanical harvesters are not possible to use, so it is mainly picked by hand. The fruit can take between 8 and 11 months to ripen.

The coffee plant produces cherries that are either red or yellow in colour once ripe, if you were to bite into one, it would taste sweet, but what we’re really interested in isn’t the flesh of the cherry, (which these days is used for a drink called cascara) but the two green beans you find inside of it.

PROCESSING THE COFFEE BEANS: 

These green beans are then processed and dried. The processing varies on the flavours the processor wants to lock in and develop within the coffee bean, but we'll touch down on that detail in a future post.

Coffee is set out to dry for 10 – 20 days and once dry it is packaged into sacks and exported to coffee drinking nations.

ROASTING THE COFFEE BEANS:

To get that brown coffee bean colour and pungent coffee smell, the beans have to be roasted. The roaster will take into account the coffee variety, moisture level and the way it will be brewed. Normally, a lighter roast is used for filter coffee and a darker one for espresso. The roast level is highly important as it defines the compounds that will determine the flavour of the drink. To get your hands on some of the best-roasted beans, we highly suggest buying them at your local speciality coffee roastery or speciality coffee shop.

GRINDING THE COFFEE BEANS:

Roasted whole coffee beans, if sealed properly, can last a while on the shelf - while ground coffee oxidizes and loses taste rapidly. To get the most out of your coffee beans, we suggest grinding your coffee and choosing the appropriate grind size. The grind size is important as it determines how much and what flavours you'll extract when water hits the coffee grounds. When making an espresso the hot water will quickly pour through the grounds, due to this short contact of the grounds with water, we can maximize extraction by finely grinding the beans. In contrast. When brewing filter coffee the water pours through the grounds slowly, thus a more coarse grind size is recommended, so that not to many bitter flavours are extracted from the coffee powder.

MAKING COFFEE WITH THE BARISIEUR:

Making coffee with The Barisieur is simple and almost hands-free. To get the most out of your morning coffee, we suggest reading our perfect morning coffee routine blog. While for those looking to get the most out of their drink and extract the most flavour from the bean we suggest using our brew on-demand feature that will allow you to brew your freshly ground coffee at any time.

COFFEE WASTE? 

An estimated 250,000 tonnes of coffee waste are sent to landfill each year, with less than 1% of the actual coffee bean used to create a coffee. This coffee has also traveled hundreds of miles from the likes of Columbia or Panama to then be used and get discarded. 

At Joy Resolve we came up with the idea to use coffee waste in some of our latest designs like our coffee coasters and coffee table. 

We gather waste from local coffee shops and use them to create coffee panels that can then be shaped into sustainable timeless furniture pieces.

Browse our product catalouge here.

Read the full story behind our COFFE GROUNDS COASTERS .