Coffee Class｜How is a good cup of coffee made?

Do you still remember "An Actor's Self-cultivation" by the King of Comedy Stephen Chow? This incident tells us that if we want to turn things around, "self-cultivation" is very important and key. Let's get back to the point, how is a good cup of coffee born? This needs to be traced back to the source. Let's follow the editor to see the cultivation process of a small coffee bean!

How does a tiny coffee seed grow through several years of spring and autumn, undergo numerous post-processing trials, and finally become a cup of fragrant coffee? Let’s take a look.

1. Understanding coffee cherries

Below is the coffee fruit, and the coffee we taste is actually the seed part of the coffee fruit.

2. Start growing coffee

Now that you have a better idea of ​​the structure of coffee seeds, let's start planting coffee.

The coffee seedlings sprouting out of the soil are cute, right? They are carefully cultivated in the greenhouse! Next, the hardworking farmers will transplant them into the coffee fields.

Coffee trees are only suitable for growing in tropical or subtropical areas, the area between 25 degrees north latitude and 30 degrees south latitude - also known as the coffee belt, which is most suitable for growing coffee. There are three main coffee producing areas in China: Yunnan, Hainan and Taiwan.

Hainan's Fushan coffee is well-known both at home and abroad. It has a mellow and delicious taste, and many old coffee drinkers love this authentic flavor.

The first bloom of a coffee tree is about three years old. The coffee flower is a white five-petal tube-shaped flower with a faint jasmine fragrance. The inflorescence is dense and arranged in clusters. The flowers will wither after two or three days of blooming. If you have the opportunity to visit a coffee farm during the flowering period, you can see a vast sea of ​​white flowers, which is very spectacular!

After a few months, the coffee fruit will begin to bear fruit. The coffee fruit is a drupe. It is green at first, then gradually turns yellow, and then turns red when ripe. It is very similar to cherries, so it is called coffee cherry. It can be harvested at this time.

The harvest season is fruitful. Peel the coffee cherries and take out the kernels inside, which are the raw materials for making coffee.

3. Continue processing coffee beans

This process generally uses the sun-drying method or the water-washing method, and undergoes a certain degree of fermentation to obtain a rich sweet and sour taste.

(1) Sun exposure method

(2) Water washing method

The sun-dried method and the washed method have their own advantages, and the taste of the processed coffee beans is also different. In recent years, after improvement and development, a new processing method has evolved - the half-sun-dried and half-washed method, also known as the honey processing method. Honey-processed coffee beans have a richer and more charming sweetness, but this method is more complicated and the degree of fermentation is not easy to control.

The processed green beans will be stored in the form of shelled beans, with a moisture content of about 12%. Before roasting, the inner shell and silver skin will be removed, the coffee beans of appropriate size will be sorted, and the impurities and defective beans will be picked out, so that good coffee beans with good taste can be roasted.

4. Coffee roasting

Next, the most important coffee roasting is to be carried out! The roasting time of coffee beans is relatively short, generally 8-16 minutes. During the roasting process, after a series of complex chemical changes, the color and size of the coffee beans are very different from the raw beans, and they will emit an attractive aroma.

5. Coffee beans finally become coffee

Now that you can smell the aroma of coffee, how can you drink it? First, grind the roasted coffee into coffee powder; then, you need some tools for brewing coffee, such as a siphon pot, hand brewing kit or espresso machine. After extraction, you can drink a cup of coffee with rich aroma and full of happiness.

After experiencing the coffee journey from “seed to cup”, I believe everyone has felt how hard it is to get a coffee bean, so please cherish every cup of good coffee!

The Encyclopedia of Red Wine (WeChat ID: wikiwine), China's most influential wine self-media, provides the most popular wine information and knowledge, aiming to popularize wine culture and improve the life taste of Chinese people.