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Coffea stenophylla: A forgotten bean that could save coffee from extinction

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: Coffea stenophylla: A forgotten bean that could save coffee from extinction

#51

Post by tomrod »

djha-skin wrote: post #5

Caffeine production is likely difficult in the face of a drier climate. Caffeine is present in the plant as a pesticide. Insects are a much bigger problem in wet climates over dry. Having grown up in a wet climate (Chicago) but now living in a dry one (Utah) I can say that finding a droubt tolerant species which concerns itself with pesticide production may be difficult. The same water which coffee relies on is the s…

Not that this applies to you, but coffee is definitely one of the things the Utah-based religions and metacultures should reconsider. Both coffee and tea are extraordinarily healthy compared to their more commonly preferred soda/diet sodas, and much more satisfying. Further, they already allow tea in subculture rulesets like Korea (one can speak with former proselytizers that sold the ideas in the region if doubt is one's initial thoughts). Most trace back their current adherence to cultural baggage of the same diet notions that led to Seventh day Adventists's diets, Wheaties, Kellogg Cereals, etc. Some great articles in Dialogue for the Utah-metaculture based curious. It's clear that the health advice banning coffee is a remnant of earlier times and currently operates as a shibboleth and token of obedience without merit.

Re: Coffea stenophylla: A forgotten bean that could save coffee from extinction

#52

Post by 6177c40f »

jtbayly wrote: post #38
FuriouslyAdrift wrote: post #20

Robusta is doing just fine... https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2024/08/coffee-is-threa...

If, as the article says, you like instant coffee, then great.

Robusta is great if you don't go with the low quality stuff. Good quality Vietnamese Robusta is very enjoyable (and much higher in caffeine than Arabica, which I think is a nice bonus).

There's also the possibility of hybridizing Robusta and Arabica to get the best traits of both. A few hybrid varieties, such as Catimor, have existed on the market for a while. AFAIK Catimor has some of the hardiness of its parent Robusta.

As always, you'll have the best experience if you buy whole beans and grind them yourself (or at least find a supermarket that lets you grind beans fresh). No instant coffee that currently exists will be able to compete with that.

Re: Coffea stenophylla: A forgotten bean that could save coffee from extinction

#53

Post by awaymazdacx5 »

Caffeine mgs for various brewed extracts can be lower than a cup of coffee. Even decaf still contains <.002mg, remain static over the designated beverage half-life. For third-wave, light roast blooms, containing more acid, the caffeine content is punctuated.

Re: Coffea stenophylla: A forgotten bean that could save coffee from extinction

#54

Post by ifellover »

Kirby64 wrote: post #37
chongli wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a daily coffee drinker I wouldn't mind less caffeine in coffee. I drink coffee for its flavour (and have tried dozens of different coffees from many different roasters). I have tried some decafs but they just taste different and generally much flatter. They also behave very strangely in my espresso machine, requiring a much finer grind to sustain brewing pressure. From my limited understanding of decaf processes,…

The biggest reason decaf brews, tastes, and grinds so different is the processing essentially causes the beans to expands (so you can extract the caffeine out of the center of the very dense, green coffee) and then you need to dehydrate them back to the proper moisture content for roasting. You take a green coffee that is previously extremely dense and non-porous, and make it much much more porous. This leads to roas…

Huh. As an avid home coffee roaster, this is interesting to learn. I find that decaf also really struggles to “crack” when roasting, and emits way less smoke. I guess that’s because there’s perhaps nothing left to really crack anymore?

Re: Coffea stenophylla: A forgotten bean that could save coffee from extinction

#55

Post by ghc »

soperj wrote: post #45
WrongAssumption wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes you can. See Patagonian Toothfish -> Chilean Seabass.

Or Chinese Gooseberry -> Kiwi Fruit.

To be fair, a lot of Asian ingredients have picked up such weird English translations that they could use a rebrand. Case in point: "Prickly pear ash" is an amazingly unappetizing translation of the spice's proper name, sanshō or sancho.

Re: Coffea stenophylla: A forgotten bean that could save coffee from extinction

#56

Post by klausa »

shepherdjerred wrote: post #47
klausa wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eugenioides is sweet in a way that no other coffee I ever had is sweet. You sometimes see "sweet" as an axis of flavor of coffee, or as a tasting note on a bag of fancy beans; but eugenioides is very different. It's _the_ dominant note in that cup, and it is much less fruity or floral, it's just... sweet. You taste the sweetness, and then the rest of the "typical" coffee notes come in the background, but much less pr…

When you say sweet, is that because the coffee has more sugar, or are there just other compounds? I guess what I’m asking is what’s the difference between what you’re describing and making a regular good cup of coffee and adding a teaspoon of sugar?

It's the "other stuff"/flavor compounds, definitely.

I don't think brewed coffee contains any meaningful amounts of sugar?

Coffee (filter/brewed, not espresso) is ~98.5% water by weight, even if the Eugenioides species has more sugar in the beans than Arabica (it might! literally no idea here) — if the difference would be "just" down to the sugar levels, I don't think it would be noticeable at the dilution levels we're talking about.

The difference in the natural sweetness vs adding sugar is an interesting question, honestly!

Sugar is usually added to coffee to hide/mask/round out the bitterness; whether naturally occurring or from overly developed roast. But it also masks/drowns out other notes, too. You'll get less bitterness, but less of the acidity, the floralness, of all the other subtleties that can make coffee great — you'll get _sugar_ sweetness (and it's a very different kind of sweetness than coffee can naturally have!), and less of everything else.

Eugenioides is different because it just doesn't have that baseline note of bitter/hashness _at all_, and it's naturally pretty sweet.

Instead of sugar, I think the "magic berries" (I never tried!) that mess with your bitterness perception might work better? I'm actually now curious to try it out...

Re: Coffea stenophylla: A forgotten bean that could save coffee from extinction

#57

Post by Straw »

djha-skin wrote: post #5

Caffeine production is likely difficult in the face of a drier climate. Caffeine is present in the plant as a pesticide. Insects are a much bigger problem in wet climates over dry. Having grown up in a wet climate (Chicago) but now living in a dry one (Utah) I can say that finding a droubt tolerant species which concerns itself with pesticide production may be difficult. The same water which coffee relies on is the s…

Current models don't predict the climate overall getting drier with climate change- in fact average rainfall goes up slightly.

Some areas will get drier, others (like the Sahara and Sahale for example) have and will get wetter.

Re: Coffea stenophylla: A forgotten bean that could save coffee from extinction

#58

Post by chongli »

ifellover wrote: post #54
Kirby64 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest reason decaf brews, tastes, and grinds so different is the processing essentially causes the beans to expands (so you can extract the caffeine out of the center of the very dense, green coffee) and then you need to dehydrate them back to the proper moisture content for roasting. You take a green coffee that is previously extremely dense and non-porous, and make it much much more porous. This leads to roas…

Huh. As an avid home coffee roaster, this is interesting to learn. I find that decaf also really struggles to “crack” when roasting, and emits way less smoke. I guess that’s because there’s perhaps nothing left to really crack anymore?

This makes sense! The coffee has expanded a lot from the decaf process so it's not going to expand as much during roasting, hence no "crack" (which is really the same kind of process as popcorn popping)! The reduced smoke may be due to the removal of the skins and residual dried fruit which would have been washed away along with the caffeine, whereas I would expect a natural process coffee to produce a lot more smoke (compared to the most common washed process coffee).

Re: Coffea stenophylla: A forgotten bean that could save coffee from extinction

#59

Post by ars »

rmah wrote: post #34
jpalawaga wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're not denying climate change, just the effects of it. I'm not sure that's any better. We call it climate change because warmer weather produces higher variance in weather patterns--you're adding entropy into the system. Overall warmer, but more rain (and mud/rockslides), more wind, more lightning, etc etc.

As I read it, he's not denying the effects either. He's just saying that not everything bad that happens wrt climate and weather is due to "climate change". Sometimes, it's just variations, which have always happened.

These days everything is blamed on climate change. And when people point out natural variation, they get bashed.

A recent example is the CA fires, there is zero evidence linking them to climate change - they did a study and found no effect - which of course was reported as "climate change to blame".

Re: Coffea stenophylla: A forgotten bean that could save coffee from extinction

#60

Post by fellowniusmonk »

doodlebugging wrote: post #24

Maybe the answer is for someone to work on boosting natural caffeine levels in yaupon holly tea. It grows wild all over the SE US and can withstand multi-year drought or regular floods though it does best in a situation where it gets regular rainfall. You may have some in your own yard used as a hedge plant. I have several large trees on my place. It spreads underground by suckers and will take over an area if you do…

The naming of yaupon really ticks me off, of all the things that should get a scientific rename it's yaupon, clearly it was a successful marketing effort by the Empire, er, by the British to knock out a delicious and ubiquitous competitor.
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