Where does the aroma of coffee beans come from?

In a coffee obsession like mine, there is no smell comparable to the smell in the coffee field during the flowering period. The first flowering period of the coffee tree is about three years. The white flowers are five-petal tube-shaped flowers, with a faint fragrance of jasmine, and the inflorescences are arranged in dense clusters. It will wither after two or three days of flowering and begin to bear fruit after a few months. In Yunnan, this period coincides with the beginning of the rainy season, usually in March or April, when the climate is drier and temperatures begin to rise, when Rain Water breaks open sleeping buds. These blooming coffee flowers are of great significance for the upcoming coffee ripening season.

90-95% of Arabica coffee trees are self-pollinated: the pollen that pollinates the flowers comes from the same plant, and the berries begin to develop immediately. The fruit is a drupe with a diameter of about 1.5 centimeters. depending on the variety, the berries change from green to yellow or red as they mature. Because the flowering time is scattered back and forth, you will see red and green berries hanging on the tree. Coffee fruit contains two seeds, namely coffee beans. The two beans are connected face to face with each other on one side of the plane.

The time required from flowering to coffee berry ripening is affected by several factors, including coffee varieties, climatic conditions and agronomic practices. For Arabica coffee, it takes about 6-9 months, which means it can be harvested in Yunnan from then on. The harvest season for the coffee belt begins in October (September in some warmer areas) and lasts until February next year. Although mechanized picking can be used when conditions permit, most countries still pick coffee fruits by hand.

Manual picking is a labor-intensive operation with high cost. Therefore, it is mainly used to pick high-quality Arabica coffee beans. This is only the first step in the production of high-quality coffee, and it is also the way to pick coffee in Yunnan. Fresh fruit needs to be peeled on the day of picking, followed by fermentation, cleaning and drying to ensure that the coffee beans maintain the purest and original aroma and taste.

When high-quality coffee beans are picked, the most important step in making them gourmet coffee is roasting and mixing. As a result, coffee beans from different places show different fragrant, dry, mellow, bitter and sour tastes. A master baker must have the temperament of an artist and the rigor of a scientist. Only in this way can we ensure that the sugars and other carbohydrates in the coffee are carbonized during the baking process, thus producing the well-known coffee fat and producing good coffee of high quality and consistent style. Academically, this subtle chemical is not really grease (because it is soluble in water), but it is the source of the aroma of coffee. Professional coffee is generally roasted in small batches. Different degrees of roasting of coffee beans determine what flavor the coffee beans will eventually show. The aroma extracted from coffee beans is proportional to the baking time, the deeper the roasting degree, the less caffeine content and the less acidity. The deeper the baking, the more scorched you taste and the lighter the taste of the coffee bean itself.