Why bake beans? The way of baking beans

Translated foreword

The Coffee Roaster Companion was published in 2014 by Scott Rao, who owns two coffee roasting companies in the United States. He has been in the coffee industry since 1994 and has written several books about coffee knowledge. Huaxia felt that his book Coffee Roasting Companion was suitable for friends who wanted to know about roasting, that is, beginners. Huaxia was also a beginner in coffee roasting, so let's read this book together.

Coffee roasting, he says, is a dark art. Although coffee roasting has existed for hundreds of years in human history, there is no official systematic description of coffee roasting knowledge. To this day, bakers still learn baking skills through apprenticeship and through teacher worship. Some young bakers also like to think for themselves, trial and error, taste pot after country of beans, and conclude from their own experience that the best baking curve for a particular bean. Scott did the same, and in his first decade in coffee, he began to make mistakes and achieved some results, describing the experience as "one step forward, two steps back." After owning two roasting companies, Scott began consulting for coffee shops in the United States, and through this work, Scott learned how a variety of roasters work and perform. His job is also to help customers analyze roasting data to find the best roasting curve for their roasters and beans. After six years of doing so, I think his experience summary in this book is very precious. No wonder it is so expensive. Therefore, from a few days on, it will be China's bedtime reading for the next few days, and translate each chapter to share with everyone.

Chapter 1: Why Bake Beans?

Coffee beans are made by processing the seeds inside coffee berries that are attached to coffee trees after they mature. In most cases, each coffee berry has two coffee beans, flat parts opposite each other, forming an oval shape. If you brew "raw" or "green" coffee beans with hot water, you cannot extract the wonderful flavor and aroma of coffee.

When green coffee beans are roasted, tens of thousands of chemical reactions occur, thousands of compounds undergo thermal degradation and chemical reactions in polymerization. The baker's hope and function is to develop the aromatic components of the beans by roasting them raw, and then to extract the wonderful flavors after grinding them and mixing them with hot water.

Among the many reactions that occur during baking, baking causes beans to:

Change in color of beans: green--yellow--tan--brown--black

Doubled the size of the bean

Bean density will be halved.

Gain, then lose, sweetness

PH will become more acidic

More than 800 aromatic compounds developed

Explosions occur when the beans release gases and water vapor from chemical reactions inside

The main purpose of roast coffee is:

To optimize the aroma produced by soluble chemicals in coffee beans,

Thus, during extraction, volatile compounds with flavor and oils and proteins representing aroma in coffee are dissolved.

Dissolved particles, oils, and suspended particles, mainly cellulose, which break apart in coffee beans, contribute to the coffee's body.

After reading only the first chapter, Huaxia felt that the author's strong coffee experience and non-procrastinating and lengthy wording were very incisive. Every word was written after careful consideration. Since coffee is an exotic product, we should clarify the English words of its professional vocabulary, which is applicable to coffee lovers, people who want to play competitions, and people who take international qualifications.

TASTE

Flavor, in coffee, mainly refers to the taste (mainly tongue) to taste the flavor. Of the five senses, taste is the most subjective, so different people, because of different experiences, experiences, and impressions of different things, taste coffee content is also different. In coffee, it is extracted to produce volatile compounds with aromatic factors after roasting coffee, thus embodying flavor.

AROMA

Dry aroma, in coffee is mainly through the smell (nose) to detect the taste. Those of you who have smelled raw beans know that they stink of something other than grass, but it is because of baking that more than 800 dry aroma compounds have been developed, the aroma of caramel reaction, and the charming burnt smell of brown pigment produced by Maillard reaction. In fact, after coffee extraction, there will also be different aromas produced, commonly known as FRAGRANCE in the industry, that is, the aroma of coffee extracted into solution, friends who often buy perfume know that this word is from French, mainly representing liquid essential oils or aromas brought out by alcohol volatilization. In coffee, it refers to wet aroma, which is the flavor of the ingredients that cause dry aroma after mixing with water.

DENSITY

Density, in this case, refers to the density of beans. Different green coffee beans are different due to different origin, altitude, tree species, humidity, soil, treatment methods and many other factors. When the raw beans are baked, the residual moisture (10%~13%) in the raw beans first breaks through the cell wall due to evaporation and heat absorption at high temperatures, and the volume of the beans increases and the density decreases. The second explosion is due to the sound of carbon dioxide and other gases generated in the chemical reaction breaking through the cell wall again, thus making the density of the beans greater. Density means volume.

ACIDY

Acidity. The acid here is not the acid that our tongue tastes, but the pH value. Because the deeper the baking, the more carbonized, the lower the pH.

SOLUBLE

soluble in water. Inorganic substances are soluble in water, so soluble compounds formed by chemical reactions; organic substances are insoluble in water, such as protein and fat, but protein and fat produce Maillard reaction under high temperature conditions, resulting in brown pigment is soluble, because it has been carbonized, which is why the color of coffee aqueous solution is brown, but due to different roasting degrees, the solution is dark.

BODY

mellow. Coffee's body is perceived by our human touch, that is, the friction between the tongue and the rest of the mouth to identify the body of a cup of coffee. What substance is BODY made of? It is the combination of soluble fine particles (carbonized), oils, and suspended matter (plant cellulose) that changes the body of coffee.

At present, there are many books on coffee in different production stages on the market, whether foreign or domestic. China had read some famous books, each with its own characteristics. However, due to the rapid development of the coffee industry (here refers to the world), many books theoretical ideas are eliminated very quickly, but the constant is everyone's love for coffee. The books translated by China are only scientific and comprehensive books from a personal point of view. If we find more comprehensive books, we can communicate with each other.