Coffee: The World's Drug of Choice

because you were on talking for a while. You talked really fast. You're like, I feel weird and it was fun to watch, and then I guess I hadn't noticed. But yeah, I just stopped. Why. Uh, I'm just not you know, I'm not a regular coffee drinker. I drink it when I'm in the mood or when it's cold. But a year in between cups is beyond not a regular coffell. It hasn't been cold. It's like avoidance. I just maybe it's been I've had some since in Yeah.

Actually I had one of those gingerbread lat taste yesterday. Those are good they're real good. Eggnog's good too. It's almost like not coffee though to me, because you and I drink it black dessert treat generally, which I'm not you know, I'm not saying that's the way you should drink it. But I just really enjoyed the taste of black coffee about eight times a year. I'm with you.

I've cut my intake down tremendously since then, since last February, down to a dozen cups a day, down to like a third of that, No, a quarter of that, three three or four cups three about three. It's not bad. And it's all decaf too, It's almost all decaf, but I still get wired buzz. It's weird. Yeah. What do they call that? The old psychosomatic reactions? Junkie? Yeah? So, Chuck, Yes, you asked me a question. I was like, this is

the absolute truth, deory listener Um. Chuck asked me a question, uh, because I said I didn't have any any intro to this, and he said, well, would you know the origin a cup of Joe? And I said, yes, I do, so here's the intro. Spotan eighty back during World War two, right, Uh, the US worked closely with the British, and the British already had um something called a cuppa c U p p A. Hey to our British friends over there, you guys can go to sleep for a minute because you

know this. But a cuppa is just a cup of tea. But t is so ubiquitous. That's just saying c U p p a means a cup of tea. A couple you're gonna have a cuppa. That means d having some tea exactly. But coffee is so thoroughly ingrained in the American culture, I believe, Chuck, there's a statue you furnished me with that eight percent of Americans consumed coffee. And it's been this way for a long time, right, And that's consumed not necessarily regularly, but consume, consume, take in

like I'm part of. This is already well established by World War Two. So when American g i's were hanging out with British soldiers, um, they drank coffee like all the time. It was part of the rations drag coffee. There's even matches included not just to let your cigarettes, but to light a fire for a kettle if you needed to coffee is just as ubiquitous among American servicemen as T was with um G I s Well, American serviceman slang is g I joe. You put Kappa and

before joe, and you have a cup of joe. And that that is why coffee is called joe. Yeah, all right, that mystery soft. It was a good intro, Chuck, well done. It was teamwork. So this is I'm pretty excited about this one. Actually, it was a good article. It was a really good artic written by the esteemed and uh unknown Deborah Beller. Have you heard of Debora Beller? Never must be a freelancer. All right, So let's get to the history first, because that's what we like to do

here on the podcast program. Uh there's an ancient um not ancient, but it's a legend. It's perhaps a myth. No one knows for sure about Calde the Ethiopian goat herder. Well he has a name, so you know it's for real. And supposedly what happened is he saw his goats mowing down on these weird green uh fruits. I'm sorry, red at first cheeze already miss set up and he noticed

they were you know, they called him dancing goats. They started to get a little frisky and not sleep at night like they're supposed to, and he said, oh, what is this stuff? I gotta get ahold of this. There's

two versions from here. He took it to a local monastery and either the abbot there made a drink from it that kept him and the rest of his monk's awake, so they said this is awesome, or he said no, this is bad, and he threw it in the fire, which produced that nice aroma, and then he said, hey, maybe it's not so bad. So either way, it's probably legend, but it's a nice story. Yeah, and there's a there's a coffee company here in Atlanta, don't know where they're based. Originally,

if it could be, Atlantic, called dancing goats. And that is why I never thought about that. There's a lot of Caldy coffees around the country. Oh yeah, I never thought that. Yeah, well, okay, yeah, dancing goats. They're like they're crazy for the coffee. Have you ever seen a goat dance? I have not. I used to dance with my goat. I've seen a painting goat, but not a dancing goat. So so that's the legend history, right. Um. We know that ancient African tribes my ancient I mean

like prehistoric meaning pre writing, how about that? Okay, especially along the eastern coast of Africa. UM had this Basically they made little power bars. They would take um animal fat and then they would take the coffee berries and either smush them and then put them in animal fat or else they just put the whole coffee bears and animal fat and then eat them and then they would like they would have a lot more energy after that.

Pretty cool, right, this uh originated probably in Ethiopia, Ethiopias biggest naturally there. Yes, a certain type does um uh. Years later that so we leave Africa. Now Africa they're eating their power bars. Um. We go to the Arabian Peninsula, and the same kind of coffee grows there on the Arabian Peninsula as does as thrives well in the Ethiopian highlands. Should we go ahead and call it what it is Arabica, okay? And that is like the primo coffee as far as

coffee drinkers are concerned. The wine of Araby right. Um, On the Arabian Peninsula, somewhere around a thousand a d. Somebody figured out that you could roast the stuff and make it into a concoction of brew if you will, and start drinking it hot drink bye. I think the thirteenth century, a couple hundred years later, Um, the Muslims which had conquered Um the Arabian Peninsula by then, UM knew that they had something really special with the coffee.

So they would export coffee beans, but you would be beheaded if you tried to get a plant or a seed out right. They want to keep it, yeah, because they knew, like, we can basically control the world with this. Yeah. And I found that that there's something called the kabe Kane, which was the public coffee houses in the Arabian Peninsula, and they were hugely popular still are I'm sure? And they it's at that time, and this is what do you say, one thousand d. Well, they they had a

lockdown on coffee by the thirteenth century. Okay, long time ago though, but early on coffee already started to have a link between drinking this stuff and sitting around with people and talking about smart things. It wasn't like going to a bar where you get slashed and talk about you know, the good old days, you know, and end

up weeping exactly. Uh. So they called these kab Kane's uh Schools of the Wise, and then later in England there were more than three hundred of these in London by the sixteen hundreds, and they were called penny universities because a cup of coffee was a penny and you would sit around and like learn stuff in the US now in London, okay, nice, So there was always a link.

I just found it interesting from the very beginning, between drinking coffee and talking smarts like we're doing right, go ahead, check okay, No, that's all I had, okay. Um. So we we were saying that the Muslims had a lockdown on coffee. But there was supposedly a legend. There's a couple of legends, legends of people getting it out of the Arab Peninsula and into the rest of the world. Um, And one of them is an Indian smuggler named Baba Boudon Baba Booi Baba boud Okay, and he left Mecca.

Supposedly there was some seed strap to his chest and made it out and um started growing coffee in India right. Well, the fact that it was Mecca was it may not have spread the same because Mecca was obviously a destination still is for pilgrimages, so it may it may not have picked up if it hadn't have been for the

fact that it was in Mecca, right. Um, I supposedly, I don't know how it got out to Europe, but the first um first coffee plantation, first European controlled coffee plantation, was established in Java by the Dutch in sixteen sixteen UM. And then it made its way across the Atlantic, and you can kind of see like little by little, there's like histories and legends about how coffee spread, which is pretty cool. Um. So it made its way into India

thanks to Baba Bouddhan. It made its way to um Brazil thanks to a spy named Lieutenant Colonel Paletta, who was sent by the Emperor of Brazil at the time in seventeen seven to get coffee from Yeah, from French Guiana, go find the ambassador's wife or the the the Emperor of of French Guiana. The ambassador, go find his wife and seduce her and get some coffee sack seedlings. And he did. Yeah, apparently he was a looker, and she

was a sucker for a handsome mug. And so when he left, she gave him a bouquet of flowers and he hid them inside the flowers. So there you have it, and coffee is president BRAZILA. Now Brazil's like the world's leading grower. I believe of coffee. That true. I think in Brazil alone, Um, there are five million people who are employed to cultivate and harvest three billion coffee plants. That's just in Brazil alone. Wow, so you mentioned Europe.

Though coffee in Europe it would have not taken hold in Europe nearly as aggressively if it hadn't have been for Pope Clement the Eighth. Did you hear about this guy? It was Originally coffee was very controversial obviously, uh, early on because it's a drug, gonna stimulant, and a lot of Europeans cautioned against the bitter invention of satan. They took it to Pope Clement and said, hey, dude, you gotta rule on this evil stuff. And he went, well,

let me give it a try first. He gave notice everyone has a Brooklyn accent now, and um, he gave it a try and said Wow, this stuff is pretty awesome. Actually, I'm gonna give it the stamp of approval. So Pope Clement gave it the papal stamp, and that's why it became so popular in Europe. Well, yeah, it was vindicated papally, and if it hadn't have been, who knows. So okay,

well we'll talk about Europe for a second. You were talking about how um the penny academies, penny universities, penny universities. So um. There's also been a lot of companies that are still around today. A lot of just to set a lot of huge events have taken place or begun

or find the roots in coffee houses. Lloyd's of London, rue Lloyds of London, UM, the huge insurance company, I think the world's largest insure began in a coffee house that was owned by a guy named Edward Lloyd, and I guess to make a little electra money on the side or to keep his patrons happy, he kept a list of all the ships that were insured by some of his UM patrons, who I guess at the time you could get somebody to cover your ship as an investment,

and Edward Lloyd started keeping track of it, hence Lloyd's of London. And now you have your tonsils insured because of that very day. Man. That costs me, but it's going to be worth than just in case. Um. Also, do you remember how I said that coffee is just so ingrained in American culture? Do you know why? The answer is totally obvious, but so obvious. Yes, it's so obviously.

You just walk right past it and you don't hear a lot of I'm not pressed, but you just don't read about that a lot unless And it wasn't just the Boston Tea Party that did it. It was, I mean, that was part of it, but it was all of the taxes on tea that really made it prohibitive for people to drink, so they started switching to coffee. And then it became something of a point of national pride, and and the Boston Tea Party itself was planned in

a coffee house called the Green Dragon. That is very true. So coffee is very much, um, just from the from the get go, from the it's the reason why everybody is sub jacked up for the American Revolution. Well, it's just it's interesting all these stories come together to make coffee like the fact that it was in Mecca, the fact that the Pope gave it the stamp of approval, the Boston tea party, the ties with smart talk in

coffee houses. It's all those things came together to form the perfect storm of what is now the second leading h import or export or just commodity. Aside from second leading commodity, as far as I understand, it's far. It ranks second to petroleum in terms of dollars traded world crazy, and it's the most popular drink on the planet aside from water. And I imagine that's on the the no normal market. I don't know if anything tops coffee on the black market. Um, chuck, it's I think. You know.

There's plenty of reasons to love coffee, but probably the most the most common reason to love coffee is um. The trimethyl accident. Then yes, yes, C eight H ten and four O two for those in the know. Uh, that's caffeine UM, which has the same but a milder effect on the brain is cocaine or opium meth I'm starting to feel this already. I felt the first one this morning. Yeah, um, And caffeine occurs naturally in a number of plants. It's not just coffee, um, but it's

in like whamo amounts in coffee. Um. An average cup of coffee has about a hundred milligrams of caffeine, where if you have like a can of coke, twelve ounce can of coke is fifty milligrams of caffeine. Yeah, so I mean it's twice as much. And you can tell I drank decaffeinated coffee just now and I'm a little more just decalf yeah, and de careful explain how how

it comes about later on. But there is one plant out there, um that naturally is decaffeinated, one naturally decaffeinated bean, right, yeah, the Madagascar coffee crazy species, mascar coffea vigner I wonder if that was naturally happened naturally, if it was bread to be so, I don't know, we're not bread, but you know what I mean. So, UM, we're talking about the United States, and as big as junkies for coffee as we are, there's only one state in um, the

Union where coffee can grow, and that is Hawaii. And that's because Hawaii exists in the bean belt, that's right, and they grow. They're very famous and delicious ConA copy in the volcanic mountains and the bean belt. It's on the Big Island, on the Big Island, Hawaiian guy. Now you know that. Uh the bean belt, as you mentioned, is uh bounded by the tropics of Capricorn and Cancer and Remiller are running right through the middle. That's right.

And uh the soil climbing and altitude are awesome for coffee. It means that you're gonna get a continually producing tree, which is really cool. One coffee tree can have uh beans ready to pick, beans and bloom flowers blooming all at the same time. Do you remember we saw them in Guatemala. Oh yeah, I think it's their second or third largest export is coffee says their number eight in the world. Um, I believe it. Uh. So the coffee is grown on a tree. It's a woody evergreen tree

um that can grow up to thirty ft high. But if you're into coffee cultivation, you keep your coffee shrub level so you can harvest it easier. You don't want to be bringing ladders in there now. And most harvesting is done by hand. Um. Like you said, the it's it's constantly productive. So you've got a little bit over here that's mature. You've got a little bit that's ready. Um, And there's flowers. Did you know the coffee tree has

flowers that smell like jasmine some say. And on the spot where those flowers bloomed, about a year later, you're going to have fully mature red coffee cherries is what they're called. Right for the picking, and they look just like cherries they except group in bunches. It tastes different. Um. And then one tree in a single season, I thought this was this is kind of staggering. Just one tree produces one to one and a half pounds, which is um less than it's about a half a kilogram. Yeah,

that's one. That's a that that takes a lot of trees to produce all the coffee that the world's consuming. Thing about that. Luckily we have Bob Bob Boudhan who got coffee out of Saudi Arabia. That varieties of coffee, Josh, we already mentioned Arabica. There are two Arabic and Robusta. Um, if you're talking Arabica, those are the original Ethiopian UH coffee trees or descendants of UH. They grow well, I'm sorry they are mild and aromatic. Eventually, that's what you're

gonna get when you drink a cup of it. About seventy percent of the world's coffee as Arabica growing higher altitudes between two and six thousand feet above sea level

the Ethiopian Highlands is a great pleasure. Mild temperatures are required between sixty and seventy five degrease fahrenheit, and they need about sixty inches of rain per year in and frost is no good, no, not at all no, because if you look at the bean belt, Florida is not even in it, Like the keys aren't even in the bean belt, So it's probably rare to get a frost, if not impossible in the bean belt. The robusta is

you're gonna have a bean smaller and rounder. Overall. The tree is much hardier because it can grow into temperatures up to eight degrees fahrenheit and lower altitudes, and it packs a lot more punch, about fifty more caffeine, and it's more bitter. And I read somewhere that um robusta is like has long been considered an inferior type of coffee, like it's the hardy like redheaded cousin of Arabica. It's on um and that we we here in America consume.

We we consume a lot of it um. And the reason why is because the Pan American Coffee Council, I believe, which created something called the coffee break. Have you heard of that? Check? Yes, that's a made up thing. From the nineteen fifties, um coffee was coming down from up on high where only the wealthy could afford it, to um being a lot more predominant. And one of the ways that it was um it was introduced to wider cultures by mixing the inferior robusts of beans with the

Arabica beans. And so now it was like, sure it doesn't taste as good, but it gets you going through your your horrible life. So have a have a coffee break and get back in there. We drink more of the robusta here. At least in the twentieth century we started consuming a lot more of it, all right, Yeah, Uh. There are more than eight hundred flavor characteristics and a coffee bean which is double that of wine. So when you hear people talk about wine and all the you know,

it's smokey, oky and woody like double that. And you know wine people, which I'm a wine person, but I'm not. I know you're making fun of yourself. I'm making fun of my people, but wine, I'm sorry. Double that. And you've got the what you've got going on with coffee, even though you think you like there's like the morning blend,

little Colombian, little Brazilian. Yeah, not so. Remember our friend Brandon was having a fight with our friend mark over because he keeps buying um flavored coffee like the blueberries. Seberry coffee should not exist. Marker is going to go ahead and tell you that right now. And not only should it not exist, but if you make some in your coffee maker, you might as will throw it away because you can taste it for the next fifty pots

of coffee. Right, let's talk about the actual coffee bean itself, Chuckers, the coffee cherry, Josh, all right, what you got is a bright red, like we said, skin when it's ready to pick in ripe, Uh, it's green if it's not. And apparently coffee pickers they don't want to have more than two green per every one picked, otherwise they're going

to get their hands slapped by coffee plantation owner. Oh yeah, yeah, like when they're hand picking them, they I mean they're picking them fast, so you're gonna have some green ones. But that's their goal, is what I here. The skin of the cherry is called the exocarp, very thick and bitter. You got a fruit beneath that called the mesocarp. It's kind of like the inside of a grape, like if you peel the skin off a grape. That's what I

take the mesocarpe. Yeah, it's gushy and sweet. Uh. Then you have the parencoma, which is uh slimy, and it's a honey like layer protects the bean. There's gonna be two beans generally, and every you know, if all goes well in every cherry, and they are covered by a parchment like envelope called the endocarp. They're kind of bluish green at the time. And then there's the silver skin on top of the bean and it's all protecting that little nugget that looks sort of like a shelled peanut.

And the silver skins also called the spermaderm prefer silver skin. I think everybody serves prefer silver skin. So uh, if you can get rid of all these layers that protect the bean. UM. They sically, what you're going down to is like the pit of a cherry, the seed, the nut, that's where the gold is right. Um. And when you harvest them, you said that people they just want the bright red ones. But people are harvesting between one and two hundred pounds a day by hand. Most coffee harvesting

takes place by hand. UM. And it depends on where you are where it's going to be harvested um or when it's going to be harvested. If you are north of the equator, you're going to harvest between September and March. If you're south of the equator, you're going to um harvest between April and May, which is not spring. Right, So the summertime it's basically the only time they're not harvesting.

And when you um, when you've got them harvested, you've got them picked, you have your hundred to two hundred pounds for the day. UM. Depending on the type of coffee plantation, you're going to um dry them by one of two methods. There's basically just two methods of dry which is pretty cool considering that they are huge, huge, concerns that like produce coffee. Yeah, and and there's still like two kind of primitive means of drying them before

we get into the cool method. I want to point out that all of this is speed is key because the freshness of coffee is the secret to good coffee. So if you pick beans that morning, they're being process that afternoon. They don't sit around in barrels for a few days at all, unless they're being dried. Then they sit around for seven to ten that's part of the processing.

So basically, um, if you're using the dry method of drying, um, you are basically you're laying the coffee beans out in the sun or the coffee cherries I'm sorry, big concrete slab. You're laying them out in the sun, um, and you're letting them dry. Uh. And after about seven to ten days, um, and you're raking them periodically, just kind of turn them over and get some air underneath them. The uh, the cherries will have dried enough so that there's only about

eleven percent moisture in the whole coffee cherry. And um, you can tell that it's ready because the beans rattle inside.

So it makes a good children's toy as well. I couldn't find who dries dry like I'm sure you can find out, like whatever coffee if you want to really want to research what kind of coffee you want to drink, Well, yeah, I'm sure you can tell, like who does the dry method, because it's I mean, I get the feeling that dry methods probably superior because anything that usually takes a little longer, it's probably worth it. Sure. And also it doesn't use

enzymes like the wet method. I get the impression that, um, if you get from a small plantation, probably using the dry method. The wet method uses enzymes and fermentation. And basically you take the cherries and throw them into a vat of water. After I'm sorry you you get the pulp and skin peeled away. Then you throw it into a vat to ferment for a couple of days, and um, the natural enzymes apparently eat away the little envelope in the silver skin and then you have the beans left over.

That's right. But and you still need to dry up for about four days in the sun, just like the dry method. And uh, you let it rest at night sometimes if you don't want to do if you want to speed it up even more. You don't do the sun dry method. You put it in these big rotating drums that pump in hot air. Uh, and that'll dry it out. Uh. And it's spermating. But if it smells too much like vinegar, that means of spermating too much, is there? Right? Yeah, that's what I hear. Okay, So

let's say you have a bunch of dry coffee. What you have is a commodity, like we said, second only to oil and total dollars traded. And uh, it's called green coffee because coffee producers don't roast coffee. Roasters roast the coffee and they buy their green coffee from coffee producers. So you've got Um, if you bought a bunch of green coffee, what you would have is traditionally a big jute or cecil bag filled with coffee. Still is this day? Yeah? Um,

and uh it's going to be train. It'sward to the tune of about seven million tons of green coffee shift worldwide every year. Now it's already hold too at this point, right right, it's just the beans, right Yeah. So the hauling process, you know, it's a it's a machine that does that and then they sort them according to to class, like grade A beans, Grade BE beans. Great sin about that part, yes, but eventually you're going to get a nice bean, right, And they grade them first by size

and then by density. And you want the bigger, heavier ones are superior to the smaller ones. And either they're graded by hand like along and like a conveyor belt, or there's um a conveyor belt and puffs of air that will puff off the lighter, smaller ones. Yeah, or they have little machines like uh, disorders that sort of

according to size. There's all different kinds of machines. Now, yes, they also have ones that look exactly like giant spiders that are terrifying, but they get the job done all right. Now to the roasting, which is that's the good stuff. Yeah, that's where coffee really gets its u a roma and its flavor, eventual flavor. Uh. And here's an interesting fact.

Roasting reduces caffeine. Is that right? That's right. So even though an espresso roast takes fourteen minutes compared to a seven minute light American roast, an espresso bean has a lot less caffeine than just a regular thing, a regular bean. Huh, so you may say, why do you get so jacked up? It's because the grind and the concentrated brew. Yeah, I never knew that. I thought the espresso bean is like

loaded with extra caffeine. I guess I would have. I would have imagined the same thing, because you quite like taste with caffeine content too. Yeah. True. So like the blacker, it is the thicker and richer that tastes you just like this must be loaded with caffeine. Very interesting, chuckers. So we're roasting now. Yeah, So you've got roasting drum um that's capable of achieving temperatures of degrees fair height, which is two degrees celsius and um. The key is

not just the heat, but the rotation of the drums. Um. You can roast coffee at that heat as long as it's moving, so it won't burn. I don't want to burn. It's hot, but it's not gonna burn. Espresso beans are burned a little bit, right. Um. So there's there's a couple of If you are a coffee roaster, you're you're looking for a couple of things. The first thing is that the beans should start to turn yellow, smell a little bit like popcorn. Like you said, they shouldn't smell

like vinegar at all. You want to throw that out, um, And then you're going to hear something called the pop and the coffee bean is just popped and it's hit about four hundred degrees ferret height. It doubles in size at that point. Yeah. Um, And that's really the beginning of the real roasting process. After that happens, you really want to be Johnny on the Spot paying attention to this because things move pretty fast after that. Um. Through

a process called pyrolysis. Um, the heat extracts the oil and they turn the coffee from green or yellow to a nice, rich brown, And now it's really being roast and eventually almost a black. Yeah. It depends like like you said, if you are going to make espresso roast, you're gonna heat it for fourteen minutes and basically you're toasting these things. You're burning them, and the sugars inside

are caramelizing. Right. And by the way, God help you if you say espresso, or even worse, if you sell espresso and you have a sign that says espresso, come on and then chuck. There's the second pop, and the second pop is like I'm done, take me out. Uh. You talked about the roasters, these roastmasters, and they are called roastmasters because it is a very specialized job. What they do a lot of times is because you don't want to roast you know, ten thousand beans and have

a bad batch. So what they'll do is they have a side room where they a little tiny batch and this is where the roastmaster does their taste testing. They'll brew up four cups of coffee from different parts of the batch just to make sure they've covered it all. Uh. They push aside the phone, and when they don't put it in a coffee maker, they put the grounds in a cup with hot water and let's steep, you know, like old school. Yeah, that's how I make coffee or

what I like to call camping style. Do you do that at home? Uh? Yeah, you just boil it with the French press, Oh, French pressure. I have several ways. There's all. I also have this coffee maker that you may got me. The boat them and it uses vacuum. It uses the vacuum to suck water up into this top bulb and it just sits there and percolates and then it drips back down really, but just the coffee does the ground stay up above, and then you take the top part off and you've got like a little

pot of coffee. It's awesome. It's fun to watch. I find the de press pot is a little chalky for my taste. Oh yeah, it totally is. But I guess it's just you know, if you like that, you like it, but you have to you have to grind it to its right. Yeah, which we'll talk about in a second. It's all about the ground, Josh. But what they do is, like I said, they've got the small batch. They broke the four cups. They steep it and then they push aside the foam on the surface to release a roma,

and that's called breaking the cup. They sniff it. Then they skim the grounds from the surface and do a little sip and spit for each cup, and then they say, hey, it's ready, go ahead and throw the big batch. And then when no one's looking, they snort the grounds. That's right. And another interesting thing is that once they roasted, it actually gets packaged still hot into the bag hot, and they pump in nitrogen to replace the oxygen. And because you don't want oxygen and then uh that you know,

the vacuum seals. Yeah, oxygen degrades the freshness of coffee faster than anything else. So yeah, that's why everything's vacuum sealed. Well, let's go. We're there. So uh well, there's four keys to making really good coffee. Right, You've got your roasted coffee. It's been roasted masterfully. Um. And now it's your turn. You have a bag of beans that's vacuum sealed, very fresh. You can still tell it's warm even chuck um. And

so you have four things you want to take into consideration. Freshness, the type of the grind, the ratio of water to coffee, and then water purity and the purity of your coffee maker. And by the way, don't don't either a buy ground coffee or be buy coffee and grind it in the store. You're you're not doing yourselves any favors if you can, and tell everybody just leave you alone while you enjoy your coffee. Do whatever you want people. But if you're

a coffee connoisseur, yeah, and you're not doing that. You're grinding. You have a home grinder, you're buying beans, you have a home grinder and you're grinding just enough to make a couple of cups of coffee. Well, and not only do you have a home grinder, but you should have a nice grinder. I went to research Emily drinks a latte every morning of her life, and she had a

crappy little grinder and a crappy espresso machine. So I invested in like the good stuff in The difference between the fifteen dollar grinder and the hundred dollar grinder is massive, I would imagine. So, yes, grinder, I've heard burg grinders are like the best one. It's a burg grinder, and um, it's you know, I don't know enough about coffee to know the difference, but I started reading up on it and it said the grind is the key. Yeah, So as you say, the grind is the key, you've got

your freshness. You don't want coffee that's older than like two weeks. You don't want to grind it ahead of time. Um, and if you do end up somehow with some ground coffee, you want to keep it in the fridge and it will stay up to two weeks. Don't try to get Chuck Bryant to drink any of it, though, No I'm not like that. I'll drink anything. I'm just teaching. But the grind, like you say, is what releases all of the flavors and aromas and every little, great little nugget

of goodness and coffee. It's the way you grind it. And anybody who's ever ground coffee, especially at like a Trader Joe's or something, you can adjust then die and it will say French press, espresso, automatic drip and espressoes are really fine grind very and Turkish is actually even finer than that. UM. But the grind is related to the amount of time it takes to make the coffee. So espresso is very fine, almost powdery, and that takes

about twenty five seconds to make espresso. It takes about ten minutes to make a pot of UM regular drip coffee. So for that you have a coarser grind is what it's called. UM. And then also, Chuck, I want to mention there's Cowboy coffee. You're talking about how the roastmaster um just mashes up some coffee that called Cowboy coffee. Cowboy coffee. Yeah, Um, And apparently it used to be very difficult for cookie to get anybody to grind coffee

because that gets sold very very often. So um, I believe in the nineteenth century there was a coffee company called art Buckles Coffee, and they put a peppermintstick and every bag of coffee so that cookie could be like, hey, whoever grinds this gets really stick and yeah, apparently cookie had no trouble after that. That's a great story job. I agree, I love it. So you talked about proportion of water to coffee. Everyone has their slight variations. Some

people like a little stronger, some people like a little weaker. Yeah. I found this this ratio to be on, to be wanting, because what we have here in this article is two tablespoons of ground coffee for six ounces of water. They say that makes a strong cut, but you say more. I like a little more coffee than that, a little more, which is like a heaping kitchen spoon, no kitten spoons, about one table spoon two of those? Yeah, that's what I mean. Yeah, yes, heaping for sure. Yeah yeah, oh yeah,

you know you don't level it off. You're like, if it if it doesn't fall off on the way into the basket or the French press, right, okay. And they also say that cold water. Fresh cold water is what you really want to start with, and eventually you want to end up with two grease fahrenheit ninety three celsius. If you want to really get all the flavor out of the beans and keep your maker clean, gotta clean the thing out. Well, there's the irony. If your coffee

smells like vinegar, you've got bad coffee. But you want to use a vinegar solution to clean out your coffee every once in a while, rent it out. I don't know what the proportion is make it up. I think if yeah, there, I mean, there's got to be a certain amount of weeks or amount of coffee pots of brood. But if you're starting to taste bitter coffee, then it's it's time. Or if you taste blueberry coffee and you want to do the vinegar thing to or throw it out.

And then we talked about the Madagascar coffee species um that naturally produces decaf but um, most people don't drink this. Instead, they're drinking stuff that um has been removed somehow. The caffeine has been removed from the beans, either by using a chemical solvent gross which extracts the caffeine and then the solvents washed away. Wow. Uh. And then the other

method is to steam the beans nice and um. That gets some of the outer part of the bean um, which apparently packs the most caffeine worn away, and you've got decalf and then I think they scrape the rest of it a way after that even. Yeah. So if you're if you're into healthy, then get organic decaf. If you want decaf non chemical solvent. Yah, you don't want to be drinking that, yeah. Um So then coffee around

the world Chuck America. Thank you to UM our friends at Starbucks who founded their company in nineteen seventy one. UM has kind of come out of its haze of not that great coffee, and it's starting to understand like, oh, there's really good coffee out there, and it's it's a good coffee because I've heard I've heard coffee people say, you know, store Bucks really need a good coffee because X, Y and Z. I was trying to be polite here and I was thinking Starbucks of nine not Starbucks of

two thousand eleven. UM Starbucks opened America up to the concept of good coffee. Doesn't necessarily serve it good coffee or at least expensive coffee, right. Um. But for the most part, Americans still prefer the American roast, which is about a seven minute roast, like you said, um, which is just shameful if you ask me. So what do you think though, I mean, I'm not an officio, were talking about this, Well, I don't know. I mean I just hear coffee snobs say, you know, store Bucks isn't

even good. But then I think those are people that are just fighting the big mass corporation that's on every corner. Well, I don't know, man, I I tend to go with the coffee snobs in that one. I think it used to be a lot about like way, there's way too many Starbucks out there, and now I think it's like they're just not The coffee just doesn't taste that good. It's really cloying. But the thing is is, I wonder also if I'm missing something, because how does Starbucks not

know that it's coffee tastes like this? Why wouldn't they change it? What's the deal. I'm sure someone out there We're gonna get some good emails on this from people who really know how they treat their beans. From Ted Starbuck himself, it's gonna be like I'm so you, Teddy Starbuck France Prince roast, very dark, robust cafe l it's gonna be half milk, half coffee. I don't know why you'd want to ruin your coffee with half milk. It's good, is it? Yeah? Viennese roast, I think Vienna was the first.

I think the first coffee shop in Europe was in Vienna. I might be wrong that I can't remember. I think so. I think so. Possibly we'll find out at any rate. The Viennese roast is very popular. Um dark roads two thirds dark roast beans one third regular roast, and the European roast is the flip the reverse of those. So it's one third dark and two thirds light. Yes. Uh. And then of course you have espresso um, which, like you said, it's there's less caffeine, but you get the

big jolt out of it by grinding it. So just pulverizing every hiding place where caffeine can hang. Have you ever seen maholland drive David Lynch the espresso seen, I don't remember it. It's when they it's some one of those mysterious meetings and David Lynch movies or like, who are these people and why are they having this mysterious meeting? And they serve this one guy. He's like, you know, we searched the world over for this espresso, and we

know you're gonna approve of this one. And they surf into the guy and he drinks it and then spits it up and a nap. So good god, he's the best Turkish roast. What's what's the proverb that coffee should be black as hell, strong as death, sweet as love, So what does that mean? They just put a lot of sugar in it. They like it sweet? Oh, I think it's way. I think it's more than that. So they have um, carter mom and chicory and coriander in

their coffee. Um. They also have you ever had like Mexican coffee or Mexican chocolate coffee with like cinnamon and um, like cayenne pepper in it, and I don't know, very good um. And then yes, they also put some some sugar in there, I believe. And it's very finely ground, like I said, even more finely ground than espresso. Boy, that's powdery. Yeah, and thick. They make it real thick yeah. Yeah.

Uh in Cuba, You're gonna get the Cafe Cubano, which you do it like a shot, which is pretty cool, and it's like espresso, but you don't sip it with your uh sambuca lemon twist or whatever. Have you ever had a lemon twist with espresso? I never have no remember Balky in um Beverly Hills cop he said, can I interest you in in? Yeah? Yeah? Uh? And then in Thailand, I didn't realize this coffee is really strong there and it is chickeny tinged, iced and sweetened with

condensed milk. I don't know if they don't drink hot coffee at all, or I know it's in Japan. It's like coffee is huge, and I think it's always hot in Thailand and they're like, it's too hot for hot coffee. It is so apparently if you want to make it a home, you just take some coffee, a little sweet and condensed milk and some ice and there's your thaie coffee. Boom, so chuck. I am heartened by some recent research that has come to light that basically says, drink as much

coffee as you like. Yeah. They I mean they used to say like coffee is bad for you. You don't want to have too much right now, bowlic acid, too much caffeine will make you go shoot people. I mean, it's been crazy. There's good and bad. Let's just say that. So let's talk about some there's some sort of weird link between coffee consumption and UM diabetes. There's a negative correlation, whereas the more coffee you drink, the lower your risk

of diabetes, right two diabetes specifically. Yeah, they did nine studies about five years ago, and four to six cups of coffee per day versus two or less us reduced your risk by which is pretty significant. Yeah, that's extremely significant thirty if you drink more than six cups a day, all right, and whether you drink decaf or caffeinated, the results were the same. Yeah. So it's not the caffeine, which I thought was probably the bullock acid. We're gonna

do a caffeine podcast by the way. Okay, that's coming um. Free radicals, which may or may not exist. UM. Supposedly there's phytochemicals about a thousand of them uh in coffee beans and UH. If free radicals do exist, these phytochemicals act as antioxidants. Preventing the aging process and all sorts of cellular damage if free radicals exist. Uh. They say

that coffee improves memory and cognition. They did plenty of studies on this, and coffee drinkers people that drink coffee in the morning especially performed better than non drinkers and when it comes to learning new information. Yeah, I was surprised by this. Like I'm not surprised, but I wonder if they did a follow up, like four hours later, like how you doing now? Exactly? Yeah, the coffee crash, I get that. Which is I think white people like

my brother in law drink coffee all day long. Yeah, there is no coffee crash when you drink two pots today. No, I know what you mean. But you also don't sleep and like your calf muscles rupture through your skin. They don't study on that. I can tell you, all right, what about the bad? Because you know not not not everything is all good. Um. Well, when you drink a lot of coffee, you pee calcium, and uh that means that you are losing bone density e g. Coffee can

increase OSTEO process. But they say add a little milk to your coffee, balance it out. Oh yeah, that's what. That's what it says here at least, it definitely makes sense or yogurt, But who wants to eat yogurt? So if you put two I love yogurt. I'm just kidding, all like it, all right? Two tablespoons of only the good stuff, like only Greek yogurt. Um, two tablespoons of milk or yogurt per cup of coffee. I don't see putting yogurt in coffee though, Like you'd have to be

literally insane to do that. It seems like it would just coagulate, ump up, like they would take you away and lock you up if somebody saw you putting yogurt in your coffee. Josh, I know you like your skin. I know you like to remain youthful and and handsome and sexy. But it's just like an exercise and futility. I feel like I disagree. Coffee has antioxidants. If you drink it too much of it, it will cause your skin to wrinkle, probably quicker than your average dude who

doesn't because of dehydration. That's what they say. I've heard that. I don't know about this weight gain thing. Um. Basically, there's a change in blood sugar that the caffeine high can produce, which is strange because that would seem to um contradict the diabetes study if there was a less risk less of a risk of diabetes. Huh um. But apparently, um, if we we because we love eating donuts with our coffee and that kind of thing too. Um. You can actually gain weight if you eat a lot of coffee

because you're like, I would have another crowler? Why not? Because it goes do you dunk? I have dunked in the past. I'm not that big on it. I I also will dunk in oreo from time to time, but it's not like every time any oreos, I have to have milk. I thought you oreon coffee, okay? Uh. And then coffee is one of the most heavily sprayed crops on the planet, with pesticides and herbicides and chemicals. So if you know, if you're not into that, you should

get organic coffee. Thank you, Norman Borlog. And just a couple of more little facts here. I'm gonna skip most of these, but um, I will say that fair trade coffee, if you have a heart, you will seek out fair trade coffee because for every I'm sorry. The pickers themselves earned as little as four cents per pound, and the farmer earns as little as twelve cents per pounds sold. So the fair trade movement tries to redistribute profits so

that all these people earn decent wages. I believe the fair trade movement originated around coffee production, like I think that was the first industry. I think that's where it's cradle lie. And finally, Josh, if you are one of those dudes or ladies who start your day off by going to your local coffee shop to get a cup of coffee on your way to work, you're gonna wait in line about forty five hours a year for that coffee.

Not too bad a couple of days. That's a lot, though. Uh. You're also going to drop about a hundred and sixty five bucks on coffee every year. I don't know that seems that to me looks like a stat if you buy and make your own coffee, Because I bought one of those gingerbread ones yesterday at Starbucks. It was like five, let's even say four bucks, and you drink coffee every day, you buy one a day. There's plenty of people out there by cups of coffee. That's more than a thousand

dollars on coffee a year. That's way low. Then, yeah, that's just a stupid statistic you came up with. I'm done with my coffee, We're done with a podcast. Well, no, we're not quite done yet. They got some stuff, chuck. Let's forego listener mail and instead, sure, we're not gonna just let you go before we let everybody go. Um,

we want to wish everyone a very happy New Year. Yeah, no matter where you are, no matter what time it is, we are um wishing you a very very happy, safe, bountiful, beautiful, wonderful two thou twelve. Yeah, and that's what I love about New Year is it's everyone We're not going to get a malc and well you know in my country we don't do this or down here, it's not that everyone gets a New Year. So you must really love New Year's. Love it? Yeah, so Mary Mary, New Year.

And I want to also say very very special happy birthday to a very very special girl who um has her birthday the two days before New Year's. Myum, I was assuming that, well, happy birthday. We love, Happy birthday you me and happy New Year to everybody and if you I forgot almost chuck. If you want to get in touch with this, you can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast, Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know, and you can send us a good old fashioned happy New Year email to Stuff Podcast at

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