Tag: coffee roasters

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Coffee Elephants

coffee Coromandel Coast, Indian Shade grown coffee
The coffee from Coromandel Coast. Chocolate, ginger and nougat. I got the chocolate and the nougat, though the taste profile changed quite significantly between brewing by a V60 or an Aeropress

The coffee from Coromandel Coast arrived in a box, in bags that were suitable for industrial composting, each printed with an elephant on the packaging. The elephant is the logo of Coromandel Coast and is a nod to the fact that all of their coffees (which include single origins and blends) originate in India. All of the coffees have been shade grown which helps with the carbon footprint of the coffee, hence the slogan “Climate solution in your cup”. Which means that it would have been easy to do a coffee-physics review based on the different ways that coffee can be grown and why shade grown coffee can be part of a climate solution for coffee. But that would have been too quick; one of the motivations for cafe-physics reviews (and the related coffee-physics reviews) is to slow down and explore how sitting down and contemplating a cafe (or just coffee) can lead to so many different but connected thought trains. Given that your attention is drawn to the issues of climate change, and what you can do, from the instant you order from Coromandel Coast, this seems to be too obvious, even if an incredibly useful, thought train. So, if you would like to follow that thought train while contemplating the coffee you are drinking, you can read more about the environmental impact of coffee growing here or here and the importance of shade grown coffee here. An alternative thought train may be provided by the elephants.

I purchased two coffees from Coromandel Coast: Ganga and Chalukya. The Ganga was a washed catuai peaberry coffee with tasting notes of “chocolate, ginger and nougat”. The chocolate definitely comes through when brewed in the V60 and the pureover while the Aeropress produces a somehow cleaner taste profile that I find characteristic of washed coffees. Coromandel Coast was established in 2017-8 and is both a coffee roaster and a cafe based in Croydon. All of the packaging is recyclable or compostable, including the box it arrives in which is additionally re-usable (and will be reused again a couple of times before it is eventually recycled).

The elephant stamp. Is every copy identical? Could we use one elephant to understand the others?

The ink-stamped elephant on the box is a nice touch and echoed on the coffee bags. You could perhaps start to think about ink printing, dyes and the invention of the printing press, there are plenty of thought-paths that open themselves out. But a chance conversation over the coffee provided a different direction into the ways in which physics is taught at schools.

It appears that the school of my interlocutor that day initiated the physics course with a very boring set of classes on units. I was asked that morning: why would the teacher have started teaching physics with such a boring set of lessons? But I wondered a separate question, how can units be boring? How sad that they were made to be so. For although they are of fundamental importance in how we explore and understand our world, and could perhaps be quite dry, they can also link elephants to the Sun and to the work we now do to understand coffee better. For if we start with elephants, it was a favourite unit of my physics teacher. Used for all manner of things when we omitted to include the units in our answers. Consider the coffee: it comes in bags of 250 what? 250 elephants? or 250 grammes? The elephant became a unit of frustration for the lack of stated proper units. But we can push the Coromandel Coast elephant link a bit further, for each elephant on the packet is an ink-stamped copy. They are different but identical, they serve as a standard.

neon sign, light emission
Light is emitted from different chemicals at certain, definite wavelengths. This is an effect you will have seen on many a high street in these neon signs where the colour is determined by the composition of the gas within the sign. We can use the reverse of this to identify chemicals based on what wavelengths they absorb. But to do that, we need to know that we are all measuring in the same units.

And the standards are important for units because we need to know that we are all measuring the same thing. When Anders Angstrom was measuring the absorption and emission spectra of the Sun and of different gases, he quoted the absorption lines in units of 1/10 of a nanometre (a unit now called the Angstrom). Different gasses will absorb (or emit) light at very specific frequencies or wavelengths. Being a very careful experimentalist, Angstrom had ensured that his measurements of the wavelengths that were absorbed or emitted were checked against the standard measure of length of the day, the metre. But at the time, the metre was defined by the length of a metal rod stored in Paris. All other standards of the metre were copies of this original one, including the metre kept at Uppsala where Angstrom was doing his experiments. An issue with metals is that they will age. With time you will get some shrinkage and some expansion owing to the formation of oxides etc. on the metal. The metre in Paris had aged in a different way to that in Uppsala which was just a tiny bit shorter than the Paris metre*. These differences would not be noticeable were Angstrom measuring the size of elephants, but instead he was concerned with measurements that were one ten-billionth of a metre. And at this scale, it mattered a great deal. Angstrom was aware of the systematic error in his results but it wasn’t until after his death that the error was fully hunted down and corrected for.

The position of the lines that Angstrom had been measuring reveal the chemical composition of the gases, and so knowing whether a line appears at 700 or 710 nm, reveals information about the chemical studied. We still use these spectroscopy techniques, not just for understanding gases, but also for checking the composition of medicines and for understanding the differences between Arabica and Robusta coffees. Which brings us back to the coffee, for while we no longer use a physical measure of length as our standard metre, we still use a standard definition of the metre that allows us to compare coffees and stellar spectra. It also allows us to appreciate the beauty in the uniformity of an ink-stamped elephant on a box housing an interesting and flavourful, climate sensitive, coffee.

You can order from Coromandel Coast here, or (post-lockdown) visit the cafe at Filtr, 53 Limpsfield Road, S. Croydon,, CR2 9LB

*To read more about the history of the definitions of units including the metre, click here. This anecdote was originally recorded in a book that I do not have physical access to at the moment owing to coronavirus restrictions. As soon as I get the name/author of the book, I’ll include it here.

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Coffee review Coffee Roasters Observations slow Uncategorized

In search of origins

Amaje coffee
Buriso Amaje Coffee from Ethiopia via Amoret Coffee in Notting Hill. The Jimma 74158 and 74160 varietals are selections from coffee grown in the wild.

It was a goat herder named Kaldi, so the story goes, who first noticed the effect of coffee beans on the the energy levels of his goats. After telling the local abbot of his observations, the monks at the nearby monastery realised that this drink could help them stay awake during prayer and so the reputation, and consumption, of coffee spread from Ethiopia and then throughout the world.

While the details may be questionable, there is evidence that the coffee plant originated in Ethiopia. Coffee still grows wild in parts of Ethiopia and the oldest varietals are also to be found there. And so, when I realised that my latest coffee was an Ethiopian Natural of varietal Jimma 74158 and 74160, roasted by Amoret coffee in Notting Hill, I thought, why not do a coffee-physics review rather than a cafe-physics review? For there are always surprising links to physics when you stop to think about them, whether you are in a cafe or sampling a new bag of beans.

This particular coffee was grown by Buriso Amaje in the Bensa District of the Sidama region of Ethiopia. The varietals were selections from the Jimma Research Centre from wild plants that showed resistance to coffee berry disease and were also high yielding. Grown at an altitude of 2050m, the naturally processed coffee came with tasting notes of “Blueberry muffin, white chocolate” and “rose petal” among others. Brewed through a V60, it is immediately clear it is a naturally processed coffee, the complex aroma of a rich natural released with the bloom. Indeed, the bloom was fantastically lively with the grounds rising up with the gas escaping beneath them in a manner reminiscent of bubbling porridge (but much more aromatic). And while I lack the evocative vocabulary of Amoret’s tasting notes, the fruity and sweet notes were obvious, with blueberry a clear descriptive term while I would also go for jasmine and a slight molasses taste. A lovely coffee.

Brewing it again with an Aeropress, the tasting notes were different. We could start to ponder how the brew method affects the flavour profile. But then we could go further, how would this coffee taste if brewed using the Ethiopian coffee ceremony? Which leads to further questions about altogether different origins. Where did this come from and how do our methods of experiencing something emphasise some aspects while reducing others? Ethiopia offers a rich thought current if we consider how things originated because it is not just known for its coffee, Ethiopia is also home to some of the world’s oldest gold mines. Today, one of the larger gold mines in Ethiopia lies just to the North West of where this coffee came from, while a similar distance to the south east is a region rich in tantalum and niobium. We need tantalum for the capacitors used in our electronic devices. In fact, there is most likely tantalum in the device you are using to read this. While niobium is used to strengthen steel and other materials as well as in the superconductors within MRI machines. Where do these materials come from?

The Crab Nebula is what remains of a supernova observed in 1054AD. Explosions like these are the source of elements such as iron. Image courtesy of Bill Schoening/NOAO/AURA/NSF

Within the coffee industry there has been a lot of work done to demonstrate the traceability of the coffee we drink. But we know much less about the elements that form the components of many of the electronic devices that we use every day. And while this leads us into many ethical issues (for example here, here and here), it can also prompt us to consider the question even more fundamentally: where does gold come from? Indeed, where do the elements such as carbon and oxygen that make coffee, ultimately, come from?

The lighter elements, (hydrogen, helium, lithium and some beryllium) are thought to have been made during the Big Bang at the start of our Universe. While elements up to iron, including the carbon that would be found in coffee, have been formed during nuclear fusion reactions within stars (with the more massive stars generating the heavier elements). Elements heavier than iron though cannot be generated through the nuclear fusion reactions within stars and so will have been formed during some form of catastrophic event such as a stellar explosion, a supernova. But there has recently been some discussion about exactly how the elements heavier than iron formed, elements such as the gold, tantalum and niobium mined in Ethiopia.

One theory is that these elements formed in the energies generated when two neutron stars (a type of super-dense and massive star) collide. So when the LIGO detector, detected gravitational waves that were the signature of a neutron star collision, many telescopes were immediately turned to the region of space from which the collision had been detected. What elements were being generated in the aftermath of the collision? Developing a model for the way that the elements formed in such collisions, a group of astronomers concluded that, neutron star collisions could account for practically all of these heavier elements in certain regions of space. But then, a second group of astronomers calculated how long it would take for neutron stars to collide which led to a problem: massive neutron stars take ages to form and don’t collide very often, could they really have happened often enough that we have the elements we see around us now? There is a third possibility, could it be that some of these elements have been formed in a type of supernova explosion that has been postulated but never yet observed? The discussion goes on.

coffee cup Populus
Where did it all come from? Plenty to ponder in the physics of coffee.

The upshot of this is that while we have an idea about the origin of the elements in that they are the result of the violent death of stars, we are a bit unclear about the exact details. Similarly to the story of Kaldi the goat herder and the origins of coffee, we have a good idea but have to fill in the bits that are missing (a slightly bigger problem for the coffee legend). None of this should stop us enjoying our brew though. What could be better than to sip and savour the coffee slowly while pondering the meaning, or origin, of life, the universe and everything? That is surely something that people have done throughout the ages, irrespective of the brew method that we use.

As cafes remain closed, this represents the beginning of a series of coffee-physics reviews. If you find a coffee with a particular physics connection, or are intrigued about what a connection could be, please do share it, either here in the comments section, on Twitter or on Facebook.

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Coffee Roasters General Sustainability/environmental

Packaging, all about substance

The OK Vincotte or OK Compost HOME labels are for items that are suitable for “home” composting. This label was on a coffee bag from Amoret Coffee

Who would have thought that buying coffee to drink at home could be such a moral minefield? There are issues of sustainability: for the people involved in the coffee process through to the planet. Issues of transportation and the balance between supporting local independents or larger companies with different sustainability policies. And in amongst all this are issues of packaging the final product. How does your freshly roasted coffee arrive? Is it in a bag that you have no choice but to dispose of in the ordinary rubbish, or in a bag (or even bottle) that can be re-used and recycled or composted?

As many of us are buying more coffee on-line at the moment, I thought that it may be helpful to have a list of roasters who have gone to some effort in thinking about the sustainability of their final packaging. Of course many other issues are involved in your decision about which coffee to purchase. This list is only intended as a place to collate information on coffee bean packaging. The list is not definitive, so if you know of a roaster (or if you are a roaster) who is not currently featured on this list but you think ought to be, please let me know as I will be updating the page regularly. Similarly if you notice a mistake, please get in touch (e-mail, Twitter, Facebook).

One more caveat. We each need to decide what we consider a ‘good’, or sustainable packaging. The issue is highly complex. Some of us will have the ability to compost at home, some will have access to an industrial composting bin, some will go to supermarkets regularly and would prefer to recycle plastic together with other plastic bags. And then of course there is the problem that packaging is just one part of a whole relationship between farmer, supplier, roaster, customer and planet. It requires thought and consideration on our part as consumers, on the part of the coffee roasters and, I think, it requires kindness on all our parts, appreciating the efforts of those who are trying to improve things while recognising that there is currently no perfect solution.

In alphabetical order:

Compostable (Home)

Very few items marked “compostable” are, in reality, “home” compostable. Properly home compostable items are certified by the “Ok Compost, Vincotte“/OK compost-HOME labels.

Amoret – Notting Hill, London and online. Coffees (including directly traded coffees) are supplied in bags certified as home compostable (OK Compost). Owing to supply problems during the pandemic, some bags of coffee have been packaged in EN13432 (industrially) compostable bags instead but a recent addition of a new supplier should hopefully solve these supply problems.

Coromandel Coast – online. Shade grown coffee from India, coffee orders online come in a Natureflex bag within a recyclable cardboard box. Natureflex is certified as ASTM D6400 but also listed as “home” compostable and indeed composted in my worm bin composter in 17 weeks (packaging was from Roasting House in that instance).

Roasting House – online. Delivery by bike in the Nottingham area. Ground coffee is supplied in home compostable packaging. Whole beans are supplied in recycled and recyclable bags (see below). You can read more about their latest packaging policies here.

Compostable (Industrial)/Biodegradable

Most packaging that is marked compostable (or biodegradable), but that is not marked as home compostable, will require specialist facilities to compost/degrade such as industrial composting. Compostable items should be certified by (BS) EN 13432 and/or ASTM D6400.

Coromandel Coast – Croydon and online. Bags of coffee purchased in Filtr, the coffee shop associated with Coromandel Coast in Croydon, are supplied in industrially compostable packaging. For coffee purchased online see above.

Dear Green – Glasgow and online. “Together we can all make a difference”. Next year, COP26 will go to Glasgow and Dear Green are ready, organising the 2018 Glasgow Coffee festival to be re-usable cup only. Coffee is supplied in biodegradable packaging.

Glen Lyon Coffee – Perthshire and online. Glen Lyon coffee made a commitment to zero waste in 2017 and use OK Compost Industrial certified coffee bags for their 250g and 500g packaging. 1kg bags are designed to compost within 3 months in a home composting environment. They offer a ‘drop box’ for customers to return their bags for composting. You can read further details about their dedication to sustainability here.

Recyclable

Several roasters have opted for recyclable packaging and quite a few are using the Dutch Coffee Pack bags which are additionally carbon neutral (via offsetting which you can read about here). Be careful with the “recyclable” label as it may, or may not, be suitable for collection with your household waste. Look for the recycling labels on the bags. PET plastic (label 1) is often collected with the street based collections but LDPE (label 4) should be taken to a supermarket where they provide recycling for plastic bags.

Atkinsons – Lancaster, Manchester and online – Established in 1837 as a tea merchant in Lancaster, Atkinsons now sell tea and coffee using recyclable packaging which is also carbon neutral.

Casa Espresso – online – Great Taste award winner for 3 years in a row, coffee is supplied in recyclable and carbon neutral packaging.

Chipp Coffee – online – In addition to using recyclable packaging, you can read more about the ethical and sustainability policies of Chipp Coffee here.

Fried Hats – Amsterdam and online – recyclable but also re-usable. The coffee comes in bottles that can be re-used before ultimately being recycled.

Good Coffee Cartel – online – Coffee in a can, but this time a re-usable and recyclable can containing speciality coffee beans.

Manumit coffee – online – “Manumit”, a historical verb meaning to set a slave free. Manumit coffee works with people who have been subject to exploitation and modern slavery so that they can rebuild their lives. Their coffee comes in recyclable and carbon neutral, Dutch Coffee Pack packaging

New Ground – Oxford, Selfridges and online. Providing opportunities for ex-offenders to develop new skills and employment, coffee is provided in recyclable packaging.

Paddy and Scotts Suffolk based, various outlets and online – Coffee packaging is described as PET recyclable or compostable. Check labelling on package. More info here.

Rave Coffee – Cirencester and online – Rave coffee have been conscientious in describing the reasoning behind their policy of using recyclable (LDPE (4)) bags, You can read about the rationale here.

Roasting House – For whole beans, Roasting House supply the coffee in (recycled and) recyclable paper packaging. Ground coffee is supplied in home compostable packaging (see composting section).

Runnerbean Coffee – Berkshire based Runnerbean coffee uses recyclable (LDPE label 4) coffee bags and, additionally runs a tree planting scheme to offset their carbon footprint. They had been using compostable bags until recent supply problems, check their website for the latest details.

Steampunk coffee – online. I’m reliably informed that their coffee is supplied in recyclable packaging but have been unable to confirm.

This list will be updated regularly. Please do get in touch if you would like to suggest a coffee roasting company who should be included: email, Twitter, Facebook.

Categories
Coffee Roasters General Observations

As quick as (a) Quarter Horse

Dog and Hat, Dog & Hat, Hundred House, Quarterhouse coffee
The package from Dog & Hat with Hundred House and Quarter Horse. Is it a particularly contemplative dog with the monocle?

Links with science can be found everywhere, from the café to the coffee roaster. A couple of weeks ago a delivery from Dog and Hat coffee gave me an opportunity to explore the random thought paths that may occur if you stop to ponder your coffee at home rather than in a café. The first coffee, an Ethiopian from Hundred House prompted thoughts on star gazing. But the second coffee, a Mexican from Quarter Horse coffee was equally thought provoking.

Finding time to prepare a V60 and sit with the SCAA “flavor wheel” as a guide, I was rewarded with a sweet, well rounded and perfectly enjoyable brew. I found fruity notes of blueberry and cherry/pineapple though the tasting notes on the packaging say “green grape, toffee and cocoa”. Sadly I missed the cocoa but this offers a good excuse for another slow brew with the coffee wheel at hand.

Thinking about the name of the coffee, I started to consider how you could quarter a horse. Perhaps not a literal horse given the ethical considerations but rather an irregularly shaped volume. How would you divide, into equal portions, an irregularly shaped object such as a horse? It seemed related to the question of finding the shortest route between two locations, how would you calculate the best route to take from A to B? In the 1950s a computer scientist called Edsger Dijkstra (1930-2002) came up with an algorithm to calculate precisely this problem. Originally designed to show the shortest routes between 64 cities in the Netherlands, Dijkstra’s algorithm is now ubiquitous in our lives.

Quarter Horse but how would you
A close up of the Quarter Horse Coffee Bag.

One of the ways in which we have started to rely on such algorithms is in car GPS devices or even on our phones trying to navigate to our destinations. Or at least, many of us do. London taxi drivers however have been shown to have developed a different brain structure from the general population that means that, for them, Dijkstra’s algorithm may be unnecessary. A few years ago, a study compared brain scans of people who had been driving London’s “black cabs” for a number of years to those of us in the general population. A follow-up study followed three sets of people over several years. A control group of people in the general population and a second group of people who studied the “Knowledge”, the navigational test that London taxi drivers have to pass in order to become cabbies. The Knowledge tests the driver’s ability to recall tens of thousands of London’s streets and the prospective cabbie can be asked to navigate between two points anywhere within a 6 mile radius of Charing Cross. Typically it takes years to acquire the Knowledge and not everyone who starts on the Knowledge will pass (the pass rate is only about 50%). This means that this second group of people splits into two groups; those who studied and passed the Knowledge and those who studied but did not pass.

The studies proved illuminating. One particular part of the brain, the posterior hippocampus had a greater volume of “grey matter” (the brain processing cells) in taxi drivers who had studied, and passed, the Knowledge compared with the general population. Moreover, those that had been taxi drivers for longer, showed larger posterior hippocampi. The changes in the brain seemed to lead to the cabbies having not only better navigational ability than the general population but better memory for London based information. The study of the trainees moreover confirmed that these brain changes occurred as a result of learning the Knowledge, showing that our brains are adaptable and still able to develop well into adulthood. While the brains of all the study participants started off similarly, those that went on to pass the Knowledge had a larger posterior hippocampus than those who either didn’t study or studied but hadn’t passed. However it was not all good news for the cabbies. The growth of the posterior hippocampus seemed to occur at the expense of the anterior hippocampus in long serving taxi drivers (but not newly qualified ones). The improved memory for London based information shown by the taxi driving group was also accompanied by a poorer ability to learn other visual information/memory related tasks in those that passed the Knowledge compared to the general population.

taxi and motorcycle, London
London black cab drivers have been shown to have a larger volume of grey matter in the posterior hippocampus area of their brains, demonstrating that our brains remain adaptable well into adulthood.

Perhaps the ability of the cabbies to navigate quickly around London’s streets suggests a second connection with Quarter Horse. A Quarter Horse is a breed of horse that can sprint very quickly over short (less than a quarter of a mile) distances. Which goes faster, the cabbie with the Knowledge or us with our smartphones once we have plugged in our destination? We are reminded of the tale of the hare and the tortoise. But I think a different tale is more appropriate. A tale that in reality was only ever a snippet of an ancient saying but has been developed into tales by thinkers such as Isaiah Berlin and Ronald Dworkin.

“The fox knows many things but the hedgehog one important thing”.

What does this mean? It seems there is a connection here between coffee roasting and taxi drivers, between algorithms and personal development, between coffee science and writing about coffee science. Is this connection really there or is it a meaningless statement that leads us into blind alleys of coffee consideration? It may be time to stretch our brains, grow our grey matter a bit and contemplate. Am I a fox or a hedgehog and where do London cabbies and coffee roasters fit in?

Quarter Horse coffee is online at https://quarterhorsecoffee.com

You can find out more about the coffee subscription site Dog and Hat on their website https://dogandhat.co.uk

You can read more about the taxi driver study on the Wellcome Trust’s press release about it here.

Enjoy your coffee, have fun thinking, grow your grey matter.