Fermented coffee’s fruity aromas [video] | Hacker News Reader

Fermented coffee’s fruity aromas [video]

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57 pointszdw14 comments

Is this video related to the recent article on ArsTechnica?

https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/05/the-chemistry-of-fer...

Also a press release here: https://www.acs.org/pressroom/newsreleases/2023/march/fermen...

I do home roasting of green coffee, but I find the different process names a bit confusing (natural, washed, anaerobic etc), so here's a helpful guide: https://dailycoffeenews.com/2020/12/10/coffee-processing-sty...

What's your favourite brand for green grains?

I'm in the UK, so that might not be particularly helpful for you.

I currently buy green beans from https://www.pennineteaandcoffee.co.uk/ as they're cheaper than other places that I've found. I used to buy (and still do on occasion) from https://www.hasbean.co.uk/ which I can heartily recommend. Their roasted beans are excellent too and I love the information they provide about the individual growers.

In terms of beans, I tend to go for Asian coffees such as Monsoon Malabar, Indonesian or Thailand (tends to be difficult to find).

Here's an example of a fermented Thailand coffee that doesn't muck around when it comes to flavour or aroma (a friend complains that it smells of cat pee): https://www.hasbean.co.uk/products/thailand-22-114

I usually buy around 8kgs of green beans at a time to qualify for free delivery and the advantage of green beans is that they keep much better (months at least). It's when you roast them that beans should be consumed with 2-3 weeks or so depending on how fussy you are about staleness. It's when beans are ground that they go stale extremely quickly, so ground coffee from a supermarket will inevitably taste a bit stale despite having it in a fancy air release bag etc.

I am impressed by how much the general population is driven by supply, instead of finding their way to quality, when it comes to coffee.

Quality coffee fell out of favour when instant coffee came on the market. Before that, it was common for people to roast their own coffee using a stove-top pan, but instant coffee meant that anyone could manage to have a coffee-like drink without worrying about roasting and the occasional fires that can result (it's quite easy to set fire to the chaff released from the beans). When people grow up with instant coffee, they often don't realise the difference until they're exposed to expensive coffee-shops.

It's a similar situation with tea as most people don't appreciate the staleness of tea-bags bought in supermarkets until they're given a quality loose-leaf brew. However, tea wasn't better back in the day as it was often shipped in bricks.

As an anecdote I would have never expected, English Breakfast tea standards are the poorest: broken leaves that fall apart while producing finer sorts.

I think English Breakfast tea leaves are deliberately broken when processing as it gives it a stronger flavour (might help it move around inside a teabag too). Tea leaves are oxidised to make black tea (as opposed to green tea) and tearing the leaves is sometimes part of that process to speed up oxidisation.

Great chart, thank you! I brought home some "honey" coffee from Colombia the other day and planned on trying it later today, so the guide came just at the right time and helped me remember what they told us on the coffee farm. :)

I was sure it was gonna be another James Hoffmann video but I was wrong.

You can indeed noticed these fermented flavours if you buy natural (not washed) processed coffee.

Yep, no need to pay with an arm and a leg for rich-hipster coffee.

Agreed! Personal suggestion: try a bag of the Allegro Sumatra Boru Batak, likely available at your local Whole Foods for not too much. It's very different from the South American and African beans most of us are used to.

Picture of the package: https://imgur.com/a/dbvO1sm

I wish there was a standard label for roasted coffee beans. Something that clearly specified the origin, process, roasting date, etc. I love natural processed brews but so many bags never mention it and just have fluffy words like 'fruity, citrus'.

Honestly I’m not a fan of naturally processed coffee these days but in the intro to the video when they mentioned raspberry like flavours it took me back to a microlot coffee I tried from Aricha in Yirgacheffe. It was like drinking a delicate sweet raspberry tea. It blew my mind at the time learning the diversity of flavour that coffee can offer.

Yes, the flavors are amazing, some remove the bitter and acidic taste yet it was expensive.

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