Are you buying the right Coffee Beans? (Beginner's Guide to Coffee)

in this video we are doing a deep dive into the world of coffee beans and straight up coffee is one of the most confusing items to purchase for example

what is the difference between a $14 bag from Starbucks a $20 bag from your local rooster or a specialty coffee that somehow cost $75 for 10 ounces of beans also how can two coffee beans say they

are a medium roast in the bag however even though these both look like a medium roast when I actually Brew them side by side one of is literally one of my favorite coffees I've ever made at

home the other I don't want to buy again so over the past couple of weeks I bought over 20 different varieties of coffee at different price points I visited a local roaster tried roasting

my own coffee beans at home and just tested a bunch of different types of coffee in order to come up with this coffee bean hierarchy that can explain the flavor and price differences in the

coffee that is available for you to buy and by the end of this video I have three promises to deliver on one you will understand the flavor fundamentals of coffee which weirdly enough will also

make you a better homecook because there's a lot of the same fundamentals at play two you will understand how the price of coffee changes and lastly using

that information you will be able to explore and buy coffee beans you love and the beans that you end up buying are always the most important piece in

creating a cup of coffee you enjoy and in fact when I first started drinking coffee coffee there were two big mistakes that I made first I was only focused on trying to perfect how I was

brewing my coffee and not how I was buying my coffee beans for example one of my biggest takeaways in this video is that you should stop buying coffee based

on light medium and dark roast first there is just no standardization or regulation when it comes to using those terms and secondly there are so many different varieties of green coffee that

even if they are roasted to the same level you will end up with two completely different tasting coffees and we'll learn the food science behind why this is shortly but it's kind of like

buying a car and the only thing you're considering is the color of the car not the make model or size the second mistake I made is that I never tried different coffees side by side and this

is just silly because the specialty coffee Association literally grades coffee beans by doing a cupping which is adding freshly ground coffee to a cup and pouring hot water over it everyone

can replicate this at home or you could just go to your local coffee shop where they likely could do a cupping for you you don't need to be able to describe in words why you like a coffee when you

taste it side by side you'll just know quite easy to pick out which one is which here like this is definitely that uh I think the single origin from Mexico just completely different flavor profile

than the others now don't get me wrong how you brew your coffee is very important too and there are about 10,000 different variable tests that I think would be pretty interesting to try maybe in a separate video but we have to start

with a bean that we actually like the flavor of and want to extract into our water or else we're going to be optimizing for something we don't even like so for today's video let me tell

you about the Brewing method we will be using from today's sponsor Aro press here's my oneliner on why you should pick up an arrow press it's the best way to start playing with your coffee let me

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and thank you again Aero press for sponsoring this video but now let's learn how to find some great beans that are worth Brewing so you would think we're going to start at the bottom of

the hierarchy and work our way up but it actually makes so much more sense to start at the top and work our way down for example this bag of gisha coffee cost me

$75 but what makes it expensive is not how it was roasted what makes it expensive is how it was grown and The Limited Supply now does it actually taste that much better than like a$ 155

or $20 bag we'll find out at the end of this video but first let's get in to roasting so for each section of the coffee hierarchy I'm going to give my highle takeaways that you should know

right up front then I'll give you the detailed context behind how I came to these conclusions because when it comes to Coffey it's so easy to get deep into the details and completely lose sight of

the big picture from a flavor perspective every bag of roasted coffee beans has a unique chemical composition of solubles that we can extract into water to make coffee and these solubles

are what create the flavor profile of a cup of coffee some coffee beans will have soluble Aroma compounds that remind us of berries and flowers others have notes of nougat and chocolate some

solubles make make our coffee taste bitter some taste acidic some make the color darker some lighter how does this actually work well we'll get into it shortly but secondly from a price

perspective The Roasting process is a constant price in the production cost of coffee for example one of these beans cost of goods sold is

$9.38 per pound the other is $32.45 per pound however the production cost stayed constant at

$545 per pound the significant variable cost of the final bag that we buy from a rooster is really the green coffee that was used to make this coffee and any

additional fees like Transportation or holding fee and we'll understand why the cost of green coffee can fluctuate so much in the other areas of the hierarchy and finally from a buying perspective my

biggest unlock when it comes to browsing coffee to buy is this stop buying coffee beans based on light medium and dark roast this is becoming or I would argue

is an outdated way to buy coffee beans the first problem is there's no standardization or regulation when it comes to listing light medium or dark roast on a bag of coffee beans for

example the light roast at Starbucks tends to be much darker than the light roast from a different roaster and this is why when it comes to buying and finding coffee you'll have to understand this entire pyramid and again up until

just 2 years ago I would buy coffee purely on if it had light roast on the bag or not and not pay attention mention to anything else and never would have bothered to pick up what is now one of

my favorite coffees ever like this is so unique to me it's like almost fruity and chocolatey I it's hard to describe but for some reason I love this like flavor

profile in a cup of coffee I also posted a poll to the community asking to guess the photo of a coffee bean with the aroma notes listed as Berry Rose and whiny and showed three different beans with visually different roast levels the

results ended up being almost a perfect distribution to show that no one really knows what they're talking about when it comes to light medium dark from a visual perspective so keep these takeaways in

mind but now let's get into roasting and here are two big topics I want to cover first why do the prices of roasted coffee vary so much and for this we'll break down the cost between commercial

coffee like Foggers Mass Market Roasters like Starbucks and Specialty Roasters like the one that is local to you or maybe you can find online and secondly how does roasting create the flavor of

coffee and for this I got to go in person to medich roasting and get footage of their process before trying to roast my own green coffee at home where I'll taste under roasted and over

roasted coffee additionally we'll explain why two different coffees even if they are roasted exactly the same can taste completely different at its most basic roasting is

where heat is applied to Green Coffee in order to kick off several reactions that transform the green bean into a roasted one and this is where the complexity of the flavor of Cofe is created these

reactions include dehydration the May reaction caramelization ster degradation and pyrolysis and we'll get into these shortly but it's important to know that

these reactions are not unique to coffee when we caramelize onions bake a loaf of bread or sear a steak these reactions are typically happening in some form and to get started with roasting we need

some green coffee so it's important to understand understand where does process green coffee come from and there are a few different ways that a roster will buy green coffee from a producer first is fair trade which basically guarantees

to pay a price that is considered sustainable or a small premium above the C price if the market rises above The Fair Trades base price secondly is relationship trade and this is where

there's an ongoing relationship between the producer of the coffee and The Roaster of the coffee and then third is direct trade which is just buying directly from a prod producer and as Hoffman notes in the world atlas of

coffee the idea behind all of these buying models is for roers to try to buy more traceably to remove unnecessary middlemen from the supply chain and to pay prices that incentivize the

production of higher quality coffee so what does higher quality green coffee even mean well we'll get to that shortly but the big takeaway here from a

price perspective is that there is a direct linear relationship cost here for the roster so the lower the cost of the green coffee that was purchased generally the lower cost of the final

roasted coffee we buy and on the other hand the higher the green cost of the coffee the higher the cost of the final roasted coffee and in today's market it feels like there's three pretty distinct

price bands where we have the option to buy coffee the lowest price is what I'll call commodity coffee think your folders Maxwell or instant coffees secondly is medium pric kind of mass Market rasers

think your Starbucks Dunkin Donuts or maybe the grocery store brand of the whole beans and the highest price is typically specialty roter so an example of this is going to your local raster to

buy the beans that they have roasted on site or today a lot more specialty Roasters are showing up in the grocery store regionally and nationally or they can be bought online and sent to you so

to make a pound of roasted coffee here's what that equation may look like across these various rosters now these are not real numbers but they're probably a reasonable estimate for ED educational

purposes and I want to point out a couple of things here first in order to make one pound of roasted coffee you may be surprised to find out that it typically takes 1.3 lbs of green coffee

due to the moisture loss that happens while in the roster it's kind of like a hidden cost in there and just as we talked about the big variable cost is the green coffee and Specialty Coffee

Roasters are typically paying the most for a couple of reasons first they are buying higher quality green coffee we'll learn what that means later and secondly they are buying lower volume of green

coffee for example a mass Market raser who is buying 100,000 lbs at once is likely able to get a better price than a specialty raser buying just a couple hundred or ,000 lb Additionally the

production costs include all the costs associated with getting the green coffee roasted and into the bags to sell this includes things like the overhead of salaries in labor the machines the

buildings and the bag that holds the coffee and of the three specialty Roasters likely do have a higher margin on their coffee beans but they are

selling a much much much lower volume than a mass Market roster like Duncan or Starbucks also this is the margin on a bag of coffee not a cup of coffee there's a whole other range of costs

associated with every cup of coffee from Barista salaries to machines the cups used to make it a lot going on there and as someone who has an accounting degree in a past life this really reminds me of

kind of a basic cost structure you would go through in Accounting 101 and I'd say in general the specialty coffee Market is very transparent with how their

coffee is priced for example one of the reasons this gisha Cofe costs so much money is because it said to taste really good and it has a very limited Supply so

the green cost of this coffee is much higher than this one however the cost to roast them is more or less the same now is the flavor that much better than a $19 bag of coffee well that's a

completely different question we'll find out at the end of this video but now let's cover this how does roasting create the flavor of coffee which will also help us answer why you should stop

buying your coffee based on light medium and dark roasts now before we get to my weird roasting test let's take a look at how coffee is roasted behind the scenes at a

specialty roaster and thanks again to my friends at Michi for letting me film this process they were super helpful in making this video so the roasting process starts by choosing one of the

green coffee varieties that were purchased from a producer and I'll explain this graphic a bit later but these are five varieties of green coffee on the left that were processed differently grown in different Origins

and are different varieties of coffee trees that will all react differently during the roasting process to produce their unique flavor in this case we chose a natural Rwanda which was a new

green coffee that had recently been purchased and started loading a batch of 16 lb into the hopper one filled there's a vacuum that starts sucking up the beans into the roter and at the bottom there's this

little magnet separator that will remove any bits of debris rocks metal or anything that's not coffee that may have been in the large bag of green coffee that was purchased the green coffee beans are then dropped into the main

roster where we can see it through this little window and Madison the rooster at medich has a roasting software that is keeping track of various temperature points

along the way this includes the rooster itself the bean temperature and and much more in order to create a roast profile for this Bean that will be saved and used for future roasts now we're going

to get into the flavor science of what's going on as we see this copy go from green to yellow and various shades of brown but the two main variables that are being played with are temperature

and time in this case the final roasting temperature was 46° F and the roast took 7 minutes and 40 seconds and as we'll learn shortly changing how much time

time or at what temperature can significantly change the flavor of the roasted Bean for example you could go hot and fast like the caramelized onions or low and slow and gradually bring up

the temperatures leading you to quite different results anyways once that roast is done the beans are immediately dropped into a vented chamber with air

that quickly cools down the bean to stop any carry over cooking and completely stop that roasting process once cooled they are brushed out into a container and then sucked up into one more Hopper

where they can be transported into a container for storing before being ready to bag and this was another batch of coffee roasted earlier that I got to bag up on the machine and send it along the

line which is now available for you to [Music] buy okay so we generally understand how we go from a green coffee bean to a roasted one from a price and process

perspective but now let's switch gears a little bit and answer these three questions first how does roasting actually create the flavor of coffee two why can two beans that are roasted to

light or dark end up tasting so much different when they are brewed and three if you should not buy based on generic terms like light medium and dark how do you find what flavor of coffee you enjoy

so in order to do that we need to go a little deeper and let's start with a weird test so did I need to try roasting my own coffee beans for this video probably prob not however did I think it

would make a very interesting test to try roasting my own beans and pulling them off at various points as I'm roasting them and Brewing them yes so that's exactly what we're going to do

now while I get this set up let me explain the theory of roasting coffee beans so for this test I started roasting a washed green coffee and then kept pulling off Bean samples at various

points in the roasting process to create this really satisfying profile of the roasted coffee beans and I had decided to brew a few of the samples some that were completely under roasted some in the middle and some at the far end

however before I get to tasting them let's take a look at how the flavor of coffee is created through roasting there are five main reactions that are happening during the roasting process

dehydration the mayor reaction ster degradation caramelization and pyrolysis and what makes roasting and the flavor of coffee complex is that these are happening throughout the process and

often overlapping dehydration starts first at as the bean starts to heat up and lose its moisture but it will continue throughout the process now as that bean continues to rise in temperature this leads to the May

reaction where the Browning will slowly start to occur at around 280° F and continue rapidly up to 350° as the amino acids in the Coffee Bean react with a

reducing sugar this reaction produces hundreds of new Aroma compounds that help provide the unique color Aroma and taste of all kinds of food it's probably

one of the most important reactions we use almost every time we cook next is streer degradation and this is a much lesser known reaction that as noted by

Barista hustle ster degradation is often considered to be a subset of the May reactions but with coffee in particular it has a very specific and important role to play it contributes to much of

the characteristic Aroma of fresh coffee and creates nearly all of the CO2 trapped in your beans now as the heat of the bean continues to rise more the sucrose molecules in the coffee beans

will begin to caramelize starting at around 320° F and caramelization causes that sucrose to break down into simpler sugars and also generate more unique

Aroma compounds then lastly pyrolysis may just start to occur in the Coffee Bean if it is being roasted for a long enough time at a high enough temperature now full pyrolysis would literally be

lighting a coffee bean on fire and completely breaking it down into carbon like charcoal but just a bit of P PSIs can happen to provide a generic roasty Aroma especially in dark color beans

that have been heated to a very high temperature and at its most basic The Roaster is controlling the temperature and time of the roasted coffee of which there are generally three phases where

these reactions are happening multi-dimensionally the dry phase the May phase and the development phase and I'm remaking this graphic from modulating the flavor of coffee by Rob

who where in the book he ran a bunch of experiments with the same green coffee but he changed the amount of time in each phase to see how it affected the flavor of coffee for example less time

in the mayor phase typically resulted in lower body less complex and lighter flavors and you may be wondering how does a roster decide what level to roast a particular Coffee Bean too but before

we get into that let's give my weird coffee experiments a try let's Taste the rainbow yeah just kind of taste

generically grassy and green not much going on there this kind of reminds me of like a toasty green tea I mean it's not coffee but it's not bad this I would say is

just not great this feels like it wants to be coffee but it's just like not quite there yet kind of tastes like a little water down underdeveloped in terms of flavor which is surprising cuz in when I

just smelled the grounds this kind of this one did actually smell like coffee yeah you can tell this one's got a lot more development in terms of the roasting flavor going

on yeah that's like a nice level right there let's go to the final this one is like generically roasty not much else going on besides

that but I will say this is really cool to show like just how much that roasting process truly transforms in terms of colors Aromas and taste in a cup of

coffee and what would be really cool is if I could replicate this test with a bunch of different green coffee beans so like we'd have a row here a row here a row here a row here a row here but that's not really the point of this

video what we are going to answer next though is like how does a roster decide what level to roast the coffee too and how do you find beans that you really

like remember every green coffee variety has its own chemical composition that will go through their unique roasting reactions to create a coffee bean with a very unique flavor profile now as you

raise the temperature and time you roast the chemical compounds will break down into simpler and simpler components eventually resulting in a completely carbonized Coffee Bean which we see on

the right probably not one you want to ground up and drink however roasted beans are pulled off well before we get to that carbonization state and this is why even if two beans look like they

have been roasted the same can potentially taste completely different now in some cases this difference in flavor can be small or quite large for example if you're comparing a Duncan

medium roast versus a Starbucks one they may have started with a fairly similar green coffee so the resulting flavor is going to be fairly similar but on the other hand a medium roast from a Java

Bean and an Anor robic process when I brew them side by side to the Starbucks one they could not be further apart in what they actually taste like so even though these both say medium roast on

the bag could not be further part in how different they taste this is that Anor robic coffee it's a jof of variety and it's just very very delicious it's fruity whiny kind of has this chatey

note and for me what is great about this one is it stays really good tasting even as it cools because I'm one of those people who like to sit with a cup of coffee for a good 45 minutes the

Starbucks on the other hand just generic roastiness to it like I don't really get much else like it's coffee it tastes okay but for me the

complex flavors you get in this is just amazing in the case of a specialty roaster they're typically trying to optimize the flavor potential of the green coffee that they sourced and was

paid for and typically if you buy a higher quality green coffee you want to optimize and retain the flavor characteristics of the origin the process and harvest quality of the

coffee you got and here's a good quote from modulating the flavor profile of coffee I like to think of a coffee like a color let's say blue you can only do so much to a coffee by manipulating a

roast you can turn that blue into a teal or a navy blue or even a purple but it will never be orange you will never make it better or substantially different than its potential but you can make it

worse than its potential as we kind of saw if you wanted orange you should have Source coffee that was red yellow or orange and this is fairly theoretical but this is why buying coffee based on

light medium and dark Roose is a complete oversimplification of coffee flavor that I would argue does not help you find coffee you'll love for example here are six different varieties of

coffee four of those most people would call a light roasted Coffee Bean two of them are on the medium roasted side however these beans all have a wide range of flavor notes and if I was

personally ranking them one one of the medium roast is my favorite and the other medium roast is on the bottom and from a flavor perspective some light roast may even have flavor qualities

that would be also be present in a darker roasted coffee now at this point we could go very deep trying to explain all the different chemical differences between these various coffees and how

they affect the elements of flavor from a taste Aroma texture sight physical or human element but until we start listing

terms like chlorogenic acids or alahh or melanoidins and all these various terms that make up coffee from a chemical perspective it's not all that useful for the average consumer however if that

does start to change I will gladly make that video so instead of worrying about all that in this video Let's answer how do you find coffee beans you'll love and

if I was starting today to just get into coffee here is the advice that I would give myself first you do not need to be able to describe coffee in words to know

which one you like better in a side-by-side test I'll leave additional reading about scoring and Grading coffee from the sca because depending on how you learn I think it can be very helpful

especially if you do become a complete coffee nerd like I have and want to know everything there is to know about coffee but I can throw two cups of coffee down in front of anybody and they will be

able to tell me which one they prefer you don't need to know the specific Aroma notes or the difference between Harmony and balance to know which coffee you like better and this brings me to

point number two go try two coffees side by side and here's how I would pick them I'd go to your local roster and ask for two of the most different tasting coffees they have because if you go to

the far ends of coffee flavor you'll learn so much faster than starting with two coffees that are fairly similar this is one of the benefits of buying at a specialty rooster because since they are

buying a wide variety of green coffee they'll have a wider variety of Aromas and tasty notes in the coffees they offer and one thing I will say more coffee shops should start offering

coffee flights or coffee tastings like give us three 4 oz cups of coffee from a wide spectrum of flavors or you can always just go with a friend or family member and split the cop now once you

find a coffee bean you like we run into another problem now if you remember back to the beginning of this video I said the two biggest mistakes that I made when I first got into copy is that I was

overly FOC Focus trying to perfect how I was brewing and not paying any attention to what beans I was actually buying and secondly I never tried coffees side by

side well there was one more third mistake that I made and that was when I found a coffee I really enjoyed I didn't know how to find similar coffees I may

also like so now it's time to go through the rest of the hierarchy and talk about processing harvesting and growing coffee at its most basic coffee processing is

how we go from a harvested coffee Cherry to the final dried out green coffee bean that is sold to the coffee roaster and a coffee Cherry is made up of several different layers the outer skin the pulp

the Muer pectin the parchment the silver skin and lastly is the green coffee bean inside of which there are typically two but if there is just one this is referred to as a pea Berry so why is how

the coffee process an important piece of information that you should consider when buying coffee beans well sometimes when coffee cherries are processed the skin pulp and melage are removed right

away other times the whole Cherry is left to dry before it is removed or sometimes the coffee beans are left to ferment and as we have mentioned earlier this causes the green coffee to have a

slightly different chemical composition which could make a really large difference or just a small difference in your final cup of coffee commodity coffees or most Mass coffee beans like

Duncan or Starbucks will typically not specify what process was used on the bag but if you are buying from a specialty roaster these are some of the common terms that you should know because

you'll see them on the bags of coffee available to buy the two main processes are natural and washed then there are variations on these two which include

the honey process the Anor robic process and co-fermented cofes decaf I'll also include here and in theory if you started with these same coffee cherry and process it in these several

different ways you would end up with several different tasting cups of coffee for example wash coffee beans are processed by removing the outer layers of the coffee Cherry where they are then

washed with water and left to dry natural coffee beans are processed by drying the whole coffee Cherry in the sun until they are dry and then removing the outer layers so how different do

these actually taste well it's tough to say unless I literally had the same exact coffee Cherry batch that was processed in two different ways but people typically say that a natural

process will promote more fruity and wild Aromas in a coffee while a wash Coffee Bean leads to a cleaner and brighter tasting cup now the honey process is where the skin or pulp is

removed but the mucilage or pectin is left on the green coffee bean as it dries and this pectin is sticky and sweet which is why it is referred to as the honey process again some say that

these coffees will be more complex than a wash one but not as fruity as a natural coffee now keep in mind processing is one piece of this puzzle and you'll need to start trying

different copes in order to put that full puzzle together of what you like for example two areas that I'm definitely interested in exploring more are Anor robic and co-fermented coffees

the Anor robic process is kind of a variation of the natural or wash process where the coffee beans go through an extended fermentation without air and this leads to a whole range of new

flavor they are typically known for their complexity with notes of fruit floral and wine likee flavors a lower acidity and a smooth malf now co- fermenting is a relatively

new way to process coffee which again is a variation on the natural or wash process and as you can guess the coffee is fermented alongside other ingredients you can kind of think about this in

similar to creating different flavors in wine beer or Kucha which have a variety of ingredients that will affect the final flavor of the beverage typically with coffee this is a fruit but there's

a ton of experimentation being done here now as you can imagine we could do a whole video just going into deep Dives with each of the various processing methods and trying to figure out all the

slight differences in that green coffee that actually comes out but here's where I want to leave us today one process is not better or worse right or wrong and how a coffee is process is really just a

way for you to explore the flavor of coffee for example I really like anob coffee and want to explore them more but you may taste this and be like that is so different from what I'm used to I

actually want to avoid these completely and that's perfectly fine and for me I like to keep different bags of coffee on hand for different preparations for example I like more fruity and complex

Aromas in my hot coffee so I'll typically use a natural or Anor robic coffee for those use cases but for an ice coffee preparation I like cocoa

nutty or brown spice Aromas which a lot of times ends up being a water coffee and I'm going to leave a bunch of additional reading if you guys want to dive into it but now let's move on to

harvesting where I've always wondered what is the difference between a single origin coffee and a blend and is one better than the other from a price perspective coffee

harvesting can contribute significantly to the price of the green process copy that is sent to the roster and it's typically done in three ways handpicking strip picking or or machine harvesting

and as you can guess handpicked coffee cherries are going to cost the most but this kind of begs the question in our Advanced day in age why is a significant amount of coffee picked by hand and

we'll touch on this in more detail in a second but from a growing perspective araba coffee trees are grown at higher altitudes where it can be tough for machines to get to but we also run into

another problem coffee cherries ripen at different stages so a mechanical Harvest will have a mix of ripe and unripe coffee cherries that then need to be sorted and this is why Hoffman notes for

high-quality coffee handpicking Remains the most effective way of harvesting and like almost all jobs depending on where you are in the world there will be price differences in the labor force so a

coffee that is handpicked in Hawaii will generally cost more than a handpicked coffee in a smaller country with different wages regardless of how it tastes so from a flavor perspective why

is harvesting important and you can really think about it just like any other piece of fruit an under rpe banana is acidic and generally has green vegetal Aromas however over time the

starches turn into sugar and a ripe banana becomes sweet and it's a similar idea with a ripe coffee Cherry they will generally have increased sugar content in the green seeds and a more developed

set of aromatic compounds that can be processed roasted and extracted into our hot water and as noted in the world atlas of coffee many experts see the Harvest as the point at which the

quality of coffee Peaks and every stage thereafter is about preserving the quality rather than improving it now from a buying perspective you're not going to see handpicked coffee cherries written anywhere on the bag but an

important concept to know is single origin versus a coffee blend Rea hustle to find single origin as coffee beans that come from a single estate group of estate or a cooperative and typically

the term Single origin is used as a way to communicate that this is a consistent highquality coffee bean in this bag now on the other hand there two ways that a

coffee can be Blended first two or more cofes are mixed together after roasting and I could literally mix a single origin with another single origin and I now have a coffee blend and if you see a

blend from your local roster this is likely what they are doing they want to highlight the best flavor qualities of the two beans in the resulting cup of coffee however some Roasters will also say that you should never make a blend

and I'll leave an article from barice the hustle where you can learn why that may be the second Way Coffee can be Blended is that two or more green coffees are mixed together before

roasting and this is typically done for Mass Market Roasters like Starbucks who literally buy 5% of the world's coffee and have an insane commercial demand for example their Pike Place roast is a

blend of Latin American coffees so they likely purchase green coffee from a variety of Latin American countries and farms in those countries they then Blended all the green coffee bags

together and roasted it all together now now one challenge of this is that even though they may have purchased the same exact variety of coffee there are likely some small differences in the chemical

composition of the green bean so in order to make that difference smaller they likely need to roast the beans for a longer time and temperature to break that compound down into simpler flavors

in order to homogenize it so the coffee doesn't end up tasting completely different and this is why in my experience a lot of this coffee is less complex and if you you are new to

exploring specialty coffee beans I would recommend trying your single Origins first because it's just one less variable that you need to figure out for example if I have a blend with two wash

coffees from two different countries that I really like I then need to figure out does it taste good specifically because these two copes were Blended together or do I actually like the

flavor of one of the beans more than the other and you can really see how each piece of the hierarchy is important in creating the terms that we see on our

bags of coffee so lastly let's talk about how coffee is grown from a bind perspective there are several important terms that you will likely see on a bag of coffee as it

relates to how the coffee was grown and first is the origin this can be as broad as the country but also more specific to the region in that country or if it is a

single origin the specific Farm estate or Co-op may be listed second is the variety of coffee now a lot of mass Market roaster will just say it's 100%

araba coffee beans however a lot of specialy roaster will be more specific for example Gesa Java and typa are all varieties of the araba Coffee Bean and I find it helpful to think of the

different coffee tree varieties just like there are different apple tree varieties just how Granny Smith honey crisp or Gayla apples all have slightly different flavors due to their chemical compositions there's going to be

different varieties of coffee that all have slightly different chemical compositions too this again will react differently during the processing and roasting of the Coffee Bean and lastly a

newer addition you may see on a specialty bag of roasted coffee is the altitude at which the coffee was growing and typically this is expressed as masl or meters above sea level and my first

question when I started to learn about all this was well how different would the same coffee variety taste if it was grown in a different country and at a different altitude

and unfortunately that's not really a simple answer because the world of coffee beans is constantly evolving and it would be so hard to control all the variables over the several year process

it takes the grow coffee from seed to tree so a better question that we can get an answer to Is how does a producer decide what variety of coffee to grow

and to answer that let's look at the basic process of how coffee goes from seed to tree so first the Coffee Bean is germinated into a seed Lane which actually lifts the bean up from the

ground instead of the Chute coming out of the bean and these things just kind of look cool those Bean CHS will quickly open up into leaves and after 6 to 12 months they will mature into an established coffee plant where it can

then be moved from the greenhouse or Nursery to the coffee Farm now an important distinction when we say coffee Farms these are not your Rolling Hills of other commodity crops like corn or

wheat araba coffee varieties tend to grow well at higher altitudes while robusto varieties can grow at lower altitudes and this is important to remember as it relates to cost and

flavor once that seedling is planted the young tree might need another three years before it starts producing coffee cherries and in general coffee tree growing is a slow process that requires

commitment from Farmers however once planted mature coffee trees last a long time as they can produce for 50 to 60 years and some Farms may even have

coffee trees that are over 100 years old and like most Orchards once you've planted the trees you kind of committed to them being in the ground exactly where they stand coffee trees usually have one Harvest per year where those

flowers will Bloom and because they are self-pollinating they will always yield fruit in the form of that coffee Cherry now if you remember the vanilla video this is much different than the vanilla

plant which is notoriously difficult to pollinate and is one of the reasons why vanilla beans are so expensive now despite fruiting consistently every year coffee is still frustrating to harvest

the fruit might take the next next 9 months of the year to mature and ripen but as we learned in the harvesting section the cherries will ripen at different rates which causes the producer to make a tough decision do we

handpick the coffee cherries to ensure even ripeness or do we use a machine to pick them all at once with slightly different ripes and the challenges of this farming process generally dictate

what variety of coffee is decided to be planted and specifically the world of coffee research has a great PDF that breaks down a bunch of different araba varieties and a coffee Farm really has a

bunch of variables to figure out this includes the yield potential of the coffee the optimal altitude the quality or cupping score of that roasted coffee and the plant's resistance to disease

this includes coffee leaf rust nematode and coffee Berry disease and as noted by Barista hustle some research has been shown that higher grown coffees tend to

concentrate more of their nutrients into the seeds in these harsher growing environments such as high altitude Farms and this is why it's important to grow these arabaca varieties at these higher

altitudes in addition to the more constant temperatures now from a price perspective just because today you can get a higher price for Gesa coffee a farm has to balance that with the fact

that it has a lower yield it grows optimally at much higher altitudes making it harder to farm it is also more susceptible to nematode and coffee Berry disease and while Gesa coffee is sought

after today who knows what's going to be popular in 5 10 or 15 years from now so there are a lot of things that a farm has to weigh before they decide what

variety of coffee to grow speaking of remember how I said 87% of the coffee imported into the us or arabaca varieties well those numbers look a little different at the global scale

according to the international coffee organization's annual review the estimated total production in coffee 2021 and 22 was

167.5 Million bags and of total production 93.9 7 million bags or 56% were araba varieties and the other 44% were Robusta varieties so you're

probably wondering what exactly is the difference between them and what are they used for again according to the international coffee organization araba trees are more difficult to cultivate

due to their need for higher altitudes and specific climates this makes them more costly to produce and is part of what adds the cost to the green coffee before it is shipped however even though

they are more expensive araba coffees are much more popular due to their Superior flavor and again if you are buying whole beans in the US they are almost assuredly going to be a variety

of the Arabica Coffee Tree so what about Robusta coffee then well in the US Robusta coffee beans are commonly used for large commercial coffee products such as instant coffee Blends or coffee

flavored products and Robusta coffee trees are much easier to cultivate as they can grow and bear fruit at lower altitudes and higher temperature they also more resistant to disease meaning

that on average robusta beans are just cheaper to produce the beans themselves also have more caffeine on average which could be seen as a positive if you're after some of that stimulation however

when it comes to flavor in general most people say that Robusta Bean varieties have a harsher oilier and more bitter taste compared to these arabaca varieties and from a chemical level this

table from the food chemistry shows just how different Arabica and Robusta coffee beans are notable differences include the oligosaccharides such as sucrose which is needed for caramelization the

chlorogenic acids which provide that acidity the lipids and the amount of caffeine now I was able to find one company offering whole robusta beans but

this is very much the exception at least in today's age most of the coffee that you're going to buy in the US is arabaca varieties and as a consumer you may be wondering like should you know what

different varieties taste like and to that I would say probably not that being said as you do explore more coffee beans keep in mind it is a piece of the puzzle

to consider when buying your beans and we should Now understand all of the components and terms that you may potentially see on a bag of coffee so let's wrap this video up okay so if you

remember all the way back to the beginning of this video I had three promises one you will understand the flavor fundamentals of coffee and for this we went into how every green coffee

has a unique chemical composition depending on how it was grown how it was harvested and how it was processed and because of this it will react differently during the roasting process

with those five key reactions leading us to the wide world of flavor in coffee and remember while there are countless ways to brew a cup of coffee all we are

doing when we make a cup is extracting those compounds from the roasted beans into our water promise number two you will understand how the price of coffee

changes so for this we learned that the roasting process is a marginal cost in the coffee beans that are available to us and that the significant variable cost is actually the green coffee that

was sourced by the roster and this cost is influenced by how it was processed how it was harvested and how it was grown and my Last Promise was using this

information you will be able to explore and buy coffee beans you love each of these areas in the hierarchy explain the common terms that you will likely see on

your coffee beans at a local roster for growing it's the origin Variety in altitude for harvesting it's single origin versus a blend for processing it's washed versus natural with

variations including the honey process Anor robic process co-fermented coffees or decaf and lastly for roasting it's all about the aroma and flavor notes

listed on the bag of coffee by the raster and lastly learn from my mistakes focus on finding coffee beans you really enjoy before you try perfecting how to

brew them secondly try different coffees side by side and lastly if you understand the variables of roasting processing harvesting growing you can find similar coffee and explore coffee

you love the Gesa is good don't get me wrong but at like 50 or $60 more than some of these other bags definitely not worth it at least in my opinion now I don't know where the information in this

video is going to lead you for example I'm personally interested in exploring kind of Anor robic and co-fermented coffees next but a year from now maybe I'll be exploring coffees in a very

specific country who knows so hopefully the information sets you up for you to have a lifetime of exploring coffee beads lastly I have a couple of carve outs I do want to talk about to wrap up

this video I'm going to pull over a chair and sit down for this one first is just a thank you for watching these videos and letting me completely dive deep into all these kind

of basic food products it's really interesting and you never know what you'll end up learning when you dive into something that you use all the time but you never really thought about it from a fundamental level secondly I do

want to thank Aeropress again for sponsoring this video I delayed this video at least three or four weeks and I had to keep pushing the date back from them and honestly if I didn't have their

support on this I probably would have just pushed a coffee video out the door just to get it done but since I did have their support I was like I want to make the coffee video that stands the test of

time for the next several years so hopefully we've done that um that link will be back down below really great way to brew coffee thirdly I will leave the sources that I used in this video down

in a comment below and I would also recommend anyone who is in the coffee industry leave us more things to read about this video was deep but also shallow in some aspects too you can

never possibly learn everything there is to learn about coffee fourth I do want to say thank you again to Michi in Austin for letting me film and also just letting me ask them a bunch of questions

it was super helpful to talk through that process and really figure out all this stuff and hopefully give it to you guys in a concise package and then lastly we have launched a second Channel

called cookwell with Ethan chabowski there are two videos up on the channel already these are kind of live just cooking laidback videos it's kind of like a companion Channel to this channel while we wait for the

next deep dive so if you want to check that out I'll link that down below but anyway that will wrap it up for me in this one I'm almost positive this is the longest video we've ever done on this

channel but I will catch you all in the next one peace y'all