Leidenschaft für Kunst Passion for Art - Restaurants HAZIENDA

Genuss
pleasure
Who likes to steep themselves in coffee? Statistics show that it’s
the Germans who are literally immersed in the stuff. The average
German drinks 150 litres of coffee per year. Unaccustomed coffee
drinkers, however, don’t really appreciate the true flavour of coffee.
Instead of a wonderfully aromatic hot coffee, they swill down
an indescribable liquid that has little in common with the real
McCoy.
The bean is a cherry
Extremely few machine coffee connoisseurs actually realise what
they are wetting their whistle with at work every day. The strong
aroma that supermarket-bought coffee powder promises is a distant
cry from the coffee that conveniently comes down the spout
of invariably poor quality machines. But there’s no fooling a specialist
when it comes to the wonderful taste of a carefully prepared
coffee.
Botanically-speaking, coffee is the fruit of the coffee plant and is
harvested as a drupe, which is similar in appearance to a cherry.
Each fruit contains two bean-like seeds from which roasted coffee,
as we know it, is produced. Legend has it that an Ethiopian
shepherd once picked some raw seeds from the plant, chewed
them and threw them into the fire due to their bitter taste. The
wonderful smell that they produced prompted the idea of roasting
coffee.
Coffee. How can a
cherry produce such
powerful aroma?
There are many legends, but very few pure species
It’s not known whether this legend is worth the paper it’s written
on. Whilst there are so many legends about Germany’s favourite
drink, the variety of different coffees is a little less legendary.
Apart from the renowned Arabica coffee, which enjoys around
60% world market share, there is the Robusta type, which has
36% market share and boasts a caffeine content twice as high
as that of Arabica. Excelsa, Stenophylla and Maragogype types
lead a niche existence. Those who are not put off by a product
that has passed through an Indonesian civet cat can count themselves
amongst the fans of the world's most expensive coffee, the
Kopi Luwak. This is the result of coffee cherries that the animals
eat from the bush and that they excrete in an undigested, yet
specific ally fermented, state.
There’s more to making coffee
than putting it in the pot
Making a good coffee begins way before the coffee even reaches
the kitchen. The roasting process determines early on whether
or not the beans will produce a good coffee. Most industrially
roasted coffees fall at this hurdle, which is why small coffee roasters
also provide special roasting services. They roast the coffee
for longer, and more gently. You can tell a good coffee by its fuller
aroma, up to 800 times less bitterness and a better overall flavour.
Then there’s the grinding. If the coffee is ground too finely,
the coffee grounds will produce a bitter-tasting caffeine brew. If
ground too coarsely, the coffee will not release its full aroma and
the result will be too weak. The art of correct grinding is the answer
to a top-quality coffee product. The last step is, of course,
the brewing. Whilst Americans brew their coffee with boiling
water, European connoisseurs know that a good coffee should
always be brewed with water that has come off the boil. Depending
on the type of coffee, a temperature of 96°C, a slightly coarse
ground and a brewing time of three to five minutes produces the
best coffee – one that has absolutely nothing in common with
the stale coffee from office pump flasks or the bitter result from a
poorly configured espresso machine. •
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