Slashdot Mirror
Disease Outbreak Threatens the Future of Good Coffee
Wired reports on a disease infecting coffee plants across Central America that could lead to shortages around the world. "Regional production fell by 15 percent last year, putting nearly 400,000 people out of work, and that’s just a taste of what’s to come. The next harvest season begins in October, and according to the International Coffee Organization, crop losses could hit 50 percent." The disease is called coffee rust, and it has been damaging crops to some degree since the 1800s. It's not known yet exactly why coffee rust has become such a problem now, but one of the leading suspects is climate change. "Since the mid-20th century, though, weather patterns in Central America and northern South America have shifted. Average temperatures are warmer across the region, with extremes of both heat and cold becoming more pronounced; so are extreme rainfall events." The fungus that causes coffee rust thrives on warm, humid air, and higher temperatures have allowed it to climb to higher altitudes than ever before. But another likely cause is the way in which coffee is planted and harvested these days: the plants evolved as shade-dwellers, but are now often placed in direct sunlight. They're also clustered closer together, which facilitates the spread of disease. "The integrity of this once-complicated ecosystem has been slowly breaking down, which is what happens when you try to grow coffee like corn."
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/shouts/2013/04/the-day-coffee-stopped-working.html
MOD THE CHILD UP!
The banana that many of us (at least those of us over a certain age) grew up snacking on now is extinct. As a result of a banana monoculture and an ever-mutating fungus, the Gros Michael variety of banana is no more.
Without the public noticing, around 1960 the Gros Michael disappeared and Chiquita (aka United Brands) replaced it with the much less tasty Cavendish variety. Well, actually banana eaters did notice that bananas had suddenly gotten less snackable but nobody gave a reason or acknowledged that anything was wrong. Eventually people came to accept the Cavendish while still thinking that bananas weren't as good as they used to be.
And now the Cavendish banana is going the same way as the Gros Michael thanks to the same monoculture farming technique. And there may not be a replacement.
They have some [good coffee] you can buy there, jackass.
Really? Name it. You'll be hard-pressed to find a single bean in a Starbucks that hasn't been intentionally over-roasted as part of their standard business practice. As should be obvious, the result of over-roasting is that your beans will give you a burnt ash flavor rather than a rich, nuanced coffee flavor, which is why so many people who have only ever been exposed to Starbucks (or worse) think that coffee by itself tastes bad, when it really doesn't. Several of us at my company nearly staged an uprising when an HR person who didn't know any better brought back a bag of "Starbucks Dark French Roast" for our several thousand dollar coffee machine to use, thinking she was doing us a favor.
(quick aside: to quote Wikipedia's definition for a French Roast - "Roast character is dominant at this level. Little, if any, of the inherent flavors of the coffee remain." I.e. It's been burnt to the point where you can't taste the coffee itself, and that's even before you take into account that a Starbucks "blonde" is actually a medium, their "medium" is a dark, and their "dark" is simply burnt beyond hope.)
As for why they over-roast, there are two main reasons. One is that more heavily roasted beans maintain a flavor for longer, giving them a longer shelf life. The other is that over-roasting produces a stronger (though worse) flavor that can stand out when you load your drink up with cream, caramel, sugar, whipped cream, ice, and whatever else. If they had instead used properly roasted beans, they'd have needed to increase the concentration of actual coffee in the drink (i.e. increase their costs), since the flavor of decent coffee is more subdued and would have a harder time standing out above that mess of excess. Instead, they cheated by increasing the strength of the flavor via over-roasting so that they could use as little coffee as possible, while compromising on the flavor of the most important ingredient itself.
And even if you go for their "blonde" roasts, they're still just average compared to decent ones you can pick up elsewhere. If you want some decent coffee without a lot of fuss, get it from a decent roaster as soon as possible after roasting (e.g. Tonx), and brew it properly (e.g. use a burr grinder and an Aeropress, for instance).