Coffee is a among the most widely consumed psychoactive beverages on the planet. It is the basis of culinary identity around the world. Nearly every country, region, and culture has its own unique way of preparing and consuming coffee. But there’s nothing simple about a cup of coffee. Those beans in your kitchen are the result of a complex series of interactions between international corporations, roasters, shippers, marketers, wholesalers, and even growers. into the land. It’s very complicated. It was a mess.
Below we break down some of the most common coffee myths and misconceptions, to help you become a more informed consumer of this delicious bittersweet elixir.
Be sure to check out our other coffee guides, like The best espresso machine, The best cappuccino and latte machines, The best portable coffee maker, Sign up for the best coffeeand The best coffee grinder.
1. Coffee is not a bean
Coffee is not a bean. It’s a seed! Technically, it’s the endosperm of a particular berry, typically from the coffee plant. It was originally wrapped in a thin red fruit that was peeled off during the cleaning process. It is then light silvery green in color until it is roasted.
That doesn’t mean you can grow your own beans and coffee trees. The beans we grind and brew cannot be grown anymore, due to the roasting process. Even if that is the case, it can take many years before the coffee plant is mature enough to produce pods containing coffee beans. Not to mention, Coffee arabica (most popular cultivar) only grows and thrives in a few parts of the world. It’s a demanding plant with very specific climate needs — which brings us to our next point.
2. European coffee not from Europe
Coffee beans not developed in Europe. They grow in Central and South America, East and West Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, Asia and Hawaii. So if you buy expensive imported coffee from Italy, France or anywhere outside of these regions, you can get pretty bad coffee (that is, unless you live in Italy or France). That’s because the best coffee is always roasted shortly before being consumed.
If your beans say they come from Ethiopia, that’s where they’re grown. But if the bag says they’re from somewhere in Europe, it’s possible the coffee was roasted there, and that sucks. The roasting process brings out the flavors in the coffee, but those flavor compounds start to break down as soon as they’re roasted. Your local outside roast coffee may have been in the shipping crate or cargo plane for a long time. So when it arrived, all the flavors that made coffee so good in a Parisian cafe were greatly mutated.
That’s why my advice is to always buy locally roasted coffee beans and grind them at home (with a burr grinder).
3. Dark Roasts No Added Caffeine
We often hear that dark coffee is “stronger,” meaning it contains more caffeine, and that’s not entirely true. When green coffee enters the roaster, it’s literally just toasted to different levels of finished product — like your morning toast.
Yellow beans are one of the lightest roasted beans and because they don’t take much time to cook, they’re really Storage than intact caffeine more compound than medium-roasted or dark-roasted beans. Heat speeds up chemical interactions, which means it also breaks down caffeine compounds. So it stands to reason that the longer the beans are roasted, the less caffeine they contain when ground and brewed.
