Coffee: Science, Lore, and Frolicking Goats

Nearly thirteen years ago, I published twenty fun facts about coffee. Some aged beautifully. Some needed better science. One appears to have retained counsel.

I found the old article recently.

December 17, 2013.

Twenty Fun Facts About Coffee.

I had started collecting notes, interviews, graphics, odd bits of history, and coffee lore soon after Amy and I were married in 2012.

I remember having fun with it.

That matters because somewhere during the last several hours of rebuilding the thing, fun apparently left the studio, started its car, and drove away while I remained behind with seventeen research tabs, a legal pad, three cold cups of coffee, and the facial expression of a man preparing to cross-examine an Ethiopian goat.

Coffee already occupied an unreasonable amount of my attention in 2013.

I entered the professional coffee world in 2004 and spent the years that followed tasting, buying, roasting, developing coffees, studying green coffee, examining defects, building flavor profiles, questioning industry standards, and becoming progressively more difficult to impress.

Then I discovered coffee trivia.

Dangerous combination.

The article covered coffee cherries, Arabica, Robusta, Brazil, espresso, caffeine, instant coffee, Theodore Roosevelt, Ottoman divorce, Alzheimer’s disease, Voltaire, the invention of the webcam, and Ethiopian goats displaying what can only be described as suspicious enthusiasm. Pasted markdown

Twenty facts.

I reread the whole thing.

Some of it was excellent.

Some of it was true.

There was encouraging overlap.

The article remains exactly where I left it, carrying the magnificent confidence of a younger man with internet access and apparently limited adult supervision.

Research worked differently then.

Find an interesting claim.

Discover seventeen websites repeating it.

Wonderful.

Add Theodore Roosevelt.

Publish.

Nearly thirteen years later, I know more.

The internet knows more too.

It also distributes nonsense with astonishing athleticism.

Progress comes for everyone.

So I put the article back on the examination table.

Present Bryan likes younger Bryan.

He worked hard.

He cared deeply.

He was curious.

He was also about to be questioned without counsel.

I. The Coffee Professional Enters the Room

We begin with the crime scene.

The coffee bean.

It is a seed.

Yes.

After more than twenty years in professional coffee, I am finally prepared to expose Big Bean.

Coffee grows as fruit. Inside that fruit—commonly called a coffee cherry—are the seeds we roast.

Calling them beans is perfectly normal common usage.

Botanically?

Seed.

Which means the little object you throw into your grinder at 6:12 in the morning has already completed an extraordinary journey before you stumble into the kitchen and demand that it correct your personality.

The tree flowers.

Fruit develops.

Fruit ripens.

Someone harvests it.

Someone sorts it.

Processing begins.

Fermentation may enter.

Then drying.

Milling.

Selection.

Storage.

Shipping.

Warehousing.

Roasting.

Resting.

Grinding.

Extraction.

Agriculture.

Biology.

Chemistry.

Physics.

Human judgment at every turn.

Then Gary orders six pumps of vanilla, caramel drizzle, whipped cream, cinnamon dust, and enough actual coffee to satisfy the legal definition of coffee.

Gary.

People climbed mountains for that seed.

Someone studied rainfall.

Someone worried about soil.

Someone monitored ripeness.

Someone managed fermentation.

Someone else spent years learning what heat does to hundreds of aromatic compounds.

And you wanted sprinkles.

Coffee teaches humility.

It also gives humanity an impressive number of opportunities to ruin breakfast before the cup ever reaches the table.

Poor harvesting can hurt it.

Poor processing can hurt it.

Bad storage can hurt it.

Bad roasting can hurt it.

Bad water can hurt it.

Bad grinding can hurt it.

Poor extraction can hurt it.

Leave brewed coffee cooking on a warming plate long enough and eventually you have evidence.

Then we blame the coffee.

I respect that kind of nerve.

My old article also informed readers that there were two kinds of coffee beans.

Arabica.

Robusta.

Done.

Coffee taxonomy appreciated my intervention.

Reality carries considerably more depth. Many species exist within the genus Coffea, although Arabica and canephora—commonly called Robusta—dominate commercial coffee production. Pasted markdown

From there, humans do what humans do exceptionally well.

We discover a useful distinction and inflate it into theology.

Arabica good.

Robusta evil.

Meeting adjourned.

Coffee refuses to cooperate.

Genetics matter.

Climate matters.

Elevation matters.

Ripeness matters.

Processing matters.

Drying matters.

Storage matters.

Defect control matters.

Roasting matters.

Water matters.

Grinding matters.

Extraction matters.

Then Gary returns.

Caramel.

The deeper I traveled into coffee, the less patience I had for easy declarations.

Coffee punishes intellectual laziness.

I adore that about it.

Caffeine gave younger Bryan another opportunity to demonstrate confidence.

In 2013, I announced that espresso contained about one-third the caffeine of brewed coffee.

A fraction.

Very impressive.

Fractions make statements look researched.

The useful distinction is concentration versus total serving. A single espresso may contain less total caffeine than a large brewed coffee because the serving itself is smaller. Ounce for ounce, espresso can carry substantially more caffeine. Pasted markdown

Different question.

Different answer.

Younger Bryan approached this nuance with tremendous scientific discipline.

He suggested adding more espresso.

Of course he did.

Present Bryan has refined the official recommendation:

Enjoy your coffee.

Know your own response to caffeine.

Allow toxicologists to retain their jobs.

II. Humanity Invents the Webcam for the Correct Reason

Then I reached the webcam.

This one survived magnificently.

In the early 1990s, researchers at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory shared a coffee pot in the Trojan Room.

People working elsewhere in the building kept walking over for coffee and discovering an empty pot.

Scientists tolerate many things.

Wasted walking loses the room.

So they aimed a camera at the coffee machine and built a system that allowed colleagues to determine whether coffee remained before making the trip.

In 1993, the image reached the web, and the Trojan Room coffee pot became one of the great artifacts of early internet history. Pasted markdown

Consider what happened here.

Advanced computing.

Networking.

Digital imaging.

Emerging web technology.

The great question driving innovation:

Is there any coffee left?

I love our species.

People discuss technological progress with tremendous dignity.

Connectivity.

Information systems.

The digital future.

The actual engineer is thinking:

I walked down that hallway twice today and Steve emptied the pot both times.

Solve it.

Immediately.

This may be the most credible story in coffee history because resentment is involved.

III. George Washington Invents Instant Coffee

This is true.

It is also a trap.

A George Washington played an important role in making instant coffee commercially successful in the United States.

George Constant Louis Washington.

That middle portion is doing heroic work.

Around 1910, George Constant Louis Washington produced one of the first commercially viable instant coffees in America. Pasted markdown

Different George.

I was disappointed too.

My preferred version has the first president at Mount Vernon, retired from public life and apparently still incapable of leaving civilization alone.

Martha enters.

“George?”

“Busy.”

“You retired.”

“The Republic remains unfinished.”

“What are you doing?”

“Soluble coffee.”

“George.”

“History will thank me.”

History denied us this scene.

Theodore Roosevelt fared only slightly better.

For generations, Maxwell House promoted the story that Roosevelt tasted its coffee during a visit to Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage and declared it:

“Good to the last drop.”

Perfect advertising.

Perfect Roosevelt.

One problem.

Reliable documentation establishing that Roosevelt actually said it has proved elusive. Pasted markdown

That fascinates me.

A story begins.

Someone repeats it.

A company prints it.

Other writers repeat the company.

Decades pass.

Eventually the story arrives dressed for dinner carrying identification.

That is folklore at work.

Repetition gives confidence.

Age gives dignity.

Marketing supplies cuff links.

History gets called afterward to check everyone’s credentials.

Coffee is packed with this stuff.

Voltaire supposedly drank forty or fifty cups a day.

New Yorkers supposedly drank seven times more coffee than everybody else.

My younger self loved a number.

The more specific the number, the happier he became.

Seven times.

Fifty cups.

One hundred cups to kill you.

Wonderful.

A precise number walks into an article and everybody relaxes.

Numbers have excellent tailoring.

IV. The Ottoman Coffee Case

Then I reached one of my favorites.

Ottoman coffee divorce.

The popular version goes something like this:

A husband in Ottoman Turkey could be divorced by his wife if he failed to provide adequate coffee.

I desperately wanted that version to survive.

Picture the proceeding.

Judge enters.

“Grounds for divorce?”

“Coffee.”

The room freezes.

“Continue.”

“My husband has repeatedly failed in his duties.”

Gasps.

“What did he do?”

“He brought home decaf.”

Silence.

The judge removes his glasses.

“Repeatedly?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

Judgment entered.

House to the wife.

Children to the wife.

French press every other weekend.

The historical reality is more complicated and, in many ways, more interesting.

The neat internet version compresses Ottoman domestic, cultural, and legal history into one irresistible sentence. Coffee could indeed matter within household provision, while marital disputes themselves existed within a broader legal system that cannot responsibly be reduced to no coffee, instant divorce. Pasted markdown

So younger Bryan had not completely hallucinated.

He encountered a complicated historical reality.

Then the internet put lipstick on it.

I owe Ottoman women greater precision.

I also owe myself another cup.

V. The Part Where We Stop Joking

Then comes the serious claim.

My 2013 headline suggested that moderate coffee consumption made people less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease or dementia.

Nearly thirteen years of additional research demand more disciplined language.

Researchers continue studying coffee, caffeine, cognitive decline, dementia, and Alzheimer’s disease. Some observational research has found associations between moderate coffee consumption and lower risk of certain cognitive outcomes. Other analyses have found weaker or inconsistent relationships. Pasted markdown

Association matters.

Association is not causation.

That distinction deserves daylight.

Coffee remains chemically fascinating. Caffeine, phenolic compounds, roasting products, and the larger composition of the beverage all deserve serious investigation.

Follow the evidence.

Medical conclusions carry their own evidentiary burden.

Coffee already has plenty to brag about.

It does not need us making promises on its behalf.

VI. We Have Arrived at the Goats

After botany, agriculture, chemistry, caffeine, computing, presidents, Ottoman domestic law, and neurology, we arrive where every serious scientific inquiry eventually ends.

Goats.

Coffee’s most beloved origin legend introduces an Ethiopian herder named Kaldi whose goats consumed coffee fruit and became unusually energetic.

Then humanity improved the story.

The goats danced.

Of course they did.

Nobody tells a story for centuries and leaves the goats standing quietly.

Reality gives us caffeinated livestock.

Humanity gives them choreography.

Historians generally treat the Kaldi story as legend rather than secure documentation of coffee’s discovery. Pasted markdown

I understand.

I respect scholarship.

I support evidence.

I am keeping the goats.

There must be limits.

We corrected Theodore Roosevelt.

We corrected George Washington.

We complicated Ottoman divorce.

We relieved Voltaire of the burden of a mathematically precise daily caffeine intake.

Someone must survive.

Leave the goats alone.

VII. The Cup Remembers

Somewhere around the goats, the old article finally made sense to me again.

I began this exercise thinking I was revisiting twenty coffee facts.

What I found was the reason coffee has held me for more than two decades.

Coffee refuses to stay inside one discipline.

Begin with the plant and you enter botany.

Follow the fruit and you reach agriculture.

Follow processing and you meet microbiology.

Roasting brings chemistry and physics.

Extraction brings water chemistry, temperature, particle size, pressure, time, and mass transfer.

Taste leads into sensory science.

Follow the coffeehouse and history opens.

Trade.

Politics.

Religion.

Literature.

Migration.

Architecture.

Hospitality.

Human behavior.

Computers enter because researchers became tired of walking toward an empty pot.

Presidents enter because advertising departments required assistance.

Law enters because coffee mattered inside domestic life.

Medicine enters because caffeine and coffee chemistry interact with human biology.

Goats enter because humanity cannot leave a perfectly good origin story alone. Pasted markdown

Then all of that machinery stops.

Someone opens an extraordinary bag of coffee.

You smell it before you see the cup.

The grinder starts.

Fresh grounds meet hot water.

The coffee blooms.

Aromatics rise.

You lift the cup.

And for one beautiful moment, Theodore Roosevelt can wait.

The Ottoman court can recess.

George Washington can return to Mount Vernon.

The Cambridge computer scientists can check their own pot.

Voltaire can pour number forty-seven.

Gary can put down the caramel bottle.

The goats can frolic without supervision.

You taste.

That has always been coffee’s strongest argument.

I know more today than I knew when I published those twenty facts in 2013.

Good.

That is what nearly thirteen years should do.

Knowledge sharpened the science.

Experience strengthened judgment.

Time made me more suspicious of a beautiful story carrying suspiciously perfect facts.

It also made coffee funnier.

That may be one of the unexpected gifts of expertise.

At the beginning, you are busy trying to know everything.

Eventually you know enough to recognize how much remains complicated, disputed, unfinished, wonderfully human, and occasionally ridiculous.

Coffee gave me a career.

It gave me friendships.

It gave me arguments.

It gave me spectacular cups and terrible cups.

It gave me farms, roasting rooms, kitchens, cupping tables, warehouses, restaurants, hotels, mornings, late nights, experiments, failures, revelations, and years of reasons to keep asking another question.

Nearly thirteen years ago, I thought I was writing twenty facts.

Today I see something else.

I was documenting the beginning of a much longer conversation.

I started this project intending to correct the old article.

The old article returned the favor.

It reminded me that curiosity was part of the work.

Precision was part of the work.

And fun was part of the work too.

Coffee still has things to teach me.

I hope it always does.

And if those goats actually frolicked?

Good for them.

They found the coffee first.

Bryan-David Scott