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Coffee: The World's Drug of Choice · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
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Speaker 1: from house Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to
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Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W Chuck Bryant.
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Speaker 1: We've been drinking coffee. I am actually Josh. I told
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Speaker 1: you what did I tell you ten minutes ago that
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Speaker 1: you are drinking coffee? And you showed me even that
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Speaker 1: you are, so I believe. And it's my first cup
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Speaker 1: since when, like last February or so, which is weird, man,
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Speaker 1: because you were on talking for a while. You talked
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Speaker 1: really fast. You're like, I feel weird and it was
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Speaker 1: fun to watch, and then I guess I hadn't noticed.
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Speaker 1: But yeah, I just stopped. Why. Uh, I'm just not
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Speaker 1: you know, I'm not a regular coffee drinker. I drink
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Speaker 1: it when I'm in the mood or when it's cold.
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Speaker 1: But a year in between cups is beyond not a
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Speaker 1: regular coffell. It hasn't been cold. It's like avoidance. I
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Speaker 1: just maybe it's been I've had some since in Yeah.
1:02
Speaker 1: Actually I had one of those gingerbread lat taste yesterday.
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Speaker 1: Those are good they're real good. Eggnog's good too. It's
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Speaker 1: almost like not coffee though to me, because you and
1:09
Speaker 1: I drink it black dessert treat generally, which I'm not
1:13
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not saying that's the way you should
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Speaker 1: drink it. But I just really enjoyed the taste of
1:17
Speaker 1: black coffee about eight times a year. I'm with you.
1:21
Speaker 1: I've cut my intake down tremendously since then, since last February,
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Speaker 1: down to a dozen cups a day, down to like
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Speaker 1: a third of that, No, a quarter of that, three
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Speaker 1: three or four cups three about three. It's not bad.
1:33
Speaker 1: And it's all decaf too, It's almost all decaf, but
1:37
Speaker 1: I still get wired buzz. It's weird. Yeah. What do
1:39
Speaker 1: they call that? The old psychosomatic reactions? Junkie? Yeah? So, Chuck, Yes,
1:45
Speaker 1: you asked me a question. I was like, this is
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Speaker 1: the absolute truth, deory listener Um. Chuck asked me a question, uh,
1:54
Speaker 1: because I said I didn't have any any intro to this,
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Speaker 1: and he said, well, would you know the origin a
1:58
Speaker 1: cup of Joe? And I said, yes, I do, so
2:01
Speaker 1: here's the intro. Spotan eighty back during World War two, right, Uh,
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Speaker 1: the US worked closely with the British, and the British
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Speaker 1: already had um something called a cuppa c U p
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Speaker 1: p A. Hey to our British friends over there, you
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Speaker 1: guys can go to sleep for a minute because you
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Speaker 1: know this. But a cuppa is just a cup of tea.
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Speaker 1: But t is so ubiquitous. That's just saying c U
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Speaker 1: p p a means a cup of tea. A couple
2:27
Speaker 1: you're gonna have a cuppa. That means d having some
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Speaker 1: tea exactly. But coffee is so thoroughly ingrained in the
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Speaker 1: American culture, I believe, Chuck, there's a statue you furnished
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Speaker 1: me with that eight percent of Americans consumed coffee. And
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Speaker 1: it's been this way for a long time, right, And
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Speaker 1: that's consumed not necessarily regularly, but consume, consume, take in
2:49
Speaker 1: like I'm part of. This is already well established by
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Speaker 1: World War Two. So when American g i's were hanging
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Speaker 1: out with British soldiers, um, they drank coffee like all
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Speaker 1: the time. It was part of the rations drag coffee.
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Speaker 1: There's even matches included not just to let your cigarettes,
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Speaker 1: but to light a fire for a kettle if you
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Speaker 1: needed to coffee is just as ubiquitous among American servicemen
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Speaker 1: as T was with um G I s Well, American
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Speaker 1: serviceman slang is g I joe. You put Kappa and
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Speaker 1: before joe, and you have a cup of joe. And
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Speaker 1: that that is why coffee is called joe. Yeah, all right,
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Speaker 1: that mystery soft. It was a good intro, Chuck, well done.
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Speaker 1: It was teamwork. So this is I'm pretty excited about
3:35
Speaker 1: this one. Actually, it was a good article. It was
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Speaker 1: a really good artic written by the esteemed and uh
3:42
Speaker 1: unknown Deborah Beller. Have you heard of Debora Beller? Never
3:47
Speaker 1: must be a freelancer. All right, So let's get to
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Speaker 1: the history first, because that's what we like to do
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Speaker 1: here on the podcast program. Uh there's an ancient um
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Speaker 1: not ancient, but it's a legend. It's perhaps a myth.
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Speaker 1: No one knows for sure about Calde the Ethiopian goat herder.
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Speaker 1: Well he has a name, so you know it's for real.
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Speaker 1: And supposedly what happened is he saw his goats mowing
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Speaker 1: down on these weird green uh fruits. I'm sorry, red
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Speaker 1: at first cheeze already miss set up and he noticed
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Speaker 1: they were you know, they called him dancing goats. They
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Speaker 1: started to get a little frisky and not sleep at
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Speaker 1: night like they're supposed to, and he said, oh, what
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Speaker 1: is this stuff? I gotta get ahold of this. There's
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Speaker 1: two versions from here. He took it to a local
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Speaker 1: monastery and either the abbot there made a drink from
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Speaker 1: it that kept him and the rest of his monk's awake,
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Speaker 1: so they said this is awesome, or he said no,
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Speaker 1: this is bad, and he threw it in the fire,
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Speaker 1: which produced that nice aroma, and then he said, hey,
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Speaker 1: maybe it's not so bad. So either way, it's probably legend,
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Speaker 1: but it's a nice story. Yeah, and there's a there's
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Speaker 1: a coffee company here in Atlanta, don't know where they're based. Originally,
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Speaker 1: if it could be, Atlantic, called dancing goats. And that
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Speaker 1: is why I never thought about that. There's a lot
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Speaker 1: of Caldy coffees around the country. Oh yeah, I never
5:10
Speaker 1: thought that. Yeah, well, okay, yeah, dancing goats. They're like
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Speaker 1: they're crazy for the coffee. Have you ever seen a
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Speaker 1: goat dance? I have not. I used to dance with
5:20
Speaker 1: my goat. I've seen a painting goat, but not a
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Speaker 1: dancing goat. So so that's the legend history, right. Um.
5:27
Speaker 1: We know that ancient African tribes my ancient I mean
5:31
Speaker 1: like prehistoric meaning pre writing, how about that? Okay, especially
5:37
Speaker 1: along the eastern coast of Africa. UM had this Basically
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Speaker 1: they made little power bars. They would take um animal
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Speaker 1: fat and then they would take the coffee berries and
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Speaker 1: either smush them and then put them in animal fat
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Speaker 1: or else they just put the whole coffee bears and
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Speaker 1: animal fat and then eat them and then they would
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Speaker 1: like they would have a lot more energy after that.
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Speaker 1: Pretty cool, right, this uh originated probably in Ethiopia, Ethiopias
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Speaker 1: biggest naturally there. Yes, a certain type does um uh.
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Speaker 1: Years later that so we leave Africa. Now Africa they're
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Speaker 1: eating their power bars. Um. We go to the Arabian Peninsula,
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Speaker 1: and the same kind of coffee grows there on the
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Speaker 1: Arabian Peninsula as does as thrives well in the Ethiopian highlands.
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Speaker 1: Should we go ahead and call it what it is Arabica, okay?
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Speaker 1: And that is like the primo coffee as far as
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Speaker 1: coffee drinkers are concerned. The wine of Araby right. Um,
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Speaker 1: On the Arabian Peninsula, somewhere around a thousand a d.
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Speaker 1: Somebody figured out that you could roast the stuff and
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Speaker 1: make it into a concoction of brew if you will,
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Speaker 1: and start drinking it hot drink bye. I think the
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Speaker 1: thirteenth century, a couple hundred years later, Um, the Muslims
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Speaker 1: which had conquered Um the Arabian Peninsula by then, UM
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Speaker 1: knew that they had something really special with the coffee.
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Speaker 1: So they would export coffee beans, but you would be
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Speaker 1: beheaded if you tried to get a plant or a
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Speaker 1: seed out right. They want to keep it, yeah, because
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Speaker 1: they knew, like, we can basically control the world with this. Yeah.
7:13
Speaker 1: And I found that that there's something called the kabe Kane,
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Speaker 1: which was the public coffee houses in the Arabian Peninsula,
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Speaker 1: and they were hugely popular still are I'm sure? And
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Speaker 1: they it's at that time, and this is what do
7:30
Speaker 1: you say, one thousand d. Well, they they had a
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Speaker 1: lockdown on coffee by the thirteenth century. Okay, long time
7:36
Speaker 1: ago though, but early on coffee already started to have
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Speaker 1: a link between drinking this stuff and sitting around with
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Speaker 1: people and talking about smart things. It wasn't like going
7:48
Speaker 1: to a bar where you get slashed and talk about
7:51
Speaker 1: you know, the good old days, you know, and end
7:54
Speaker 1: up weeping exactly. Uh. So they called these kab Kane's
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Speaker 1: uh Schools of the Wise, and then later in England
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Speaker 1: there were more than three hundred of these in London
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Speaker 1: by the sixteen hundreds, and they were called penny universities
8:09
Speaker 1: because a cup of coffee was a penny and you
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Speaker 1: would sit around and like learn stuff in the US
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Speaker 1: now in London, okay, nice, So there was always a link.
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Speaker 1: I just found it interesting from the very beginning, between
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Speaker 1: drinking coffee and talking smarts like we're doing right, go ahead,
8:27
Speaker 1: check okay, No, that's all I had, okay. Um. So
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Speaker 1: we we were saying that the Muslims had a lockdown
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Speaker 1: on coffee. But there was supposedly a legend. There's a
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Speaker 1: couple of legends, legends of people getting it out of
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Speaker 1: the Arab Peninsula and into the rest of the world. Um,
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Speaker 1: And one of them is an Indian smuggler named Baba
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Speaker 1: Boudon Baba Booi Baba boud Okay, and he left Mecca.
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Speaker 1: Supposedly there was some seed strap to his chest and
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Speaker 1: made it out and um started growing coffee in India right. Well,
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Speaker 1: the fact that it was Mecca was it may not
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Speaker 1: have spread the same because Mecca was obviously a destination
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Speaker 1: still is for pilgrimages, so it may it may not
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Speaker 1: have picked up if it hadn't have been for the
9:11
Speaker 1: fact that it was in Mecca, right. Um, I supposedly,
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Speaker 1: I don't know how it got out to Europe, but
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Speaker 1: the first um first coffee plantation, first European controlled coffee plantation,
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Speaker 1: was established in Java by the Dutch in sixteen sixteen UM.
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Speaker 1: And then it made its way across the Atlantic, and
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Speaker 1: you can kind of see like little by little, there's
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Speaker 1: like histories and legends about how coffee spread, which is
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Speaker 1: pretty cool. Um. So it made its way into India
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Speaker 1: thanks to Baba Bouddhan. It made its way to um
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Speaker 1: Brazil thanks to a spy named Lieutenant Colonel Paletta, who
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Speaker 1: was sent by the Emperor of Brazil at the time
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Speaker 1: in seventeen seven to get coffee from Yeah, from French Guiana,
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Speaker 1: go find the ambassador's wife or the the the Emperor
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Speaker 1: of of French Guiana. The ambassador, go find his wife
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Speaker 1: and seduce her and get some coffee sack seedlings. And
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Speaker 1: he did. Yeah, apparently he was a looker, and she
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Speaker 1: was a sucker for a handsome mug. And so when
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Speaker 1: he left, she gave him a bouquet of flowers and
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Speaker 1: he hid them inside the flowers. So there you have it,
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Speaker 1: and coffee is president BRAZILA. Now Brazil's like the world's
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Speaker 1: leading grower. I believe of coffee. That true. I think
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Speaker 1: in Brazil alone, Um, there are five million people who
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Speaker 1: are employed to cultivate and harvest three billion coffee plants.
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Speaker 1: That's just in Brazil alone. Wow, so you mentioned Europe.
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Speaker 1: Though coffee in Europe it would have not taken hold
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Speaker 1: in Europe nearly as aggressively if it hadn't have been
10:50
Speaker 1: for Pope Clement the Eighth. Did you hear about this guy?
10:54
Speaker 1: It was Originally coffee was very controversial obviously, uh, early
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Speaker 1: on because it's a drug, gonna stimulant, and a lot
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Speaker 1: of Europeans cautioned against the bitter invention of satan. They
11:05
Speaker 1: took it to Pope Clement and said, hey, dude, you
11:08
Speaker 1: gotta rule on this evil stuff. And he went, well,
11:11
Speaker 1: let me give it a try first. He gave notice
11:14
Speaker 1: everyone has a Brooklyn accent now, and um, he gave
11:17
Speaker 1: it a try and said Wow, this stuff is pretty awesome. Actually,
11:21
Speaker 1: I'm gonna give it the stamp of approval. So Pope
11:24
Speaker 1: Clement gave it the papal stamp, and that's why it
11:27
Speaker 1: became so popular in Europe. Well, yeah, it was vindicated papally,
11:31
Speaker 1: and if it hadn't have been, who knows. So okay,
11:34
Speaker 1: well we'll talk about Europe for a second. You were
11:36
Speaker 1: talking about how um the penny academies, penny universities, penny universities.
11:40
Speaker 1: So um. There's also been a lot of companies that
11:44
Speaker 1: are still around today. A lot of just to set
11:47
Speaker 1: a lot of huge events have taken place or begun
11:49
Speaker 1: or find the roots in coffee houses. Lloyd's of London,
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Speaker 1: rue Lloyds of London, UM, the huge insurance company, I
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Speaker 1: think the world's largest insure began in a coffee house
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Speaker 1: that was owned by a guy named Edward Lloyd, and
12:04
Speaker 1: I guess to make a little electra money on the
12:05
Speaker 1: side or to keep his patrons happy, he kept a
12:08
Speaker 1: list of all the ships that were insured by some
12:11
Speaker 1: of his UM patrons, who I guess at the time
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Speaker 1: you could get somebody to cover your ship as an investment,
12:20
Speaker 1: and Edward Lloyd started keeping track of it, hence Lloyd's
12:23
Speaker 1: of London. And now you have your tonsils insured because
12:26
Speaker 1: of that very day. Man. That costs me, but it's
12:30
Speaker 1: going to be worth than just in case. Um. Also,
12:33
Speaker 1: do you remember how I said that coffee is just
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Speaker 1: so ingrained in American culture? Do you know why? The
12:39
Speaker 1: answer is totally obvious, but so obvious. Yes, it's so obviously.
12:43
Speaker 1: You just walk right past it and you don't hear
12:45
Speaker 1: a lot of I'm not pressed, but you just don't
12:48
Speaker 1: read about that a lot unless And it wasn't just
12:51
Speaker 1: the Boston Tea Party that did it. It was, I mean,
12:54
Speaker 1: that was part of it, but it was all of
12:55
Speaker 1: the taxes on tea that really made it prohibitive for
12:58
Speaker 1: people to drink, so they started switching to coffee. And
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Speaker 1: then it became something of a point of national pride,
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Speaker 1: and and the Boston Tea Party itself was planned in
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Speaker 1: a coffee house called the Green Dragon. That is very true.
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Speaker 1: So coffee is very much, um, just from the from
13:14
Speaker 1: the get go, from the it's the reason why everybody
13:18
Speaker 1: is sub jacked up for the American Revolution. Well, it's
13:21
Speaker 1: just it's interesting all these stories come together to make
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Speaker 1: coffee like the fact that it was in Mecca, the
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Speaker 1: fact that the Pope gave it the stamp of approval,
13:29
Speaker 1: the Boston tea party, the ties with smart talk in
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Speaker 1: coffee houses. It's all those things came together to form
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Speaker 1: the perfect storm of what is now the second leading
13:42
Speaker 1: h import or export or just commodity. Aside from second
13:46
Speaker 1: leading commodity, as far as I understand, it's far. It
13:50
Speaker 1: ranks second to petroleum in terms of dollars traded world crazy,
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Speaker 1: and it's the most popular drink on the planet aside
13:56
Speaker 1: from water. And I imagine that's on the the no
14:00
Speaker 1: normal market. I don't know if anything tops coffee on
14:03
Speaker 1: the black market. Um, chuck, it's I think. You know.
14:08
Speaker 1: There's plenty of reasons to love coffee, but probably the
14:11
Speaker 1: most the most common reason to love coffee is um.
14:15
Speaker 1: The trimethyl accident. Then yes, yes, C eight H ten
14:24
Speaker 1: and four O two for those in the know. Uh,
14:27
Speaker 1: that's caffeine UM, which has the same but a milder
14:32
Speaker 1: effect on the brain is cocaine or opium meth I'm
14:36
Speaker 1: starting to feel this already. I felt the first one
14:39
Speaker 1: this morning. Yeah, um, And caffeine occurs naturally in a
14:44
Speaker 1: number of plants. It's not just coffee, um, but it's
14:48
Speaker 1: in like whamo amounts in coffee. Um. An average cup
14:52
Speaker 1: of coffee has about a hundred milligrams of caffeine, where
14:56
Speaker 1: if you have like a can of coke, twelve ounce
14:58
Speaker 1: can of coke is fifty milligrams of caffeine. Yeah, so
15:02
Speaker 1: I mean it's twice as much. And you can tell
15:03
Speaker 1: I drank decaffeinated coffee just now and I'm a little
15:06
Speaker 1: more just decalf yeah, and de careful explain how how
15:11
Speaker 1: it comes about later on. But there is one plant
15:14
Speaker 1: out there, um that naturally is decaffeinated, one naturally decaffeinated bean, right, yeah,
15:22
Speaker 1: the Madagascar coffee crazy species, mascar coffea vigner I wonder
15:28
Speaker 1: if that was naturally happened naturally, if it was bread
15:32
Speaker 1: to be so, I don't know, we're not bread, but
15:34
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. So, UM, we're talking about
15:37
Speaker 1: the United States, and as big as junkies for coffee
15:40
Speaker 1: as we are, there's only one state in um, the
15:43
Speaker 1: Union where coffee can grow, and that is Hawaii. And
15:47
Speaker 1: that's because Hawaii exists in the bean belt, that's right,
15:50
Speaker 1: and they grow. They're very famous and delicious ConA copy
15:54
Speaker 1: in the volcanic mountains and the bean belt. It's on
15:57
Speaker 1: the Big Island, on the Big Island, Hawaiian guy. Now
16:00
Speaker 1: you know that. Uh the bean belt, as you mentioned,
16:04
Speaker 1: is uh bounded by the tropics of Capricorn and Cancer
16:09
Speaker 1: and Remiller are running right through the middle. That's right.
16:11
Speaker 1: And uh the soil climbing and altitude are awesome for coffee.
16:16
Speaker 1: It means that you're gonna get a continually producing tree,
16:21
Speaker 1: which is really cool. One coffee tree can have uh
16:25
Speaker 1: beans ready to pick, beans and bloom flowers blooming all
16:28
Speaker 1: at the same time. Do you remember we saw them
16:30
Speaker 1: in Guatemala. Oh yeah, I think it's their second or
16:33
Speaker 1: third largest export is coffee says their number eight in
16:35
Speaker 1: the world. Um, I believe it. Uh. So the coffee
16:40
Speaker 1: is grown on a tree. It's a woody evergreen tree
16:44
Speaker 1: um that can grow up to thirty ft high. But
16:47
Speaker 1: if you're into coffee cultivation, you keep your coffee shrub
16:50
Speaker 1: level so you can harvest it easier. You don't want
16:52
Speaker 1: to be bringing ladders in there now. And most harvesting
16:55
Speaker 1: is done by hand. Um. Like you said, the it's
16:59
Speaker 1: it's constantly productive. So you've got a little bit over
17:02
Speaker 1: here that's mature. You've got a little bit that's ready. Um,
17:05
Speaker 1: And there's flowers. Did you know the coffee tree has
17:08
Speaker 1: flowers that smell like jasmine some say. And on the
17:12
Speaker 1: spot where those flowers bloomed, about a year later, you're
17:16
Speaker 1: going to have fully mature red coffee cherries is what
17:19
Speaker 1: they're called. Right for the picking, and they look just
17:21
Speaker 1: like cherries they except group in bunches. It tastes different. Um.
17:27
Speaker 1: And then one tree in a single season, I thought
17:29
Speaker 1: this was this is kind of staggering. Just one tree
17:33
Speaker 1: produces one to one and a half pounds, which is
17:36
Speaker 1: um less than it's about a half a kilogram. Yeah,
17:41
Speaker 1: that's one. That's a that that takes a lot of
17:44
Speaker 1: trees to produce all the coffee that the world's consuming.
17:46
Speaker 1: Thing about that. Luckily we have Bob Bob Boudhan who
17:51
Speaker 1: got coffee out of Saudi Arabia. That varieties of coffee, Josh,
17:56
Speaker 1: we already mentioned Arabica. There are two Arabic and Robusta. Um,
18:02
Speaker 1: if you're talking Arabica, those are the original Ethiopian UH
18:06
Speaker 1: coffee trees or descendants of UH. They grow well, I'm
18:10
Speaker 1: sorry they are mild and aromatic. Eventually, that's what you're
18:13
Speaker 1: gonna get when you drink a cup of it. About
18:16
Speaker 1: seventy percent of the world's coffee as Arabica growing higher
18:19
Speaker 1: altitudes between two and six thousand feet above sea level
18:23
Speaker 1: the Ethiopian Highlands is a great pleasure. Mild temperatures are
18:27
Speaker 1: required between sixty and seventy five degrease fahrenheit, and they
18:32
Speaker 1: need about sixty inches of rain per year in and
18:37
Speaker 1: frost is no good, no, not at all no, because
18:41
Speaker 1: if you look at the bean belt, Florida is not
18:44
Speaker 1: even in it, Like the keys aren't even in the
18:47
Speaker 1: bean belt, So it's probably rare to get a frost,
18:51
Speaker 1: if not impossible in the bean belt. The robusta is
18:55
Speaker 1: you're gonna have a bean smaller and rounder. Overall. The
18:58
Speaker 1: tree is much hardier because it can grow into temperatures
19:02
Speaker 1: up to eight degrees fahrenheit and lower altitudes, and it
19:08
Speaker 1: packs a lot more punch, about fifty more caffeine, and
19:11
Speaker 1: it's more bitter. And I read somewhere that um robusta
19:15
Speaker 1: is like has long been considered an inferior type of coffee,
19:21
Speaker 1: like it's the hardy like redheaded cousin of Arabica. It's
19:26
Speaker 1: on um and that we we here in America consume.
19:33
Speaker 1: We we consume a lot of it um. And the
19:36
Speaker 1: reason why is because the Pan American Coffee Council, I believe,
19:41
Speaker 1: which created something called the coffee break. Have you heard
19:44
Speaker 1: of that? Check? Yes, that's a made up thing. From
19:48
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties, um coffee was coming down from up
19:52
Speaker 1: on high where only the wealthy could afford it, to
19:56
Speaker 1: um being a lot more predominant. And one of the
19:58
Speaker 1: ways that it was um it was introduced to wider
20:01
Speaker 1: cultures by mixing the inferior robusts of beans with the
20:06
Speaker 1: Arabica beans. And so now it was like, sure it
20:10
Speaker 1: doesn't taste as good, but it gets you going through
20:12
Speaker 1: your your horrible life. So have a have a coffee
20:17
Speaker 1: break and get back in there. We drink more of
20:19
Speaker 1: the robusta here. At least in the twentieth century we
20:23
Speaker 1: started consuming a lot more of it, all right, Yeah, Uh.
20:28
Speaker 1: There are more than eight hundred flavor characteristics and a
20:32
Speaker 1: coffee bean which is double that of wine. So when
20:36
Speaker 1: you hear people talk about wine and all the you know,
20:39
Speaker 1: it's smokey, oky and woody like double that. And you
20:45
Speaker 1: know wine people, which I'm a wine person, but I'm not.
20:48
Speaker 1: I know you're making fun of yourself. I'm making fun
20:50
Speaker 1: of my people, but wine, I'm sorry. Double that. And
20:53
Speaker 1: you've got the what you've got going on with coffee,
20:56
Speaker 1: even though you think you like there's like the morning blend,
21:00
Speaker 1: little Colombian, little Brazilian. Yeah, not so. Remember our friend
21:04
Speaker 1: Brandon was having a fight with our friend mark over
21:08
Speaker 1: because he keeps buying um flavored coffee like the blueberries.
21:12
Speaker 1: Seberry coffee should not exist. Marker is going to go
21:15
Speaker 1: ahead and tell you that right now. And not only
21:17
Speaker 1: should it not exist, but if you make some in
21:19
Speaker 1: your coffee maker, you might as will throw it away
21:22
Speaker 1: because you can taste it for the next fifty pots
21:24
Speaker 1: of coffee. Right, let's talk about the actual coffee bean itself, Chuckers,
21:31
Speaker 1: the coffee cherry, Josh, all right, what you got is
21:34
Speaker 1: a bright red, like we said, skin when it's ready
21:38
Speaker 1: to pick in ripe, Uh, it's green if it's not.
21:41
Speaker 1: And apparently coffee pickers they don't want to have more
21:45
Speaker 1: than two green per every one picked, otherwise they're going
21:49
Speaker 1: to get their hands slapped by coffee plantation owner. Oh yeah, yeah,
21:54
Speaker 1: like when they're hand picking them, they I mean they're
21:56
Speaker 1: picking them fast, so you're gonna have some green ones.
21:58
Speaker 1: But that's their goal, is what I here. The skin
22:01
Speaker 1: of the cherry is called the exocarp, very thick and bitter.
22:06
Speaker 1: You got a fruit beneath that called the mesocarp. It's
22:08
Speaker 1: kind of like the inside of a grape, like if
22:10
Speaker 1: you peel the skin off a grape. That's what I
22:12
Speaker 1: take the mesocarpe. Yeah, it's gushy and sweet. Uh. Then
22:16
Speaker 1: you have the parencoma, which is uh slimy, and it's
22:21
Speaker 1: a honey like layer protects the bean. There's gonna be
22:25
Speaker 1: two beans generally, and every you know, if all goes
22:28
Speaker 1: well in every cherry, and they are covered by a
22:32
Speaker 1: parchment like envelope called the endocarp. They're kind of bluish
22:35
Speaker 1: green at the time. And then there's the silver skin
22:39
Speaker 1: on top of the bean and it's all protecting that
22:43
Speaker 1: little nugget that looks sort of like a shelled peanut.
22:47
Speaker 1: And the silver skins also called the spermaderm prefer silver skin.
22:51
Speaker 1: I think everybody serves prefer silver skin. So uh, if
22:55
Speaker 1: you can get rid of all these layers that protect
22:58
Speaker 1: the bean. UM. They sically, what you're going down to
23:01
Speaker 1: is like the pit of a cherry, the seed, the nut,
23:06
Speaker 1: that's where the gold is right. Um. And when you
23:10
Speaker 1: harvest them, you said that people they just want the
23:13
Speaker 1: bright red ones. But people are harvesting between one and
23:17
Speaker 1: two hundred pounds a day by hand. Most coffee harvesting
23:20
Speaker 1: takes place by hand. UM. And it depends on where
23:23
Speaker 1: you are where it's going to be harvested um or
23:25
Speaker 1: when it's going to be harvested. If you are north
23:28
Speaker 1: of the equator, you're going to harvest between September and March.
23:31
Speaker 1: If you're south of the equator, you're going to um
23:34
Speaker 1: harvest between April and May, which is not spring. Right,
23:40
Speaker 1: So the summertime it's basically the only time they're not harvesting.
23:45
Speaker 1: And when you um, when you've got them harvested, you've
23:47
Speaker 1: got them picked, you have your hundred to two hundred
23:50
Speaker 1: pounds for the day. UM. Depending on the type of
23:53
Speaker 1: coffee plantation, you're going to um dry them by one
23:57
Speaker 1: of two methods. There's basically just two methods of dry
24:00
Speaker 1: which is pretty cool considering that they are huge, huge,
24:04
Speaker 1: concerns that like produce coffee. Yeah, and and there's still
24:09
Speaker 1: like two kind of primitive means of drying them before
24:12
Speaker 1: we get into the cool method. I want to point
24:15
Speaker 1: out that all of this is speed is key because
24:18
Speaker 1: the freshness of coffee is the secret to good coffee.
24:22
Speaker 1: So if you pick beans that morning, they're being process
24:25
Speaker 1: that afternoon. They don't sit around in barrels for a
24:27
Speaker 1: few days at all, unless they're being dried. Then they
24:31
Speaker 1: sit around for seven to ten that's part of the processing.
24:34
Speaker 1: So basically, um, if you're using the dry method of drying, um,
24:38
Speaker 1: you are basically you're laying the coffee beans out in
24:43
Speaker 1: the sun or the coffee cherries I'm sorry, big concrete slab.
24:47
Speaker 1: You're laying them out in the sun, um, and you're
24:49
Speaker 1: letting them dry. Uh. And after about seven to ten days, um,
24:55
Speaker 1: and you're raking them periodically, just kind of turn them
24:57
Speaker 1: over and get some air underneath them. The uh, the
25:00
Speaker 1: cherries will have dried enough so that there's only about
25:02
Speaker 1: eleven percent moisture in the whole coffee cherry. And um,
25:06
Speaker 1: you can tell that it's ready because the beans rattle inside.
25:09
Speaker 1: So it makes a good children's toy as well. I
25:12
Speaker 1: couldn't find who dries dry like I'm sure you can
25:16
Speaker 1: find out, like whatever coffee if you want to really
25:19
Speaker 1: want to research what kind of coffee you want to drink, Well, yeah,
25:22
Speaker 1: I'm sure you can tell, like who does the dry method,
25:24
Speaker 1: because it's I mean, I get the feeling that dry
25:26
Speaker 1: methods probably superior because anything that usually takes a little longer,
25:30
Speaker 1: it's probably worth it. Sure. And also it doesn't use
25:33
Speaker 1: enzymes like the wet method. I get the impression that, um,
25:36
Speaker 1: if you get from a small plantation, probably using the
25:39
Speaker 1: dry method. The wet method uses enzymes and fermentation. And
25:43
Speaker 1: basically you take the cherries and throw them into a
25:46
Speaker 1: vat of water. After I'm sorry you you get the
25:49
Speaker 1: pulp and skin peeled away. Then you throw it into
25:52
Speaker 1: a vat to ferment for a couple of days, and um,
25:55
Speaker 1: the natural enzymes apparently eat away the little envelope in
26:00
Speaker 1: the silver skin and then you have the beans left over.
26:03
Speaker 1: That's right. But and you still need to dry up
26:05
Speaker 1: for about four days in the sun, just like the
26:08
Speaker 1: dry method. And uh, you let it rest at night
26:11
Speaker 1: sometimes if you don't want to do if you want
26:13
Speaker 1: to speed it up even more. You don't do the
26:16
Speaker 1: sun dry method. You put it in these big rotating
26:18
Speaker 1: drums that pump in hot air. Uh, and that'll dry
26:21
Speaker 1: it out. Uh. And it's spermating. But if it smells
26:24
Speaker 1: too much like vinegar, that means of spermating too much,
26:28
Speaker 1: is there? Right? Yeah, that's what I hear. Okay, So
26:30
Speaker 1: let's say you have a bunch of dry coffee. What
26:32
Speaker 1: you have is a commodity, like we said, second only
26:34
Speaker 1: to oil and total dollars traded. And uh, it's called
26:38
Speaker 1: green coffee because coffee producers don't roast coffee. Roasters roast
26:41
Speaker 1: the coffee and they buy their green coffee from coffee producers.
26:46
Speaker 1: So you've got Um, if you bought a bunch of
26:48
Speaker 1: green coffee, what you would have is traditionally a big
26:52
Speaker 1: jute or cecil bag filled with coffee. Still is this day? Yeah? Um,
26:58
Speaker 1: and uh it's going to be train. It'sward to the
27:00
Speaker 1: tune of about seven million tons of green coffee shift
27:04
Speaker 1: worldwide every year. Now it's already hold too at this point,
27:07
Speaker 1: right right, it's just the beans, right Yeah. So the
27:10
Speaker 1: hauling process, you know, it's a it's a machine that
27:13
Speaker 1: does that and then they sort them according to to class,
27:17
Speaker 1: like grade A beans, Grade BE beans. Great sin about
27:20
Speaker 1: that part, yes, but eventually you're going to get a
27:22
Speaker 1: nice bean, right, And they grade them first by size
27:25
Speaker 1: and then by density. And you want the bigger, heavier
27:29
Speaker 1: ones are superior to the smaller ones. And either they're
27:32
Speaker 1: graded by hand like along and like a conveyor belt,
27:35
Speaker 1: or there's um a conveyor belt and puffs of air
27:38
Speaker 1: that will puff off the lighter, smaller ones. Yeah, or
27:41
Speaker 1: they have little machines like uh, disorders that sort of
27:44
Speaker 1: according to size. There's all different kinds of machines. Now, yes,
27:47
Speaker 1: they also have ones that look exactly like giant spiders
27:51
Speaker 1: that are terrifying, but they get the job done all right.
27:54
Speaker 1: Now to the roasting, which is that's the good stuff. Yeah,
27:57
Speaker 1: that's where coffee really gets its u a roma and
28:01
Speaker 1: its flavor, eventual flavor. Uh. And here's an interesting fact.
28:05
Speaker 1: Roasting reduces caffeine. Is that right? That's right. So even
28:10
Speaker 1: though an espresso roast takes fourteen minutes compared to a
28:16
Speaker 1: seven minute light American roast, an espresso bean has a
28:21
Speaker 1: lot less caffeine than just a regular thing, a regular bean. Huh,
28:26
Speaker 1: so you may say, why do you get so jacked up?
28:28
Speaker 1: It's because the grind and the concentrated brew. Yeah, I
28:34
Speaker 1: never knew that. I thought the espresso bean is like
28:35
Speaker 1: loaded with extra caffeine. I guess I would have. I
28:37
Speaker 1: would have imagined the same thing, because you quite like
28:40
Speaker 1: taste with caffeine content too. Yeah. True. So like the blacker,
28:45
Speaker 1: it is the thicker and richer that tastes you just
28:47
Speaker 1: like this must be loaded with caffeine. Very interesting, chuckers.
28:52
Speaker 1: So we're roasting now. Yeah, So you've got roasting drum
28:56
Speaker 1: um that's capable of achieving temperatures of degrees fair height,
29:00
Speaker 1: which is two degrees celsius and um. The key is
29:04
Speaker 1: not just the heat, but the rotation of the drums. Um.
29:08
Speaker 1: You can roast coffee at that heat as long as
29:11
Speaker 1: it's moving, so it won't burn. I don't want to burn.
29:14
Speaker 1: It's hot, but it's not gonna burn. Espresso beans are
29:17
Speaker 1: burned a little bit, right. Um. So there's there's a
29:21
Speaker 1: couple of If you are a coffee roaster, you're you're
29:24
Speaker 1: looking for a couple of things. The first thing is
29:26
Speaker 1: that the beans should start to turn yellow, smell a
29:28
Speaker 1: little bit like popcorn. Like you said, they shouldn't smell
29:31
Speaker 1: like vinegar at all. You want to throw that out, um,
29:34
Speaker 1: And then you're going to hear something called the pop
29:37
Speaker 1: and the coffee bean is just popped and it's hit
29:40
Speaker 1: about four hundred degrees ferret height. It doubles in size
29:43
Speaker 1: at that point. Yeah. Um, And that's really the beginning
29:46
Speaker 1: of the real roasting process. After that happens, you really
29:49
Speaker 1: want to be Johnny on the Spot paying attention to
29:51
Speaker 1: this because things move pretty fast after that. Um. Through
29:54
Speaker 1: a process called pyrolysis. Um, the heat extracts the oil
30:00
Speaker 1: and they turn the coffee from green or yellow to
30:03
Speaker 1: a nice, rich brown, And now it's really being roast
30:06
Speaker 1: and eventually almost a black. Yeah. It depends like like
30:11
Speaker 1: you said, if you are going to make espresso roast,
30:14
Speaker 1: you're gonna heat it for fourteen minutes and basically you're
30:18
Speaker 1: toasting these things. You're burning them, and the sugars inside
30:22
Speaker 1: are caramelizing. Right. And by the way, God help you
30:24
Speaker 1: if you say espresso, or even worse, if you sell
30:29
Speaker 1: espresso and you have a sign that says espresso, come
30:33
Speaker 1: on and then chuck. There's the second pop, and the
30:36
Speaker 1: second pop is like I'm done, take me out. Uh.
30:41
Speaker 1: You talked about the roasters, these roastmasters, and they are
30:45
Speaker 1: called roastmasters because it is a very specialized job. What
30:49
Speaker 1: they do a lot of times is because you don't
30:51
Speaker 1: want to roast you know, ten thousand beans and have
30:55
Speaker 1: a bad batch. So what they'll do is they have
30:58
Speaker 1: a side room where they a little tiny batch and
31:02
Speaker 1: this is where the roastmaster does their taste testing. They'll
31:05
Speaker 1: brew up four cups of coffee from different parts of
31:08
Speaker 1: the batch just to make sure they've covered it all. Uh.
31:11
Speaker 1: They push aside the phone, and when they don't put
31:13
Speaker 1: it in a coffee maker, they put the grounds in
31:15
Speaker 1: a cup with hot water and let's steep, you know,
31:18
Speaker 1: like old school. Yeah, that's how I make coffee or
31:21
Speaker 1: what I like to call camping style. Do you do
31:22
Speaker 1: that at home? Uh? Yeah, you just boil it with
31:25
Speaker 1: the French press, Oh, French pressure. I have several ways.
31:29
Speaker 1: There's all. I also have this coffee maker that you
31:31
Speaker 1: may got me. The boat them and it uses vacuum.
31:34
Speaker 1: It uses the vacuum to suck water up into this
31:38
Speaker 1: top bulb and it just sits there and percolates and
31:40
Speaker 1: then it drips back down really, but just the coffee
31:43
Speaker 1: does the ground stay up above, and then you take
31:46
Speaker 1: the top part off and you've got like a little
31:48
Speaker 1: pot of coffee. It's awesome. It's fun to watch. I
31:51
Speaker 1: find the de press pot is a little chalky for
31:53
Speaker 1: my taste. Oh yeah, it totally is. But I guess
31:56
Speaker 1: it's just you know, if you like that, you like it,
31:58
Speaker 1: but you have to you have to grind it to
31:59
Speaker 1: its right. Yeah, which we'll talk about in a second.
32:01
Speaker 1: It's all about the ground, Josh. But what they do is,
32:04
Speaker 1: like I said, they've got the small batch. They broke
32:06
Speaker 1: the four cups. They steep it and then they push
32:08
Speaker 1: aside the foam on the surface to release a roma,
32:11
Speaker 1: and that's called breaking the cup. They sniff it. Then
32:14
Speaker 1: they skim the grounds from the surface and do a
32:16
Speaker 1: little sip and spit for each cup, and then they say, hey,
32:21
Speaker 1: it's ready, go ahead and throw the big batch. And
32:24
Speaker 1: then when no one's looking, they snort the grounds. That's right.
32:27
Speaker 1: And another interesting thing is that once they roasted, it
32:31
Speaker 1: actually gets packaged still hot into the bag hot, and
32:35
Speaker 1: they pump in nitrogen to replace the oxygen. And because
32:39
Speaker 1: you don't want oxygen and then uh that you know,
32:41
Speaker 1: the vacuum seals. Yeah, oxygen degrades the freshness of coffee
32:45
Speaker 1: faster than anything else. So yeah, that's why everything's vacuum sealed. Well,
32:48
Speaker 1: let's go. We're there. So uh well, there's four keys
32:54
Speaker 1: to making really good coffee. Right, You've got your roasted coffee.
32:58
Speaker 1: It's been roasted masterfully. Um. And now it's your turn.
33:02
Speaker 1: You have a bag of beans that's vacuum sealed, very fresh.
33:05
Speaker 1: You can still tell it's warm even chuck um. And
33:08
Speaker 1: so you have four things you want to take into consideration. Freshness,
33:12
Speaker 1: the type of the grind, the ratio of water to coffee,
33:16
Speaker 1: and then water purity and the purity of your coffee maker.
33:19
Speaker 1: And by the way, don't don't either a buy ground
33:21
Speaker 1: coffee or be buy coffee and grind it in the store.
33:26
Speaker 1: You're you're not doing yourselves any favors if you can,
33:29
Speaker 1: and tell everybody just leave you alone while you enjoy
33:32
Speaker 1: your coffee. Do whatever you want people. But if you're
33:35
Speaker 1: a coffee connoisseur, yeah, and you're not doing that. You're grinding.
33:38
Speaker 1: You have a home grinder, you're buying beans, you have
33:40
Speaker 1: a home grinder and you're grinding just enough to make
33:42
Speaker 1: a couple of cups of coffee. Well, and not only
33:45
Speaker 1: do you have a home grinder, but you should have
33:47
Speaker 1: a nice grinder. I went to research Emily drinks a
33:50
Speaker 1: latte every morning of her life, and she had a
33:54
Speaker 1: crappy little grinder and a crappy espresso machine. So I
33:57
Speaker 1: invested in like the good stuff in The difference between
34:01
Speaker 1: the fifteen dollar grinder and the hundred dollar grinder is massive,
34:06
Speaker 1: I would imagine. So, yes, grinder, I've heard burg grinders
34:11
Speaker 1: are like the best one. It's a burg grinder, and um,
34:14
Speaker 1: it's you know, I don't know enough about coffee to
34:17
Speaker 1: know the difference, but I started reading up on it
34:20
Speaker 1: and it said the grind is the key. Yeah, So
34:23
Speaker 1: as you say, the grind is the key, you've got
34:25
Speaker 1: your freshness. You don't want coffee that's older than like
34:27
Speaker 1: two weeks. You don't want to grind it ahead of time. Um,
34:30
Speaker 1: and if you do end up somehow with some ground coffee,
34:33
Speaker 1: you want to keep it in the fridge and it
34:35
Speaker 1: will stay up to two weeks. Don't try to get
34:38
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant to drink any of it, though, No I'm
34:40
Speaker 1: not like that. I'll drink anything. I'm just teaching. But
34:42
Speaker 1: the grind, like you say, is what releases all of
34:45
Speaker 1: the flavors and aromas and every little, great little nugget
34:50
Speaker 1: of goodness and coffee. It's the way you grind it.
34:53
Speaker 1: And anybody who's ever ground coffee, especially at like a
34:56
Speaker 1: Trader Joe's or something, you can adjust then die and
35:00
Speaker 1: it will say French press, espresso, automatic drip and espressoes
35:06
Speaker 1: are really fine grind very and Turkish is actually even
35:09
Speaker 1: finer than that. UM. But the grind is related to
35:13
Speaker 1: the amount of time it takes to make the coffee.
35:17
Speaker 1: So espresso is very fine, almost powdery, and that takes
35:21
Speaker 1: about twenty five seconds to make espresso. It takes about
35:24
Speaker 1: ten minutes to make a pot of UM regular drip coffee.
35:28
Speaker 1: So for that you have a coarser grind is what
35:32
Speaker 1: it's called. UM. And then also, Chuck, I want to
35:35
Speaker 1: mention there's Cowboy coffee. You're talking about how the roastmaster
35:38
Speaker 1: um just mashes up some coffee that called Cowboy coffee.
35:43
Speaker 1: Cowboy coffee. Yeah, Um, And apparently it used to be
35:46
Speaker 1: very difficult for cookie to get anybody to grind coffee
35:50
Speaker 1: because that gets sold very very often. So um, I
35:54
Speaker 1: believe in the nineteenth century there was a coffee company
35:56
Speaker 1: called art Buckles Coffee, and they put a peppermintstick and
36:00
Speaker 1: every bag of coffee so that cookie could be like, hey,
36:02
Speaker 1: whoever grinds this gets really stick and yeah, apparently cookie
36:06
Speaker 1: had no trouble after that. That's a great story job.
36:08
Speaker 1: I agree, I love it. So you talked about proportion
36:11
Speaker 1: of water to coffee. Everyone has their slight variations. Some
36:15
Speaker 1: people like a little stronger, some people like a little weaker. Yeah.
36:18
Speaker 1: I found this this ratio to be on, to be wanting,
36:22
Speaker 1: because what we have here in this article is two
36:24
Speaker 1: tablespoons of ground coffee for six ounces of water. They
36:28
Speaker 1: say that makes a strong cut, but you say more.
36:30
Speaker 1: I like a little more coffee than that, a little more,
36:33
Speaker 1: which is like a heaping kitchen spoon, no kitten spoons,
36:37
Speaker 1: about one table spoon two of those? Yeah, that's what
36:40
Speaker 1: I mean. Yeah, yes, heaping for sure. Yeah yeah, oh yeah,
36:44
Speaker 1: you know you don't level it off. You're like, if
36:46
Speaker 1: it if it doesn't fall off on the way into
36:48
Speaker 1: the basket or the French press, right, okay. And they
36:53
Speaker 1: also say that cold water. Fresh cold water is what
36:56
Speaker 1: you really want to start with, and eventually you want
36:58
Speaker 1: to end up with two grease fahrenheit ninety three celsius.
37:02
Speaker 1: If you want to really get all the flavor out
37:04
Speaker 1: of the beans and keep your maker clean, gotta clean
37:07
Speaker 1: the thing out. Well, there's the irony. If your coffee
37:10
Speaker 1: smells like vinegar, you've got bad coffee. But you want
37:14
Speaker 1: to use a vinegar solution to clean out your coffee
37:17
Speaker 1: every once in a while, rent it out. I don't
37:19
Speaker 1: know what the proportion is make it up. I think
37:22
Speaker 1: if yeah, there, I mean, there's got to be a
37:24
Speaker 1: certain amount of weeks or amount of coffee pots of brood.
37:27
Speaker 1: But if you're starting to taste bitter coffee, then it's
37:30
Speaker 1: it's time. Or if you taste blueberry coffee and you
37:34
Speaker 1: want to do the vinegar thing to or throw it out.
37:36
Speaker 1: And then we talked about the Madagascar coffee species um
37:39
Speaker 1: that naturally produces decaf but um, most people don't drink this. Instead,
37:45
Speaker 1: they're drinking stuff that um has been removed somehow. The
37:51
Speaker 1: caffeine has been removed from the beans, either by using
37:54
Speaker 1: a chemical solvent gross which extracts the caffeine and then
37:58
Speaker 1: the solvents washed away. Wow. Uh. And then the other
38:02
Speaker 1: method is to steam the beans nice and um. That
38:06
Speaker 1: gets some of the outer part of the bean um,
38:10
Speaker 1: which apparently packs the most caffeine worn away, and you've
38:14
Speaker 1: got decalf and then I think they scrape the rest
38:16
Speaker 1: of it a way after that even. Yeah. So if
38:19
Speaker 1: you're if you're into healthy, then get organic decaf. If
38:22
Speaker 1: you want decaf non chemical solvent. Yah, you don't want
38:26
Speaker 1: to be drinking that, yeah. Um So then coffee around
38:29
Speaker 1: the world Chuck America. Thank you to UM our friends
38:33
Speaker 1: at Starbucks who founded their company in nineteen seventy one.
38:37
Speaker 1: UM has kind of come out of its haze of
38:41
Speaker 1: not that great coffee, and it's starting to understand like, oh,
38:45
Speaker 1: there's really good coffee out there, and it's it's a
38:47
Speaker 1: good coffee because I've heard I've heard coffee people say,
38:49
Speaker 1: you know, store Bucks really need a good coffee because X,
38:52
Speaker 1: Y and Z. I was trying to be polite here
38:54
Speaker 1: and I was thinking Starbucks of nine not Starbucks of
38:58
Speaker 1: two thousand eleven. UM Starbucks opened America up to the
39:05
Speaker 1: concept of good coffee. Doesn't necessarily serve it good coffee
39:09
Speaker 1: or at least expensive coffee, right. Um. But for the
39:13
Speaker 1: most part, Americans still prefer the American roast, which is
39:16
Speaker 1: about a seven minute roast, like you said, um, which
39:20
Speaker 1: is just shameful if you ask me. So what do
39:23
Speaker 1: you think though, I mean, I'm not an officio, were
39:26
Speaker 1: talking about this, Well, I don't know. I mean I
39:27
Speaker 1: just hear coffee snobs say, you know, store Bucks isn't
39:30
Speaker 1: even good. But then I think those are people that
39:32
Speaker 1: are just fighting the big mass corporation that's on every corner. Well,
39:36
Speaker 1: I don't know, man, I I tend to go with
39:39
Speaker 1: the coffee snobs in that one. I think it used
39:42
Speaker 1: to be a lot about like way, there's way too
39:44
Speaker 1: many Starbucks out there, and now I think it's like
39:47
Speaker 1: they're just not The coffee just doesn't taste that good.
39:49
Speaker 1: It's really cloying. But the thing is is, I wonder
39:52
Speaker 1: also if I'm missing something, because how does Starbucks not
39:56
Speaker 1: know that it's coffee tastes like this? Why wouldn't they
39:58
Speaker 1: change it? What's the deal. I'm sure someone out there
40:02
Speaker 1: We're gonna get some good emails on this from people
40:04
Speaker 1: who really know how they treat their beans. From Ted
40:07
Speaker 1: Starbuck himself, it's gonna be like I'm so you, Teddy
40:10
Speaker 1: Starbuck France Prince roast, very dark, robust cafe l it's
40:17
Speaker 1: gonna be half milk, half coffee. I don't know why
40:20
Speaker 1: you'd want to ruin your coffee with half milk. It's good,
40:23
Speaker 1: is it? Yeah? Viennese roast, I think Vienna was the first.
40:30
Speaker 1: I think the first coffee shop in Europe was in Vienna.
40:32
Speaker 1: I might be wrong that I can't remember. I think so.
40:37
Speaker 1: I think so. Possibly we'll find out at any rate.
40:39
Speaker 1: The Viennese roast is very popular. Um dark roads two
40:43
Speaker 1: thirds dark roast beans one third regular roast, and the
40:47
Speaker 1: European roast is the flip the reverse of those. So
40:50
Speaker 1: it's one third dark and two thirds light. Yes. Uh.
40:54
Speaker 1: And then of course you have espresso um, which, like
40:58
Speaker 1: you said, it's there's less caffeine, but you get the
41:02
Speaker 1: big jolt out of it by grinding it. So just
41:05
Speaker 1: pulverizing every hiding place where caffeine can hang. Have you
41:09
Speaker 1: ever seen maholland drive David Lynch the espresso seen, I
41:13
Speaker 1: don't remember it. It's when they it's some one of
41:17
Speaker 1: those mysterious meetings and David Lynch movies or like, who
41:21
Speaker 1: are these people and why are they having this mysterious meeting?
41:24
Speaker 1: And they serve this one guy. He's like, you know,
41:26
Speaker 1: we searched the world over for this espresso, and we
41:28
Speaker 1: know you're gonna approve of this one. And they surf
41:30
Speaker 1: into the guy and he drinks it and then spits
41:33
Speaker 1: it up and a nap. So good god, he's the
41:38
Speaker 1: best Turkish roast. What's what's the proverb that coffee should
41:44
Speaker 1: be black as hell, strong as death, sweet as love,
41:48
Speaker 1: So what does that mean? They just put a lot
41:49
Speaker 1: of sugar in it. They like it sweet? Oh, I
41:50
Speaker 1: think it's way. I think it's more than that. So
41:53
Speaker 1: they have um, carter mom and chicory and coriander in
41:56
Speaker 1: their coffee. Um. They also have you ever had like
42:00
Speaker 1: Mexican coffee or Mexican chocolate coffee with like cinnamon and um,
42:05
Speaker 1: like cayenne pepper in it, and I don't know, very
42:07
Speaker 1: good um. And then yes, they also put some some
42:11
Speaker 1: sugar in there, I believe. And it's very finely ground,
42:14
Speaker 1: like I said, even more finely ground than espresso. Boy,
42:18
Speaker 1: that's powdery. Yeah, and thick. They make it real thick yeah. Yeah.
42:23
Speaker 1: Uh in Cuba, You're gonna get the Cafe Cubano, which
42:28
Speaker 1: you do it like a shot, which is pretty cool,
42:30
Speaker 1: and it's like espresso, but you don't sip it with
42:33
Speaker 1: your uh sambuca lemon twist or whatever. Have you ever
42:39
Speaker 1: had a lemon twist with espresso? I never have no
42:42
Speaker 1: remember Balky in um Beverly Hills cop he said, can
42:47
Speaker 1: I interest you in in? Yeah? Yeah? Uh? And then
42:52
Speaker 1: in Thailand, I didn't realize this coffee is really strong
42:55
Speaker 1: there and it is chickeny tinged, iced and sweetened with
42:58
Speaker 1: condensed milk. I don't know if they don't drink hot
43:01
Speaker 1: coffee at all, or I know it's in Japan. It's
43:03
Speaker 1: like coffee is huge, and I think it's always hot
43:05
Speaker 1: in Thailand and they're like, it's too hot for hot coffee.
43:08
Speaker 1: It is so apparently if you want to make it
43:10
Speaker 1: a home, you just take some coffee, a little sweet
43:12
Speaker 1: and condensed milk and some ice and there's your thaie coffee. Boom,
43:17
Speaker 1: so chuck. I am heartened by some recent research that
43:22
Speaker 1: has come to light that basically says, drink as much
43:25
Speaker 1: coffee as you like. Yeah. They I mean they used
43:28
Speaker 1: to say like coffee is bad for you. You don't
43:30
Speaker 1: want to have too much right now, bowlic acid, too
43:33
Speaker 1: much caffeine will make you go shoot people. I mean,
43:36
Speaker 1: it's been crazy. There's good and bad. Let's just say that.
43:39
Speaker 1: So let's talk about some there's some sort of weird
43:42
Speaker 1: link between coffee consumption and UM diabetes. There's a negative correlation,
43:47
Speaker 1: whereas the more coffee you drink, the lower your risk
43:50
Speaker 1: of diabetes, right two diabetes specifically. Yeah, they did nine
43:54
Speaker 1: studies about five years ago, and four to six cups
43:57
Speaker 1: of coffee per day versus two or less us reduced
44:01
Speaker 1: your risk by which is pretty significant. Yeah, that's extremely
44:06
Speaker 1: significant thirty if you drink more than six cups a day,
44:10
Speaker 1: all right, and whether you drink decaf or caffeinated, the
44:13
Speaker 1: results were the same. Yeah. So it's not the caffeine,
44:16
Speaker 1: which I thought was probably the bullock acid. We're gonna
44:18
Speaker 1: do a caffeine podcast by the way. Okay, that's coming um.
44:22
Speaker 1: Free radicals, which may or may not exist. UM. Supposedly
44:26
Speaker 1: there's phytochemicals about a thousand of them uh in coffee
44:30
Speaker 1: beans and UH. If free radicals do exist, these phytochemicals
44:35
Speaker 1: act as antioxidants. Preventing the aging process and all sorts
44:38
Speaker 1: of cellular damage if free radicals exist. Uh. They say
44:43
Speaker 1: that coffee improves memory and cognition. They did plenty of
44:46
Speaker 1: studies on this, and coffee drinkers people that drink coffee
44:50
Speaker 1: in the morning especially performed better than non drinkers and
44:53
Speaker 1: when it comes to learning new information. Yeah, I was
44:55
Speaker 1: surprised by this. Like I'm not surprised, but I wonder
45:00
Speaker 1: if they did a follow up, like four hours later,
45:02
Speaker 1: like how you doing now? Exactly? Yeah, the coffee crash,
45:07
Speaker 1: I get that. Which is I think white people like
45:10
Speaker 1: my brother in law drink coffee all day long. Yeah,
45:14
Speaker 1: there is no coffee crash when you drink two pots today. No,
45:17
Speaker 1: I know what you mean. But you also don't sleep
45:19
Speaker 1: and like your calf muscles rupture through your skin. They
45:24
Speaker 1: don't study on that. I can tell you, all right,
45:28
Speaker 1: what about the bad? Because you know not not not
45:30
Speaker 1: everything is all good. Um. Well, when you drink a
45:33
Speaker 1: lot of coffee, you pee calcium, and uh that means
45:37
Speaker 1: that you are losing bone density e g. Coffee can
45:41
Speaker 1: increase OSTEO process. But they say add a little milk
45:45
Speaker 1: to your coffee, balance it out. Oh yeah, that's what.
45:48
Speaker 1: That's what it says here at least, it definitely makes
45:50
Speaker 1: sense or yogurt, But who wants to eat yogurt? So
45:53
Speaker 1: if you put two I love yogurt. I'm just kidding,
45:55
Speaker 1: all like it, all right? Two tablespoons of only the
45:58
Speaker 1: good stuff, like only Greek yogurt. Um, two tablespoons of
46:02
Speaker 1: milk or yogurt per cup of coffee. I don't see
46:05
Speaker 1: putting yogurt in coffee though, Like you'd have to be
46:08
Speaker 1: literally insane to do that. It seems like it would
46:10
Speaker 1: just coagulate, ump up, like they would take you away
46:14
Speaker 1: and lock you up if somebody saw you putting yogurt
46:16
Speaker 1: in your coffee. Josh, I know you like your skin.
46:20
Speaker 1: I know you like to remain youthful and and handsome
46:23
Speaker 1: and sexy. But it's just like an exercise and futility.
46:27
Speaker 1: I feel like I disagree. Coffee has antioxidants. If you
46:31
Speaker 1: drink it too much of it, it will cause your
46:33
Speaker 1: skin to wrinkle, probably quicker than your average dude who
46:36
Speaker 1: doesn't because of dehydration. That's what they say. I've heard that.
46:41
Speaker 1: I don't know about this weight gain thing. Um. Basically,
46:45
Speaker 1: there's a change in blood sugar that the caffeine high
46:49
Speaker 1: can produce, which is strange because that would seem to
46:53
Speaker 1: um contradict the diabetes study if there was a less
46:58
Speaker 1: risk less of a risk of diabetes. Huh um. But apparently, um,
47:04
Speaker 1: if we we because we love eating donuts with our
47:08
Speaker 1: coffee and that kind of thing too. Um. You can
47:11
Speaker 1: actually gain weight if you eat a lot of coffee
47:14
Speaker 1: because you're like, I would have another crowler? Why not?
47:18
Speaker 1: Because it goes do you dunk? I have dunked in
47:22
Speaker 1: the past. I'm not that big on it. I I
47:26
Speaker 1: also will dunk in oreo from time to time, but
47:28
Speaker 1: it's not like every time any oreos, I have to
47:30
Speaker 1: have milk. I thought you oreon coffee, okay? Uh. And
47:34
Speaker 1: then coffee is one of the most heavily sprayed crops
47:37
Speaker 1: on the planet, with pesticides and herbicides and chemicals. So
47:42
Speaker 1: if you know, if you're not into that, you should
47:43
Speaker 1: get organic coffee. Thank you, Norman Borlog. And just a
47:47
Speaker 1: couple of more little facts here. I'm gonna skip most
47:50
Speaker 1: of these, but um, I will say that fair trade coffee,
47:55
Speaker 1: if you have a heart, you will seek out fair
47:57
Speaker 1: trade coffee because for every I'm sorry. The pickers themselves
48:03
Speaker 1: earned as little as four cents per pound, and the
48:06
Speaker 1: farmer earns as little as twelve cents per pounds sold.
48:11
Speaker 1: So the fair trade movement tries to redistribute profits so
48:15
Speaker 1: that all these people earn decent wages. I believe the
48:18
Speaker 1: fair trade movement originated around coffee production, like I think
48:23
Speaker 1: that was the first industry. I think that's where it's
48:25
Speaker 1: cradle lie. And finally, Josh, if you are one of
48:30
Speaker 1: those dudes or ladies who start your day off by
48:34
Speaker 1: going to your local coffee shop to get a cup
48:36
Speaker 1: of coffee on your way to work, you're gonna wait
48:38
Speaker 1: in line about forty five hours a year for that coffee.
48:44
Speaker 1: Not too bad a couple of days. That's a lot, though. Uh.
48:48
Speaker 1: You're also going to drop about a hundred and sixty
48:50
Speaker 1: five bucks on coffee every year. I don't know that
48:54
Speaker 1: seems that to me looks like a stat if you
48:56
Speaker 1: buy and make your own coffee, Because I bought one
49:00
Speaker 1: of those gingerbread ones yesterday at Starbucks. It was like five,
49:05
Speaker 1: let's even say four bucks, and you drink coffee every day,
49:09
Speaker 1: you buy one a day. There's plenty of people out
49:11
Speaker 1: there by cups of coffee. That's more than a thousand
49:15
Speaker 1: dollars on coffee a year. That's way low. Then, yeah,
49:19
Speaker 1: that's just a stupid statistic you came up with. I'm
49:22
Speaker 1: done with my coffee, We're done with a podcast. Well, no,
49:25
Speaker 1: we're not quite done yet. They got some stuff, chuck.
49:28
Speaker 1: Let's forego listener mail and instead, sure, we're not gonna
49:33
Speaker 1: just let you go before we let everybody go. Um,
49:36
Speaker 1: we want to wish everyone a very happy New Year. Yeah,
49:39
Speaker 1: no matter where you are, no matter what time it is,
49:42
Speaker 1: we are um wishing you a very very happy, safe, bountiful, beautiful,
49:48
Speaker 1: wonderful two thou twelve. Yeah, and that's what I love
49:51
Speaker 1: about New Year is it's everyone We're not going to
49:53
Speaker 1: get a malc and well you know in my country
49:55
Speaker 1: we don't do this or down here, it's not that
49:58
Speaker 1: everyone gets a New Year. So you must really love
50:00
Speaker 1: New Year's. Love it? Yeah, so Mary Mary, New Year.
50:04
Speaker 1: And I want to also say very very special happy
50:08
Speaker 1: birthday to a very very special girl who um has
50:11
Speaker 1: her birthday the two days before New Year's. Myum, I
50:16
Speaker 1: was assuming that, well, happy birthday. We love, Happy birthday
50:21
Speaker 1: you me and happy New Year to everybody and if
50:24
Speaker 1: you I forgot almost chuck. If you want to get
50:26
Speaker 1: in touch with this, you can tweet to us at
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50:31
Speaker 1: you Should Know, and you can send us a good
50:33
Speaker 1: old fashioned happy New Year email to Stuff Podcast at
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50:45
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50:48
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Speaker 1: two thousand twelve Camry. It's ready, are you