Page 84 - #57 English

Origin

Green coffee is“like a sponge”

IT SOAKS UP WHATEVER IS AROUND IT.
IN MOIST ENVIRONMENTS, THE COFFEE ABSORBS MOISTURE, AND IN
DRY ENVIRONMENTS, IT RELEASES THE MOISTURE.

This natural sponging action of green coffee means that, when stored in “extreme” conditions, it can soak
up and release ambient moisture many times over. I put “extreme” in quotation marks in the last paragraph,
because what’s “extreme” to one person might be normal to another person. I talked to Chris Davidson of Atlas
Coffee Importers in Seattle, one of the leading US companies, and he had this to say: “Green coffee is comfortable
in any place that humans are comfortable. If you think about temperature, humidity, airflow, and extreme light
as variables, humans all have a fairly narrow comfort zone before they start to suffer.”He also points out that
warehouse conditions have to be kept workable for any employees. In the ports of Seattle, New Jersey, and Oak-
land, they keep coffee warehoused in places with air circulation, but no air conditioning. However, he notes:
“New Orleans is one exception, and we tend to keep micro-lots stored in an air-conditioned room there to beat
the intense heat and humidity.”
Intense heat and humidity, as Davidson notes, can be very damaging for coffee. And, I’d also note, that what’s
“comfortable” for one person could be “intense” for another person. As a native of Seattle, I find New Orleans to
be very hot and steamy. But a native of Hong Kong would probably find New Orleans to be quite mild. So the situ-
ation, climatically, in East and Southeast Asia is, in fact, more seriously damaging for green coffee than, for example,
that in New Orleans.

If you look at a map of the world’s climatic zones, you’ll
find that there are very different conditions around
the South China Sea and the Sea of Japan than those
that exist on the west coast of North America. And,
the warehouse practices are less strict in Asia, when
in fact they need to be much, much more strict! So,
you have a phenomenon where specialty coffee shops
are spending thousands of dollars on fancy espresso
machines, obsessing over the details in Scott Rao’s
books, paying top money for coffee from famous
places like Yirgacheffe and Boquete. And yet: the
raw ingredients they are using have been totally
destroyed before the process even begins.

ASIA NEEDS A REVOLUTION IN THE WAY COFFEE IS STORED

For example, the coffee that I access most is stored in Singapore. Singapore is one of the hottest, most humid
places in the world. But we take care to air condition the coffee 100% of the time. From the moment it arrived at the
warehouse, it has never once been subject to the outside climate. It’s even better cared-for than the coffee in the original
“coffee revolution” cities of Seattle and San Francisco. I’ve done side-by-side cupping with coffee from various ware-
houses around the region, and there’s really no comparison in freshness. Coffee stored in climate-controlled ware-
houses has far more flavor even after years than the coffee stored in heat-and-humidity has after even just a few months.

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