Coffee Shop: Tips

Coffee shop. The coffee plant is originally from Ethiopia and arrived in Europe around the seventeenth century. Consumption became widespread in the 1700s. Coffee is consumed almost all over the world. There is no self-respecting cafe or bar that does not offer this drink as well as in other catering sectors. Coffee appears to be at the top of the world for economic value together with oil and steel.

Coffee for your coffee shop: Types

Coffee is a tropical plant. There are many species of the genus Coffea, but only two are economically important: the Coffea arabica and the Coffea canephora (known as robusta).

Better quality coffee is obtained from arabica. Contains 0.9-1.7% caffeine percentage. This variety represents 3/4 of production in the world. Arabica improves in quality if grown at altitudes above 900 metres.

The robusta produces a coffee of lower quality and a considerable percentage of caffeine, i.e. 1.6 to 2.8%. This plant prefers lower altitudes (200-300) than arabica. However, it is a variety that is decidedly more resistant to diseases and critical climatic conditions.

Production and collection

Production is divided into:

1. Central and South America;

2. Central Africa;

3. Asia.

The uniformity of the climate of tropical countries allows continuous fruiting.
Harvesting can be manual or mechanical. Manual harvesting occurs in two ways: picking or stripping.

• Picking involves the harvesting of ripe and healthy berries.
• With stripping you wait for the majority of the fruits to be properly ripe, then, in a single step, all the fruits are harvested. With this method the product does not ripen evenly and the quality suffers as a result. However, the cost of this collection method is significantly lower.

Coffee for your coffee shop:Processing

After harvest, the beans must be quickly extracted to avoid deterioration.

• In dry processing the fruits are dried in the sun. This operation can also be carried out with the use of dryers. The result is safer, but poor in quality. Subsequently, the pitting and sieving takes place. The coffee produced in this way is called natural or unwashed.

• In the wet treatment the fruits undergo pulping and fermentation. Below the beans are washed and dried. After drying, pitting is carried out. The coffee obtained from this process is called washed. This method requires a lot of water and is time-consuming and expensive, however the final product has better quality.

Green coffee is shipped in jute bags (typically 60 kg) to importing countries.
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What you need to know about coffee for your coffee shop: Blending and roasting

In order to obtain a drink with the right body, aroma and taste, you need to mix different types of coffee, in terms of quality and origin.
Mixing allows you to have a product with constant characteristics. This is important because the consumer gets used to a flavor and associates it with a certain brand.

Roasting gives the coffee the taste, aroma and color that characterize it.
The degree of roasting varies based on the country where the process takes place. In Italy, a strong and marked flavor is preferred and roasting is carried out at higher temperatures and times (in the south more than in the north). The opposite occurs in countries that like a lighter tasting coffee.
After roasting, the coffee is quickly cooled. A strong coffee does not necessarily have better quality, but only a higher roast.

Four methods are used to package coffee:

1. Non-hermetic closure: the coffee is closed in bags by making 1-2 small holes in the package. The coffee packaged in this way should be used within a month;
2. Vacuum-packed: the coffee is packaged after eliminating the air and this allows the product to keep for approximately six months;
3. Pressurization: the coffee is packaged in watertight metal containers.This more expensive method allows for long conservation (even over 3 years).

Decaf coffee

Decaf coffee contains little caffeine (about 0.1% of the dry substance). Caffeine is eliminated from the green bean through the use of water or carbon dioxide. At the bar, decaffeinated coffee can be found already ground in single-dose packages or in beans; this last solution offers superior qualitative results.