Is Your Coffee Stale ?
You are a coffee connoisseur. Your taste is distinctive. You know what you want and always get it!
The question is: "Have your taste buds been trained to like stale coffee?"
In South Africa there is a bizarre misconception that imported coffee is the best.
When coffee is roasted, a chemical reaction takes place that releases the aroma of the coffee bean. The roasted bean, when exposed to oxygen starts to loose its flavour. Most instant coffees are packaged in such a way that carbon dioxide is pumped into the container to displace oxygen. This acts as a preservative. No oxygen means that the flavour of the coffee is retained, as long as the container is closed. That way you always get a fresh cup of coffee. Imported premium filter coffee is packaged in a material that is not 100% airtight.
Often it is vacuum packed, to extract as much of the oxygen as possible. This measure fails to eliminate oxygen completely. Staling of the coffee begins immediately. Depending on shipping dates, the coffee that is exported to South Africa can spend between two and six weeks at sea. Lets look at the worst case scenario. Six weeks.
Add to the six weeks a month to clear customs. The coffee then goes to a distribution warehouse, adding yet another month to its life. From the warehouse it could take up to a week to get to the wholesaler inland and stand on shelves in supermarkets for a month before landing in your shopping trolley. That adds up to a whopping 19 weeks since roasting!
Would you pay R20 for a 19 week old imported bread? Not likely.Why do we pay R200-R350 per kilogram for imported coffee, when the same and better can be purchased for R93.00, locally?
It just doesn't make sense. Perhaps South Africans are snobs? Perhaps we think that our country is incapable of producing anything great?
LOCAL IS FRESH ....... LOCAL IS LEKKA !!!!
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It is strange how difficult it is to get people to change. People still hold on to old habits.
ReplyDeleteMost people that travel to places like Italy and taste the coffee there, know that it is good coffee.
However when they come back to South Africa they still expect that coffee. It is impossible. There are hundreds of small coffee roasteries in Italy, all with their own brands and blends. Most of the big ones make it internationally.
We all import the beans from the same areas in the world. Guatemala, Costa Rica, Vietnam, Brazil and Zambia to mention a few.
Coffee (Top Grade) only grows around the equator. Yes there is small crops all over, but the equator is the natural growing area for coffee.
Thus what I would like to say is that coffee roasted and blended in South Africa is just as good or even better due to the freshness as imported brands.
Good post...
ReplyDeletecongrats! keep up the good work/this is a great presentation.
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