What’s wrong with coffee?
Dear human, if you are expecting me to talk poorly about coffee, you can stop reading now. I am actually here to talk about all the opportunities that coffee presents to us. After all, everything that’s wrong with coffee is actually what makes it so right.
The coffee industry has been around for years. As many of us know, it was born in Ethiopia, or at least that’s what we’ve all accepted to know. We have also accepted that this is a crop that is shaped by agricultural systems, that prices are established by the stock exchange in New York, and we’ve also accepted every other piece of information that has come our way about it.
I recently spoke to a world-wide coffee organization to ask them what the right information was about a specific topic and they answered the most unexpected thing ever: “We don’t know. There is no standard since different regions in the world manage it differently.” I will not disclose which organization it was and by any means want this to feel like a critic.
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The thing is, coffee is much, much, much, more than “just a drink”. It starts in a farm in an origin with a little seed/bean. It has to be watched over so it grows well, it is carefully cut when it is ready, it is weighed, processed, selected, transformed, roasted, packed, sold, ground, brewed, and drunk.
The thing is, this process has so many variables and so many factors that can result in around 10,080 different “coffees” from one plant. This is considering harvest time, classifications by weight, classifications by size, processing methods at the mill, roast levels, brewing methods and more.
So, going back to my conversation I started to wonder… Why are there 178 different arabica varietals in Coffunity’s database, 43 in Wikipedia and 38 in a trusted varietal and cultivar-verifying organization’s list? Why is a roast level called “Cinnamon” in one place and “England Roast” in another? Why do some people spell it “Gesha” and others “Geisha”? Why do some people call it “Pulp Natural” and others “Honey”?
There is nothing wrong with coffee. But what’s wrong is there’s so many sources, opinions, spelling mistakes and terms for the same things that it gets confusing! If you are a coffee connoisseur like me, you might be able to know the answer to these questions, but what happens when someone comes and wants to start learning?
In Coffunity we have the mission to educate people from within and outside the coffee industry to make better decisions and Drink Better Coffee. But, if want to embrace and teach everything that is right with coffee, we must settle these doubts and have more organized information with the support of the largest coffee community worldwide!
