In this listener Q&A episode we talk about:
In this listener Q&A episode we talk about:
Hello, my fellow coffee nerds. It's December. And I'm recording this a few days after our first FTC camp in Guatemala. And even though this was our fifth camp, it was the first time that we had a special guest. My mom came to help. and I wanted her to help because. FDCs have, since the beginning, since its inception have always been bilingual, but in previous camps, the way that we accomplish that was by me doing the whole thing twice. Meaning I would do all of the presentations in English. The English group would go take a break and then the Spanish group would come in and then I would do it all. Again in Spanish. So the activities. The actual fermentations, all of that was done as a, an entire group altogether. You know, he would. sort cherries, pulp coffee. I do our yeast, rehydration, our inoculation wash the coffee, drying. All of that cuppings were altogether. But when. We had to do classroom time and get a lot more into the theory of the microbiology and what's going on. I would have to separate the groups. And this was a difficult setup for me because not only was it a lot of energy to do everything twice in both languages. but I didn't like having to separate the groups because there's such a rich discussion when we can all be together and just get a lot more diversity of perspectives and experiences. So I. It took five. Take five camps, but I eventually had the idea to ask my mom for help. So she flew down from California to join us for a few days because she is a professional interpreter. So having her, we were able to do a simultaneous translation. So I was giving my presentation in English and then we had her on. Headphones. And all of the Spanish speakers had their little headphones and we were able to do a simultaneous live translation. And it was really exciting because we were able to keep the entire group together. And I just had a lot more energy to. Just be present for the event. And then also it gave us a lot more time to have discussions and to have, these kind of rich interactions that aren't just like me talking at a group, but the group talking to each other. And that was important to me because what I love more than coffee microbiology is getting to interact with other folks who like to talk about coffee, microbiology, and just. The coffee scene in general. Which brings me to today's episode today is episode number 60. And as long time listeners know every 10 episodes, I get to answer your questions. I personally really like these episodes because it helps me get out of my head and hear what's still confusing or perhaps what I could do a better job communicating to you guys. The question you will hear today are very similar to the types of questions we get to discuss on discord. So if you like these kinds of topics or this kind of discussion episode, I think you would really enjoy our live office hours. I've had to make some changes because I am very much a morning person and historically. They, when they started, they've been Friday mornings at 10:00 AM my time, local time when there was Guatemala or Columbia. But I eventually heard for many listeners from Hawaii and Australia and Indonesia who couldn't join because it would be, I don't know, like three o'clock in the morning for them, which is ridiculous. So I recently added a session in my night times to include Asia Pacific. We recently had our very first Asia Pacific discord office hours. And one of the questions that came up was about the yeast pickier. And the question was posed, not just to me, but to the group in general. And what was the group's experience fermenting with this non Saccharomyces east? So this was a very into the weeds type of discussion. Um, you know, getting to talk about a particular fermentation protocol, but it's not always hardcore microbiology discussions. We also have some casual topics that we talk about, like brewing and then some more general stuff like our favorite coffees and just discussions about how we feel about the industry. And it's just a really nice place to share. So I hope you enjoy this listener Q and a, and if you want more episodes like this, I hope you'll join us in Patrion because we do these chats a few times a month in English and in Spanish and for multiple times zones. So there should be something in that configuration that works for you. And if that still doesn't work. Then before an episode or before a discord live session, I just take general questions. And if you can't make it live, I'll usually answer your question during the session, and then you can watch the replay whenever you want. Okay. I think that's it for the intro. Let's get into your questions. Our first question comes from Alex. He asks. Are there any insights Lucio would be able to share on the modern with quotes and quotations, the modern wave of processing. That seem to involve quite wild temperature swings, AKA thermal shock. And while it's less fermentation based, there seems to be equal amounts discussed about how the drying is modulating to fix again in quotations, the aromatics to the green coffee. Seems a lot of terminology is thrown around sometimes in seemingly contradictory ways for these proprietary processes. And it would be super interesting to hear Lucy his take on it. Alex, I think this is really great. And. Okay. So I'm going to try to avoid my usual thing where I take one question and turn it into an entire episode or multiple episodes, because this one's quite fascinating, but I want to honor. The spirit of this episode, which is trying to get through your listener questions and give you maybe some way to think about it. If not necessarily. I exhaust the entire topic. So I do think that this one requires a little bit of background in case you haven't heard of this process of Thermo shock. And. Alex's right. I think one thing to really keep in mind is that Thermo shock is not a type of fermentation. Eight days and method used in processing, in conjunction. With a fermentation. And this process involves exposing coffee at any state. So you can use their most shock in the cherry stage in the parchment stage. And like you said, even in the drying stage, so it's not restricted to any one part of processing. It's a method that you can. Apply to the coffee fruit. The coffee parchment or the seed at any time. And it involves both extreme, cold or extreme heat. One place where. I could see this making sense, is it, this is a method used in other agricultural processes. In. An agribusiness in general. So something like pasteurization or blanching. Pasteurization is carried out in milk and wine and beer and sauces and fruit juices. So this is something very common to help stabilize and reduce the microbial activity. In those food products. So in coffee, we haven't needed to do this from a food safety point of view. We don't need to pasteurize our coffee because we. Do that when we roast it, we have a heat step. We have a heat kill step already built in. So this additional heat for the fruit. Hasn't traditionally been necessary for food safety. However, now it's becoming interesting for this idea that Alex mentioned about quote, fixing flavors about using heat to. Trap some of the flavors that we're making in fermentation. So I guess what I want to say about The process of adding heat to cherries to reduce the microbial load. I think it's an incredibly effective method if that's why you're using it. So I think being aware of why Thermo shock is being. Used is a good thing to keep in mind it. It sounds really cool. It looks really cool on a label. But it could be the opposite of what you think. Right. So if you're seeing Thermo shock and you think, oh, wow, maybe this is going to be an extra. Flavorful and extra interesting process, maybe. Or maybe not, maybe the Thermo shock was used to reduce the microbial load to eliminate some of that microbial activity and maybe create more of a flat or. You know, plane profile. Or it could be the first step using conjunction with inoculation. So when you're adding each and you're inoculating for your coffee, it really helps your fermentation to be secure if you're eliminating the competition before you do your inoculation. So Thermo shock could be used to, you know, Really superheat the cherries. For a very short time. I think that's another thing to keep in mind is for pasteurization in new it's high temperature, short time. So maybe you would be doing something like 80 degrees Celsius for 30 seconds, right? You want it to be really short, which means you need very specialized equipment to be able to do that. So, this is not. Traditionally a cheap or a super accessible step to a lot of coffee producers. You need to have access to energy and you need specialized equipment to. Achieve something like this. But again, I think it's really effective if we're reducing the microbial load. So then we can inoculate with something else. Something else that I think is worth considering is at this high temperature will also denature or inactivate enzymes. Enzymes potentially like a pectineus that helped break down the mucilage and make it more accessible for the fermentation. So you could potentially notice maybe a slowing down of the fermentation or maybe reduced. Efficiency, not that your fermentation won't work, but it's something that if you're like, oh, I started to do this temperature treatment and now my fermentations are behaving a little bit differently. It could be because of denaturing, those enzymes. But. It could not happen Because you are. Producing the competition. And so if you're inoculating with another microbe, you could even see more increased activity because you've eliminated your competition. So I think this is, you know, not a particularly satisfying answer because microbiology is complicated, but those are some of the things that I, I want you to think about or the questions that you can ask sort of like, why is this Thermo shock happening? Is it too. Again, reduce. So microbial activity to then inoculate with something else. anD that's on the heat side. So the other. End of this could be cold, extreme, cold. This is often used in this, in this combination. to do a high temperature short time. Treatment, you would need to increase the temperature really quickly for those 30 seconds, and then you need to bring it back down. So it kind of has to go hand in hand. You can't really just do the one heat treatment and then not do an immediate cold treatment because you have to bring the temperature of the coffee back down as quickly as possible. So that you don't damage the seat. So this is the balance that we need to have when we think about Thermo shock is that we want to have high heat so that we're affecting our microbes and our enzymes in our coffee, but not so much heat that we are. Killing the germ that we are destroying. The viability of the seat, because if you kill the seed, Then you get faded and you are destroying the shelf life of your coffee. So if you're not careful, so this is a tool to be used with a lot of care, because For the benefit of more flavor or a more efficient process, you could be compromising the shelf life of your coffee. It'll taste really great. But it'll fade, in a month it'll, Get stale very quickly. I think another thing I will share especially in the drawing. Part is that we know very well from studies done by Flavio Bahram in Brazil. That when you have coffee drying at the temperatures above 60 Celsius. They have microscope pictures of cells have coffee seeds, and you can see the cells and the ones that were dried at around 40 degrees Celsius. Our round cells completely intact and. They look like a normal cell when the temperature has gone up to around 60 degrees Celsius. Then under the microscope, you can see that these cells have completely burst. It looks like, you just. He had a bag full of groceries and you just spilled it and everything just kind of rolling around on the floor. So you can see that the cells have spilled their contents because the heat was too much at damage. The structure. And that also, releases your volatile compounds so that they're not available, for your flavor. And then it also exposes some oil so that you have more exposure to oxygen oxidation, therefore going stale and branded. So we know that in drying these extreme temperatures are much more of a concern for the longevity. I think you have much more flexibility if you're doing these heat treatments in cherry for a short time for the microbial purpose. So when I'm working with my clients, this is not a process that I would recommend that they start using. If it's not something that's already in part of their protocol. But for example, I do have one client that uses Thermo shock that they started before I arrived. And they have to do it. They do cold storage because are transporting their Sherry's from a, a farm that's very far away. So it takes several hours to get to their processing facility. So they move it in a refrigerated truck. So they have cherry that's incredibly cold. And that's great because you're preserving it during that stage. I think that's really helpful. So they're trying to also do it from a microbiological point of view. They're trying to prevent the microorganisms. That are on the coffee cherries from starting to activate before they can get it into their facility. But then once they get into their facility, then it warms up. They have a long fermentation. And then because they have these bioreactors that they are able to control the temperature. They can do maybe a. Let's say 30 or 40 hour fermentation. And then they can crash the tank. So this is something that's used in beer and in wine where you can have a fermentation happening at room temperature, and then you chill it to freezing. You don't want to freeze the liquid, but you chill it significantly so that you crash the fermentation to let you can pause it and then get to it when you have more time. So it's kind of like, Yeah, push pushing the pause button. And this allows them to work. More at their own pace. So we know that a lot of coffee producers who don't have access to. You know, this type of technology can get very stressed because you're like, I need to deal with this right now. And maybe you don't have enough workers or it's, Four o'clock in the morning and nobody's there and you may be miss your window. So, this is a really wonderful tool to be able to control the temperature of your fermentation so that you can work on it. At your leisure. However, my concern was with the longevity of their seat. If they're kind of freezing the cherry first and then getting warm for your fermentation and they crashed the tank. That's a lot of physical stress. We know that when water freezes, we get that expansion and then contraction, when we melt again. So, I'm not saying that they're necessarily freezing the cherry, but I think that when you're going with extreme, cold and hot and then extreme cold, again, you're stressing out the cellular structure of the seed and that stress. Compromises the longevity of your seat. And maybe that doesn't matter because you're able to sell your coffee really quickly. Maybe you don't even export it. Maybe it's consumed domestically, so it doesn't have to travel and maybe you'll never notice a problem. So it's not that it's bad. It's that? It depends. Where is this coffee going? Is this process going to help? Or are you potentially compromising, for a goal? Is this a coffee that needs to be exported to Australia? And it's going to take, you know, five months to get there. I don't think that Thermo shock is a good. Method. With coffees that need to survive long travel distances or that you want to house. For a long time, let's say you want to buy a coffee and be able to offer it. In your cafe for a couple of months, four months, six months, something like that. I wouldn't look to a thermal shock coffee for that. Or I'd be wary of that, but if you. Don't have that issue. If you know, you're going to consume it right away, or if it's pretty sold, then I think Thermo shock is a really interesting tool to use. Don't think we know enough about how it behaves in coffee. And I think that we're getting a little too excited, borrowing. This method from again, beer and wine and other industries. I do not encourage temperature shocks as a tool for my clients, but again, my goal is not to create crazy coffee. I do not create competition coffee. I'm not interested in that type. I'm interested in creating stable, homogenous and consistent coffee. So for me, Thermo shock is a high risk strategy. To potentially fix some flavors, increase some flavors. But ultimately I think it really compromises the longevity of that coffee. So just paying attention to that. The next question is from Natalia. Totally different change of. pace. She asks, how do you make your morning coffee? Maybe it was answered before. So I don't think I have ever talked about how I prepare my coffee on the podcast, which I think is a fair question too. Ponder because we talk about coffee. So I guess I will share with you what I do. So when I first started drinking coffee, seriously. In 20 14, 20 15. I started with a baby Cemex because I was allured by the beauty of the brewer. I thought it was so cute. I was eventually talked out of this method by my friend, Tyler Duncan. Who used to be at Topeka. Roasters. But more recently started coracle instant coffee. But anyway, Tyler. He pointed out to me that the dramatic angle of the baby Cemex, it's a very steep angle. It's a very, thin, narrow cone. Made my brewing more variable. And I'm all about consistency. So as soon as he said that, I. Decided to look into other methods. And I started using the V6. Pour over pretty much exclusively. And there was a phase during our heavier travel days that Nick and I had a very long arrow press phase. So I've gone through a couple of different brewers. I'm not that interested in trying like the newest and latest brewer. So it's not like I have a ton of experience with all of the brewers out in the, in the market. I said, as you guys probably know, I'm I'm most of a minimalist. I like to not have that much gear. But I have tried the clever dripper, which I also really like. But today where we've landed in our house, We tend to go back and forth between two. Right now we have the Kalita wave and the origami pour-over. So I definitely love the ritual. I always make my coffee on a scale. I have a gooseneck kettle. And it's also really important for me, that glassware that I drink out of. So I like to drink out of like a heavy ceramic mug. I like a nice stoneware. I do sometimes drink out of the sense cup. The sense is this really beautiful, delicate class. I love a thin lip. It's really beautiful. It makes coffee look beautiful. And sometimes I'll, I'll drink out of that. But I find myself more and more going back to like a heavy ceramic. Feeling, I like having that kind of weight. In my hand. I will also share that I am not an espresso person. I have not yet learned the art of enjoying and espressos. I like my poor overs Next question is from BCU. It says, my question is purely consumer facing. As I don't have much knowledge on what goes on behind the scenes. Just really curious out of all of the labels that roasters are putting on their bags, which one are the ones that are really important. Well, if you listen to episode 59 the episode right before this one, I actually go into this in quite a lot of detail. It's probably like a 20 minute answer on what I personally think is important. On a coffee label or what I look for. Because there can be. You know, it almost looks like the. The credits rolling at the end of a movie where you just have all of this information kind of rolling by. And for me, I think that it can create a lot of noise when, you know, we don't, we don't know what we're looking at or just this, this flooding of information. Which. What I mentioned in that episode is that I think that that was very important to start to differentiate specialty coffee from commodity coffee to say, You know, this isn't anonymous. Random coffee. Look at all this information that, that I, the roaster know about this coffee, so that you know, that it's you know, it, it gives this nod towards traceability, like this isn't anonymous coffee, because look at all this information I know about it. But I don't necessarily think that's helpful for a consumer. Like, I think that's good to have, and I think that's a good philosophy to have, but I don't think it translates to people just trying to learn what kind of coffee they like. I think it can be really overwhelming and I think it can be confusing. So I much prefer simpler labels. I like to have You know, Identifying markers so that you, as a consumer can know what to look for, if you want to explore and repeat. So, you know, what I mentioned in that episode is I think it's really important to talk about. The producer, like the chain of custody, the provenance of this coffee. So it's not just the roaster, but it also talks about who had custody of the coffee before the roaster did. I think that's important. As well as the variety plant genetics, I want to see the cultivar on there because then you start to learn too as a consumer. Oh wow. The last 10 coffees that I've liked are really good and they're all were born. So then, you know I'm pretty safe. If I find another board one. I think it's also important to have the processing. And then that's why that episode got really long is talking about. How much processing information is important, but just a general guideline. I'm okay. If it says washed, you know, or dried in fruit, like just something that says, how were these cherries treated? So to review, I like to know. Who. Grew the coffee. Where was it grown as specifically as you can sort of in the region? Like what, what part of the world? And not just country, but if you can get region specific or sub region, I think that's really helpful. And. The plant variety so that you know, that genetics that you're drinking and then the processing, I think with those four. Simple like that gives you a good baseline. Personally don't buy coffees, looking on altitude, which is what the last episode was about. So I don't think that's necessary information to put on the bag. And then I am also not looking for any certifications. So my. Buying decision is not swayed by organic. Fair trade bird friendly. Carbon neutral. Women powered coffee, any of those things, not that those things aren't important and aren't good. And are not things worthy of being supported. I'm just sharing with you what I look for when I buy a coffee. So if I have to coffee side by side, and one says, Fair trade. And the other one doesn't that doesn't change my purchasing decision. I look at those other things first. And then if there's maybe some other additional marker. Sure. I maybe consider it. But I think that most of those. Systems are poorly regulated. Kind of there's so much. Politics. Involved in that. That it's not how I make a purchasing decision for coffee, and it's not necessarily what I want to see at the expense of the other information. But what I think is interesting about this conversation that maybe I didn't explore too much in the last episode is that. I think, not just looking at what the label says, but looking at. What a roaster decides to put on the label, tells you a lot about their values and tells you a lot about what they find important. It's more of a psychology exercise to see if you know, what they think is important, aligns with what you feel is important. And I guess just that feeling of like, do you feel good buying this coffee? And that's, that's so personal. And that's so arbitrary. But yeah. I guess that's all I have to say about that. This next question comes from Margo. Margo asks. How do you know when you've hit the one for both fermenting and roasting? It seems like there's a lot of tinkering done on both profiles. When do you know that? You've nailed it. Are there ways to get to that point other than pure small batch experimentation. This is also a question that could really go into philosophy for, for a while. I don't think there is a single the one coffee fermentation, or even, you know, a roasting profiles soulmate. I don't think that there is just one option. I think that there are many options. And I think it's more about reverse engineering. So thinking about what are our needs and then how do we accommodate them? So for fermentation. I'll take a fermentation example. First let's say I have a specific client in mind. Or a certain market. Like, let's say I want to sell to Korea or Dubai. And I know in general, those flavor profiles, those markets, like kind of the extreme, fruity boozy flavors. So then I think about in those situations, my perfect fermentation would be one where we play up the temperature extremes and maybe go for extended times. Or the opposite. Let's say I know that my clients don't like boozy, whiny whiskey characters in their coffee. I know that they like more of a classic profile. I would then look for reduced temperatures in my fermentation. I would reduce the oxygen contact during the fermentation. And I would not go for extended times. I would stay within maybe that 30 to 40 hours of contact time. So in those cases, the one really depends on who you're trying to target and who's going to ultimately be buying or drinking this coffee. So I would first figure out what kind of coffee you want to make. And then I would have worked backwards. And you can reverse engineer a fermentation in this way. So you definitely don't have to do what most producers do, which is just try a bunch of different things. Throw spaghetti at the wall cup, a bunch of coffees, and then, you know, sort of see where you land. You can be much more thoughtful and much more methodical when you have some of these. fermentation principle, some of these like little basics of temperature time. anD then oxygen contact. So you can reverse engineer. The flavor profile that you're trying to go for. It still matters. What genetics is still matters. What. Coffee, you are fermenting with these methods because that'll also help kind of accentuate kind of like turn up or turn down the volume. But in general, you don't have to go into a fermentation blind, which is what most coffee producers do. Let's say, however, you don't know your target, you, you don't know what you're headed for. Maybe you're a producer who doesn't have the luxury to pick and choose your clients this way yet. And you don't know what they want. And in that case, I would keep the flavor profile more classic so that you can cast a wider net. If you don't have a client yet making a really polarizing coffee flavor profile. Is more risky. And maybe that's your personality, you know, high risk, high reward, but most of the coffee producers I have met and have worked with are highly risk averse. So playing it safe is still really the best advice if you don't already have a customer. In that case, I would, you know, design a processing protocol that is really easy to replicate and then execute. And. You know, maybe that doesn't give you a crazy wild flavor that you can get a really high price for. But if you make a process that is simple. Then, if you find a client that likes it, you can easily scale up. They're like, oh, I like these five bags next year. I'd like to get 20 or 50. And you feel confident that you can do that? And if you also keep the process simple if the prices are fluctuating, at least you can control your overhead a little bit more. At least you haven't purchased a bunch of tanks or a bunch of microbes or a, you know, invested in making a 100 hour process and you have to pay more people to work a hundred hours versus doing a 20 hour fermentation. If we keep it simple, we can also, you know, reduce the cost of production in these uncertain times. So that's my general advice. I would answer this a little bit. Differently for a traditional coffee producer. But because I know Margo, I know where this question is coming from. Margo has the ability to process and roast coffee in a very close loop that vertical integration, which is very rare for most coffee producers. Few producers have the ability to, roast profile their coffee. But I know that Margot does. So. She's right. There's a lot of tinkering done on both processing and roasting and there are an infinite. Combination of this fermentation with this roast profile. So to not drive yourself crazy. I wouldn't do what most people do, which is again, this experimenting blindly and tweak. That's how you end up with. You know, 40 combinations and total overload. So I would use the guiding principle of what do you like to drink? I remember hearing. This about music. I, I wish I could remember who said this. But it's stuck in my brain as the advice with this. Artist. I gave, and it said never sing a song you don't like, because it might end up being a hit. And you'll be stuck singing the damn thing forever. So I would give the same advice for your coffee, with your coffee profile. Look for something or think about something, making something that you like and that you like to drink because you should be the master of quality control. If you personally, don't like boozy whisky coffees. How are you going to taste 10 versions of a boozy whiskey flavor, coffee, and decide which one is good. All right. So then it's up to other people to tell you what's good. And then you don't have that. That control you don't have that. Judgment in your hands. So, if you make something that you like and that you like to drink, you will know when it's getting better. You will know when you're getting closer or further away. And if you're headed in the right direction or if you're kind of lost in a spiral somewhere, so. I think that's. Something that's missing. From a lot of coffee producers, you know, they ask me what other people want. And I'm like, well, That's really hard to know what other people want. But if you know what you want, then you have that guiding light. So, yeah, my best advice is make something that you like. So that you are the best judge. kNowing what direction that you're heading in. Okay, this next question is from shepherd. Shepherd asks. Okay. I got something that is bothering me, listening to it a third time in episode 30, when it's about sugar, moving out when drying on raised beds. The statement is that sugar is moving out in the same direction as water. Out. But since the water is not really flowing, but evaporating, if that's what's happening. Shouldn't the sugar stay, where it is while the water is leaving. I'm really glad that shepherd ask this clarifying question, because I definitely feel bad that it was not clear in the original episode and that other of you were. Confused about this concept. What I meant to say. What it should be saying is that. If sugar was moving. And so this is the idea of honeys and dry process coffees being sweeter because the mucilage on the outside is. Infusing into the seed is going into the seed it's it's sweeter because of that reason. I said if that was happening, if sugar was able to move across those boundaries, which it's not too gross as much too large of a molecule to move, to permeate the the cells of the parchment and get into the seed. So that doesn't happen, but if it did. Then the only direction would actually be out, not in. So the point shepherd is that it doesn't happen in either case. Sugar is not moving into the seed. And it's also during drying, not moving out of the seed because as you're saying, yes, the water is leaving very gently. So the sugar is not. Flowing out in that sense, cause sugar can't move, but if it could, it would be more logical because sugar is hygroscopic attracted to water. It would be more logical that the sugar would move out. Then it would move in. So my point is that. a nonsensical reason. It's a nonsensical concept that sugar would get into the seed during a honey or a dry process. Coffee. Because that's not how physics works. But there is a point when sugar does flow out of the seed and that is not during drying, but during the fermentation. So a wet process coffee, if it's submerged. Underwater and it's completely. Surrounded by water. Then the glucose and fructose that's in the green seed does tend to flow out because it is attracted to water. And in that case, there's a lot of water available in a submerged fermentation tank. And in studies, they've seen that the sugar can drop up to 90%. So if you have the same coffee and you process one and you split the lot and you process it as a wet process, Pulped submerged underwater. And then you do the other one dry process or a honey. when you analyze the contents. You can see that the wet process has up to 90% last glucose and fructose inside the seed. So we know that submerged allows the sugar to come out. However, I don't want people to be alarmed with that dramatic number of 90%, less sugar, because we know that wet process coffees are not 90% less sweet. There's a lot of other. Components that go into making a wet process, coffee, sweet. You know, in our fermentation we're making polysaccharides. So we get that heaviness of the molecules. We get that syrupy flavor, we're creating different esters and thiols so you get that fruity component. So if you have something that tastes fruity. And has thickness and weight like. Syrup or honey then. Your brain fills in that sweetness. Your brain says this coffee is sweet, even if you don't necessarily have that sugar in there, but it's just interesting to note. That if, if you're a scientist and you have access to this equipment, And where you can measure. The sucrose and the seed you can knowing absolutely nothing about the coffee, even not even looking at it visually, just by looking at a printout of the contents of the seed. You can tell how this coffee was processed. You can be blindly given some green seeds. Run them in your machine and say, ah, this coffee was a natural dry process, or this coffee was wet process just by how much sugar is in the seed. I think that's a really, really interesting, you don't have to look at it. You don't have to taste it. By looking at it. I mean, looking at the physical green, cause we know that a green seed of a wash coffee looks different, physically looks different than a dry process. Coffee. So, I'm sorry if that was confusing. I hope my answer right now. Wasn't even more confusing. So I'll just summarize again. No during drying the sugar does not come out. While it's drying, but during a wet submerged fermentation, The sugar can come out because you need all of that water to attract the sugar, but not to worry because it doesn't mean that you're getting a less sweet tasting coffee because there's other things that we can do in a fermentation to compensate. So it's not necessarily the sugar, the sucrose and glucose and fructose that's giving us sweetness. It's some of those other precursors that we get in fermentation that make our brain perceive sweetness. So I think. Just to reiterate, we've been looking at our sugar conversation in a very simplistic way. It's much more complicated, layered. But that's good news because. We don't have to be. Too worried about sugar. We don't have to be so concerned about getting super high bricks. In our cherry and we don't have to be worried about doing a wet process. That. As pulling some of those sugars out of the seat, you can still find a balance in any process. You just have to keep these things in mind. Okay, this next question is from Yani. The question is I'm currently researching the genealogy of citrus fruits. They seem to have originated in Asia. How do we get citrus flavors in coffee, which is not something that originated in Africa. So I really like this question because it speaks to a couple of different concepts that are really. Easily confused. For example. If I have a yellow flower growing next to a red flower, at some point they may cross pollinate and we will get an orange flower. Right. So we know plants growing near each other can influence. These characteristics, we can have a tall one and a short one, and maybe they cross-pollinate and we get a medium one, something like that. We know that this happens in plants. But flavors. In fermentation. Don't work this way. That's not how the citrus gets into the fruit. So a coffee that has a flavor of citrus. Didn't come by that citrus flavor because there was a citrus nearby at some point. It's because. The citrus flavor is coming from the microbes in the fermentation. And that's how we can get some of these. Interesting flavors. So for example, A coffee cherry will have all kinds of microbes on its surface. We've talked about this many times and that's coming from soil. That's coming. From, other insects landing on it. It's coming from our water supply. It's coming from just all over the environment. There's all these microbes that are already present on coffee cherries. And these can include bacteria, yeast, and fungi. So we've talked many times on this podcast about sacrificing service EA because Saccharomyces is the the geese that I use the most for. My fermentations it's one that has a lot of research done in terms of. The metabolism of the yeasts and the. Flavor compounds that they can produce. And. We know that sacrifices, certain strains of sacrifice he's can produce a terpene called limonene that has the flavor descriptor of citrus and sweet. And there's another one. Another compound called linalool. Which is described as citrus, but a little bit more floral. And linalool. When I first smelled pure linalool, to me, it smells like fruit loops. There's this. Cereal. With colorful cereal that smells like fruit loops with that. Roma for me has always been linalool. And Saccharomyces when they're fermenting can create both of these compounds, limonene, citrus, and linalool. So citrus has also a whole host of different compounds. That give that, citrus aroma. And not just Saccharomyces, but also certain strains of lactobacillus can also create lemonade and linalool in their fermentation. So both yeast and bacteria. Can create these compounds and not just that, but certain strains of fungi can also create these compounds. I was reading a paper recently. It's all Lincoln in the show notes. It's called. Relationship between the different aspects related to coffee, quality and their volatile compounds. So this is, was new information for me. Cause I really focus on yeast and bacteria. I don't really focus on fungi because. They're mostly associated with defects, but you know, Not all the time. For example, there is a in rock coffee seeds that were inoculated with penicillium. Um, they identified volatile compounds that included aldehyde. So to Okta NOL and detrimental. Anil and ketones. And these compounds are generally characterized by citrus or fresh notes. In each of these three categories, there are. Strains. That produce the citrus. Volatile compound. So it doesn't come from. Coffee being grown near or by any citrus or maybe being crossed with citrus some point and it's. Ancient. History. But it has to do with the microbes, present, able to do the fermentation. I hope that's clear. The next question is from follow. So he says, I drank this mystery coffee in August. You have to guess the country processing variety as well as the flavors. So when Paula got the coffee, it was a mystery. He didn't know where the country or the processing or, or whatever. He didn't know anything about it. And then he found out after tasting it and getting his first impression. That it was a Caturra from Panama Finca. And he says the strange thing is that the coffee had Ethiopian notes. So his notes are lemon cooked, lemon, green tea, honey. He said, initially we tasted Mandarin, but the coffee lost its flavors quickly after roasting and it became flat in one month. First question. Why did this prolonged anaerobic honey processing create wash notes. So why did one process mimic another one? And I think this also has to do with his, his question about. This is a coffee from Panama, but for him it tasted like an Ethiopian. So not only is there a, an origin. Kind of mimicry. Central American coffee was mimicking an African coffee, but also in the process, he was surprised that this wash process was mimicking a. honey process something else. So that was the first question. And the second question is can the process be the cause of its rapid degradation or are there other problems, for example, the air travel of the green beans. So I like this one because it also talks about this lemon. Flavor compound the citrus note. That is not the monopoly of a certain variety. Or the monopoly of a certain country. Or the monopoly of a certain. Microbe or process, right? Because bacteria can produce citrus notes. Yeast can produce a Trish notes. And now even I just learned even fungi can produce these citrus notes. So wherever you have a combination of. Some of these microbes, you can create citrus notes. Anywhere with any process. Meaning you can have a dry process with these microbes. And you can get a citrus characteristic or you can do a wet process. With these microbes and still get a citrus characteristic. So Palo's question is how did this central American mimic. An African, or how did this wash to mimic this other process? And the fundamental like foundational flaw in the, in the question is a premise that flavor only comes from a certain country or flavor only comes from a certain process. Right. Like a honey can only taste like a honey because it was dried on raised beds with its mucilage. Or a wash can only taste like a washed. If it was pulped and fermented submerged. For a certain number of hours. So the flaw is thinking that the flavor comes from the process. Not from the microbes that are present in that process. That's how you can get this crossing over of flavor, like a flavor that's traditionally associated with something and have it show up somewhere else. So for example one of our participants and FTC three, Julie. As processing coffee in Hawaii and on her farm, they don't have a lot of access to water. So she processes in a dry process in a natural way, which we have in association with natural coffees, being heavy bodied, really fruity and then very prone to getting, you know, this whiny boozy over ferment defect. So she doesn't personally like that flavor profile. She likes a wash profile, but she doesn't have access to a lot of water. And she also doesn't want to produce a coffee that uses a lot of water because of ecological reasons. So she's found a way to increase the moisture. Of of her cherries when she's fermenting in the beginning, so that she's encouraging. The environment more associated with a wet process. So that her dry process coffees actually tastes like washed. So, you know, that's a mimicry there just kind of using our environment. But it works out because that's the coffee that she's trying to make and she can make it with fewer resources. So just because you do dry it and cherry. Dry process. Doesn't mean you have to always get the flavors associated with that process. If you know what you're tweaking. So I hope this is wasn't more confusing, but the point Paolo is that this is not a fluke. This is not something that is. Crazy. This is something that's, anybody can do is looking at the microbes that are present in that environment. We can mimic something else. And you can absolutely have a central American coffee tastes like an Ethiopian or an Ethiopian tastes like a central American coffee. That's that's very normal. And that is because the flavor is not coming. Exclusively from the location or the variety or the process. It's a combination of those things. Plus. An addition of the microbes that are in those environments. And his second question. Can the process be the cause of this rapid degradation? Yes, this is what we were talking about at the beginning of the episode where I have seen this. Come up time and time again and coffees that I've tasted. And then in comments from, from you guys, Is that you'll have these extended processes, these Thermo shocks these anaerobics 500 hour fermentations and they have really intense flavors and they're impressive. But you almost can't even finish a single bag before the flavor has faded, so they're incredibly volatile. They're incredibly delicate flavors that can disappear really quickly. you have this trade-off and yes, maybe because this copy had to travel far. Um, by the time it got to Paulo in Italy, most of the, you know, flavor life or the longevity of that coffee. Had been significantly reduced from the travel. But I really don't think it's mostly the travel because coffee. As we know travels very far all the time. So I think that a lot of the fade is more coming from. The harsh way that the coffee is being treated, the processing and not from a little long. Travel times. Thanks again for spending your time with me today. This is a completely community driven effort. I keep making new episodes because of the listeners who joined Patrion to make it possible for me to take time away from my consulting to dedicate to podcasting. Your membership and support of this podcast allowed us the funds to do our very first event by, giving us money to rent a mill. We needed to buy coffee cherry. We needed to buy all of the equipment to start putting together these fermentation events that led us, Put a deposit down on the hotel, work with a cater. You know, none of that would've happened. The very first one would have happened if we didn't have the support of listeners of this podcast. So I'm really grateful that you guys listened to the podcast and especially grateful for those listeners that take the extra step to become members because it supports all kinds of different activities that aren't just the podcast. 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