Coffee
From Wikipedia, a free encyclopedia written in simple English for easy reading.
Coffee is a drink. Normally, people drink it hot. It comes from the coffee plant. To make it, beans from the plant are roasted or cooked. Roasting gives coffee its flavour (taste). Next, people grind the beans - they are pressed so they change into powder called coffee grounds. Then water is put through the coffee. The water gets flavor from running through the coffee grounds.
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[edit] Coffee types
There are two main sorts of coffee plant; Arabica is the traditional coffee, and people think it tastes the best. Robusta, which has more caffeine, is easy to grow in places where Arabica will not grow. That is why people use it in many commercial coffee products; it is also cheaper. But Robusta tastes bitter and acidic, so people only drink it with other things. Higher quality Robustas are in some espresso blends.
In the past people gave names to new Arabica coffees from the port they came from. The two oldest Arabica coffees are Mocha and Java. Today, names are more specific. They tell us the country, region, and sometimes the estate where they come from.
[edit] Preparing coffee
[edit] Aging
Some sorts of coffee taste better when they are older, from three to eight years old. Waiting until it is older is called aging, and it gives the coffee a less acidic taste.
[edit] Roasting
The roasting process is very important to make a good cup of coffee. When we roast a coffee bean, it grows nearly two times bigger. It changes from green to yellow to brown, and is harder.
When the roasting is shorter, the beans taste different; you can taste where the bean comes from. Because people roast coffee beans from famous regions (Java and Kenya) for a short time, they taste very different.
When the roasting is longer and the bean is dark brown, the taste of different sorts of coffee bean is not very different. We can not often taste where the bean comes from.
You can also buy green (unroasted) coffee beans and roast them yourself at home in an oven.
[edit] Grinding
When we grind coffee, we press it very hard and it changes to a powder. When we grind coffee finely (into very small pieces) the taste is stronger. We often grind coffee less finely to stop it going through the filter.
[edit] Brewing (putting hot water on the coffee)
There are many ways to brew coffee, four of the most popular are:
- Boiling (cooking the water and coffee together). This is a very early way of making coffee, and people make coffee this way today in the Middle East, North Africa, Turkey and Greece.
- Pressure (pushing the hot water through the coffee very hard). We make espresso this way; it is a very strong coffee. People use espresso to make other coffee drinks.
- Gravity ( water falls through the coffee). This is how we make filter coffee. Hot water drops from the coffee machine on to the coffee, in a paper or metal filter.
- Steeping (mixing the hot water and coffee). For this people use a cafetière (a tall glass with a filter we push down), or coffee bags.
[edit] How people drink their coffee
- Black coffee is coffee with no milk.
- White coffee is coffee with milk in it.
- Cappuccino is espresso with frothed milk (milk mixed with air).
- Latté is espresso with hot milk.
- Café au lait is normal coffee with a lot of hot milk. It is often sweet.
- Americano is espresso with a lot of hot water. It is weaker than normal espresso, but does not taste the same as normal coffee.
- Irish coffee is coffee with whiskey and with cream on the top.
- Vietnamese style coffee (Cafe Suo Da) :to make this, drop hot water through a metal filter into a cup. Then pour the coffee over ice into a glass with sweet condensed milk (thick milk; there is no water in it). This needs a long time because you need to make a lot of coffee.
[edit] Instant coffee
Instant coffee is dried coffee; people sell it as powder or granules (very small pieces). The powder or granules are added to water to make coffee to drink. The taste can be very different from fresh coffee.
[edit] When people drink coffee
The United States buys the biggest quantity of coffee; Germany is next. People in Finland drink the most coffee. In Canada, the United States and Europe, some restaurants sell mainly coffee: they are refered to as "cafés" or "coffeehouses" and they also sell tea, sandwiches, etc.
In some countries, e.g. those in northern Europe, people like having coffee parties. At these parties people have coffee and cake.
In many countries people drink coffee at work; in the United States and England, for example, people drink it in the morning. In other countries, e.g. Mexico, people drink it in the evening to "help them stay awake".
[edit] Health problems
In coffee there is caffeine. This is the part of coffee that stops us feeling sleepy. When we think of caffeine we also think of addiction (when people can not stop drinking coffee) and other health problems.
Some studies look at the health risks of coffee, for example a February 2003 Danish study of 18,478 women. This study looked at the effect of drinking a lot of coffee when pregnant (becoming a mother). Drinking a lot of coffee is connected with a higher chance of stillbirths (babies born dead). The study said that between four and seven cups a day seems to be the limit. If women drank eight or more cups a day, they had a 220% higher risk than non-drinkers.
