Male: Hey, Ron welcome back to Le Gourmet TV, so today were with Derrick at the Merchants of Green Coffee in Toronto. And Derrick’s going to lead us through this idea of buying green beans and roasting at home.
Derrick: Yes.
Male: So tell us a little bit about buying green beans what should be we would be looking for and what’s out there that are available to everybody.
Derrick: Okay, well the first of all, first part of green beans is that really not many people have seen coffee that is un-roasted this is the second most popular beverage, next to tap water and green beans just aren’t available in every market. But you can find them you just have to do a little looking.
Male: Okay.
Derrick: Of course were set up to make sure that were make it sort of easier for you to find them but essentially the green coffee beans are the seed that are in side a cherry that grows on a coffee tree.
Male: Okay.
Derrick: And that coffee tree produces approximately one pound of coffee per year.
Male: Okay.
Derrick: And what with after the coffee seeds have been removed from the actual cherry. The coffee is dried and you’re left with the green bean.
Male: That’s seems an amazing number to me one pound per year.
Derrick: Yes.
Male: From one tree.
Derrick: From one tree.
Male: That does not seen like a whole lot of, of coffee.
Derrick: No and that’s what we like to educate on is that there is a lot of work that’s done by the growers of coffee that’s not necessarily recognized by the consumer today.
Male: Okay.
Derrick: And so we like to make sure the people sort of know the numbers. I mean all pound produces approximately 50 cups of coffee depending on how strong you drink it. there are 10 billion pounds of coffee growing every year so that means 10 billion trees.
Male: That’s a mind bottling numbers isn’t.
Derrick: It is, it is.
Male: Okay.
Derrick: So the green bean, the green bean is simply un-roasted coffee, it’s green in color called the green bean. It has a very long shelf life and that’s one of the key things we like consumers to know about is that green coffee will last for up to years but roasted coffee is not necessarily going to last as long as you might believe.
Male: So if you can store green coffee does the flavor change over time in the green coffee.
Derrick: It does, it does and some coffee’s aged better than others. And on the simple example would be a 2:02 coffee which is an Indonesian coffee a little heavier body. That coffee can be aged for up to 10 years and then sold as an aged coffee.
Male: Really.
Derrick: But most of the coffee that consumers come into contact with is usually between say one and two years old maybe three years max.
Male: Okay.
Derrick: But essentially if stored in the right conditions coffee has a very long shelf life somewhere between one and ten years.
Male: As a green bean.
Derrick: As a green bean.
Male: As a green bean and then what happens once you roast it.
Derrick: Well we talked about it looses that fresh flavor in such a short time and that short time is only five days.
Male: Five days.
Derrick: Five days.
Male: Five days from roasting until you’ve.
Derrick: You’ve lost the freshness the idea of what freshness is, so it’s very, very simple we talked about coffee being like a fine wine. It’s gets its flavor from different region and so essentially this is the same tree growing around the world in a different parts of world that’s picking up different flavors and the way it’s processed and handled and stored and shift. Really sort of creates the sort of the finish product. But the green beans they are the parts that’s more like the wine and once it becomes a roasted product it kind of switches over and becomes more like a fresh bread.
Male: Okay.
Derrick: And we talked about fresh bread as being fresh for only a few short days. That taste of bread out of the oven really only last for a few days and in some cases only hours. And coffee once it’s roasted if really only fresh for about that same amount of time.
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