[Leica] The LUG Has Been Conquereded by...FANATICS!

[s.jessurun95 at chello.nl (animal)]

| Good Lord!  I never would have posted on this matter had I realized
| there were fanatics out there!  Fanatics?  Obsessive-compulsives?!?!?
| On the LUG?
|
| Buzz Hausner
|
| -----Original Message-----
| From: lug-bounces+buzz.hausner=verizon.net@leica-users.org
| [mailto:lug-bounces+buzz.hausner=verizon.net@leica-users.org] On
Behalf
| Of Tony Terlecki
| Sent: Tuesday, April 20, 2004 7:38 PM
| To: Leica Users Group
| Subject: Re: [Leica] Less Bang for Your (*)Bucks
|
| On Tue, Apr 20, 2004 at 05:53:18PM -0400, Buzz Hausner wrote:
| > Roasting coffee beans causes the break-down of caffeine molecules.
| The
| > longer you roast, the less caffeine per unit of beans.  Espresso
beans
| > are generally roasted to within a mere smidgen of palatability.
Ergo,
| > less caffeine per measure of coffee than one might expect to find in
| > other brews.  Think of it like developing film...
| >
|
| While roasting drives off a very small amount of caffeine it is
| generally
| insignificant enough to say that roasting doesn't actually dictate
| caffeine
| content. Caffeine content is generally down more to the type of bean
| rather
| than the degree of roasting. Robusta contains generally about 2 times
| more
| caffeine that Arabica coffee. Then you get into the varietals - a
| Celebes
| Kalossi will contain far more caffeine than say an Ethiopian Harrar.
And
| so on and so forth...
|
| While caffeine is soluble in water it is less soluble than most of the
| good
| ingredients we are trying to extract from the bean for espresso so it
is
| the
| limited time that water is in contact with the ground beans which
| dictates
| the caffeine level. If you get an overextracted coffee then more water
| has
| passed through the coffee and extracted more of the caffeine and other
| unwanted components. Caffeine is generally higher in coffees brewed
| using
| other methods because the water is in contact with the coffee for a
much
| longer peiod of time so more caffeine is extracted.
|
| And beans for espresso are not roasted to "within a mere smidgen of
| palatability" (well there I suppose we get back to Starbucks but I was
| hoping we were improving on that!) They are roasted to produce the
| optimum
| cup for that particular blend of beans. When I have a specific blend I
| am
| able to adjust the roast I give the beans, together with both the
| brewing
| pressure and temperature of my machine to produce the optimum cup. In
| addition to that there are many other factors such as extraction time,
| extraction volume and the grind needed to obtain this.
|
| Did I mention there are fanatics out there that obsess over coffee?
Did
| I
| mention I was one of them? <g>
|
| -- 
| Tony Terlecki
| ajt@mrps.demon.co.uk
|
|
|Thanks for the info.
simon jes