All About Coffee Part 74

Some Bourbon and flat-beaned Santos coffees are better when new, and some are better when old; but a blend of fine old-crop coffee with a snappy new-crop coffee gives a better result than either separately. A new-crop Bourbon and an old yellow flat bean make a better blend than a new-crop flat bean and an old-crop Bourbon. Probably the very best result in a low-priced blend may be obtained by using one-half old-crop Bourbon Santos with one-half new-crop Haiti or Santo Domingo of the cheaper grades.

Typical low-priced coffee blends in the United States may be made up of a good Santos, possibly a Bourbon, and some low-cost Mexican, Central American, Colombian, or Venezuelan coffee, the Santos counteracting these acidy Milds.

Going next higher in the scale of price, fancy old Bourbon Santos is used with one-third fancy old Cucuta or a good Trujillo.

For a blend costing about five cents more a pound retail, one-third fancy old Cucuta or Merida is blended with fancy old Bourbon Santos.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MONITOR COFFEE-GRANULATING MACHINE]

The highest-priced blend may contain two-thirds of a fine private estate Sumatra and one-third Mocha or Longberry Harari.

[Ill.u.s.tration: COLES NO. 22 GRINDING MILL]

Alfred W. McCann, while advertising manager for Francis H. Leggett & Co., New York, in 1910, evolved a new coffee distinction based on the argument that certain coffees like Mochas, Mexicans, Bourbons, and Costa Ricas were developed in the cup through the action on them of cream or milk; while others, such as Bogotas, Javas, Maracaibos, etc., flattened out when cream or milk was added. He argued, accordingly, that breakfast coffees should be made up from the former, but that the latter should not be used except for after-dinner coffees, to be drunk black.[328]

William B. Harris, then coffee expert for the United States Department of Agriculture, took issue with Mr. McCann, claiming that if a coffee is watery and lacks body, it will not take kindly to milk or cream, not because the chemical action of milk or cream flattens it out, but because there is nothing there in the first place. The strength of the brew being equal, all coffees will take cream or milk, Mr. Harris held.[329]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BURNS NO. 12 GRINDING MILL

Designed for hotel and restaurant trade]

[Ill.u.s.tration: MONITOR STEEL-CUT GRINDER, SEPARATOR, AND CHAFFER]

M.J. McGarty said in 1915 that he had tried out many coffees in the cup, and could not see that adding milk made any difference. However, he found that sometimes a line of coffees will contain a sample that flattens out at the drinking point (the point where the boiling water has cooled to permit of its being drunk); and he thought this was what Mr. McCann had in mind, as, by adding milk to such a coffee, it was brought back to the drinking point. In other words, it was Mr. McGarty's opinion that, in blending coffees, those coffees which hold their own from the start, or boiling point, until they become cold, or even improve right through, are more desirable for blending purposes; and that those that are best at the drinking point should be given the preference.[330]

_Coffee Blends for Restaurants_

William B. Harris[331] believes that the coffee of prime importance in preparing restaurant blends is Bogota. He advises the use of a full-bodied Bogota and an acid Bourbon Santos in the proportion of three-fourths Bogota to one-fourth Santos. Blends may also be made up from combinations of Bogota, Mexicans, and Guatemalas.

According to Mr. Harris, the average blend of good coffee when made up, two and one-half pounds of coffee to five gallons of water, will produce a liquor of good color and strength. For many hotels, however, this may not answer, as it is not heavy enough. More coffee must then be used, or ten percent of chicory added. A blend with chicory can be made by using two-thirds Bogota, one-third Bourbon Santos, and ten percent chicory.

No steward, hotel man, or restaurant man should, however, advertise "coffee" on his menu, and then serve a drink employing chicory; because, while there is no federal law against such a practise, there are state laws against it. Chicory is all right in its place; and many prefer a drink made from coffee and chicory; but such a drink can not properly be called coffee.

Hotel men should purchase their coffee in the bean, and do their own grinding. Then they need never have cause to complain that their coffee man deceived them, or that some salesman misled them. The hotel steward wishing to furnish his patrons with a heavy-bodied coffee, particularly a black after-dinner coffee, _without chicory_, will use three, four, or even four and one-half pounds of ground coffee to five gallons of water.

With so wide a choice of coffees to choose from, a coffee blender can make up many combinations to meet the demands of his trade. Probably no two blenders use exactly the same varieties in exactly the same proportions to make up a blend to sell at the same price. However, they all follow the same general principles laid down in the foregoing flavor cla.s.sification of the world's coffees.

_Grinding and Packaging Coffee_

[Ill.u.s.tration: JOHNSON CARTON-FILLING, WEIGHING, AND SEALING MACHINE]

Unless the coffee is to be sold in the bean, it is sent to the grinding and packing department, to be further prepared for the consumer. Since the federal food law has been in effect, the public has gained confidence in ground and bean coffee in packages; and today a large part of the coffee consumed in the United States is sold in one and two pound cartons and cans, already blended and ready for brewing.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE IDEAL STEEL-CUT MILL]

A progressive coffee-packing house may have three different styles of grinding machines; one called the granulator for turning out the so-called "steel-cut" coffee; the second, a pulverizer for making a really fine grind; and the third, a grinding mill for general factory work and producing a medium-ground coffee.

Commercial coffee-grinding machines are alike in principle in all countries, the beans being crushed or broken between toothed or corrugated metal or stone members, one revolving and the other being stationary. While all grinding machines are alike in principle, they may vary in capacity and design. The average granulator will turn out about five hundred pounds of "steel-cut" coffee in an hour; the pulverizer, from seventy-five to two hundred pounds; and the average grinding mill from five hundred to six hundred pounds. Some types of grinding machines have chaff-removing attachments to remove, by air suction, the chaff from the coffee as it is being ground.

A large number of trade terms for designating different grinds of coffee are used in the United States, some of them meaning the same thing, while similar names are sometimes contradictory. A canva.s.s of the leading American coffee packers in 1917[332] discovered that there were fifteen terms in use, and that there were thirty-four different meanings attached to them. For the term "fine" there were five different definitions; "medium" had five; "coa.r.s.e", seven; "pulverized", four; "steel-cut", seven; "ground", two; "powdered", one; "percolator", two; "steel-cut-chaff-removed", one; "Turkish ground", one; while "granulated", "Greek ground", "extra fine", "standard", and "regular"

were not defined.

The term "steel-cut" is generally understood to mean that in the grinding process the chaff has been removed and an approximate uniformity of granules has been obtained by sifting. The term does not necessarily mean that the grinding mills have steel burrs. In fact, most firms employ burrs made of cast-iron or of a composition metal known as "burr metal", because of its combined hardness and toughness.

The "steel-cut" idea is another of those sophistries for which American advertising methods have been largely responsible in the development of the package-coffee business in the United States. The term "steel-cut"

lost all its value as an advertising catchword for the original user when every other dealer began to use it, no matter how the ground coffee was produced. When the public has been taught that coffee should be "steel-cut", it is hard to sell it ground coffee unless it is called "steel-cut"; although a truer education of the consumer would have caused him to insist on buying whole bean coffee to be ground at home.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SMYSER PACKAGE-MAKING-AND-FILLING MACHINE AT THE ARBUCKLE PLANT, NEW YORK

This machine was invented by Henry E. Smyser of Philadelphia, who secured the first patent in 1880, but it has been much improved by the Arbuckle engineers. The half shown on the left makes the one-pound paper bags complete, including the separate lining of parchment, fills the bag, automatically inserts a premium list at the same time, packs it down, seals it, and delivers it on a short conveyor to the other half (shown on the right) where the package is wrapped in the outside gla.s.sine paper and pushed out on a table for the girls to put into shipping cases]

"Steel-cut" coffee, that is, a medium-ground coffee with the chaff blown out, does not compare in cup test with coffee that has been more scientifically ground and not given the chaff removal treatment that is largely a.s.sociated in the public mind with the idea of the steel-cut process.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MACHINE FOR AUTOMATICALLY PACKING COFFEE IN CARTONS

Five distinct operations are performed by the units comprising this Pneumatic installation, viz., carton-feeding, bottom-sealing, lining, weighing and top-sealing]

According to the results of the trade canva.s.s previously referred to, it would appear that the terms most suited to convey the right idea of the different grades of grinding, and likely to be acceptable to the greatest number, would be "coa.r.s.e" (for boiling, and including all the coa.r.s.er grades); "medium" (for coffee made in the ordinary pot, including the so-called "steel-cut"); "fine" (like granulated sugar, and used for percolators); "very fine" (like cornmeal, and used for drip or filtration methods); "powdered" (like flour, and used for Turkish coffee).

Coffee begins to lose its strength immediately after roasting, the rate of loss increasing rapidly after grinding. In a test carried out by a Michigan coffee packer,[333] it was discovered that a mixture of a very fine with a coa.r.s.e grind gives the best results in the cup. It was also determined that coa.r.s.e ground coffee loses its strength more rapidly than the medium ground; while the latter deteriorates more quickly than a fine ground; and so on, down the scale. His conclusions were that the most satisfactory grind for putting into packages that are likely to stand for some time before being consumed is a mixture consisting of about ninety percent finely ground coffee and ten percent coa.r.s.e. His theory is that the fine grind supplies sufficiently high body extraction; the coa.r.s.e, the needful flavor and aroma. On this irregular grind a United States patent (No. 14,520) has been granted, in which the inventor claims that the ninety percent of fine eliminates the interstices--that allow too free ventilation in a coa.r.s.e ground coffee--and consequently prevents the loss of the highly volatile const.i.tuents of the ten percent of coa.r.s.e-ground particles, and at the same time gives a full-body extraction.

_Making and Filling Containers_

As stated before, a large proportion of the coffee sold in the United States is put up into packages, ready for brewing. Such containers are grouped under the name of the material of which they are made; such as tin, fiber, cardboard, paper, wood, and combinations of these materials, such as a fiber can with tin top and bottom. Generally, coffee containers are lined with chemically treated paper or foil to keep in the aroma and flavor, and to keep out moisture and contaminating odors.

As the package business grew in the United States, the machinery manufacturers kept pace; until now there are machines that, in one continuous operation, open up a "flat" paper carton, seal the bottom fold, line the carton with a protecting paper, weigh the coffee as it comes down from an overhead hopper into the carton, fold the top and seal it, and then wrap the whole package in a waxed or paraffined paper, delivering the package ready for shipment without having been touched by a human hand from the first operation to the last. Such a machine can put out fifteen to eighteen thousand packages a day.

Another type of machine automatically manufactures two and three-ply paper cans such as are used widely for cereal packages. It winds the ribbons of heavy paper in a spiral shape, automatically gluing the papers together to make a can that will not permit its contents to leak out. The machine turns out its product in long cylinders, like mailing tubes, which are cut into the desired lengths to make the cans. The paper or tin tops and bottoms are stamped out on a punch press.

Coffee cans are generally filled by hand; that is, the can is placed under the spout of an automatic filling and weighing machine by an operator who slips on the cover when the can is properly filled. The weighing machine has a hopper which lets the coffee down into a device that gauges the correct amount, say a pound or two pounds, and then pours it into the can. The machine weighs the can and its contents, and if they do not show the exact predetermined weight, the device automatically operates to supply the necessary quant.i.ty. After weighing, the can is carried on a traveling belt to the labeling machine, where the label is automatically applied and glued. Then the can is put through a drying compartment to make the label stick quickly.

[Ill.u.s.tration: COMPLETE COFFEE-CARTONING OUTFIT IN OPERATION

The girl is feeding the "flats" into an Improved Johnson bottom-sealer.

The carton travels to a Scott weigher on the right and thence to the top-sealer on the left]

Paper bags are filled much the same way as the tin and the fiber cans.

In fact, some packers fill their paper and fiber cartons by the same system; although the tendency among the largest companies is to instal the complete automatic packaging equipment, because of its speed and economy in packaging. Frequently, the weighing machines are used in filling wooden and fiber drums holding twenty-five, fifty, and one hundred pounds of coffee, to be sold in bulk to the retailer.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THREE TYPES OF AUTOMATIC COFFEE-WEIGHING MACHINES

Left--Duplex net weigher. Center--Pneumatic cross-weight machine.

Right--Scott net weigher]

_Coffee Additions and Fillers_