Coffee Data Science
Vinegar Soaking Robusta Coffee
A quick test on some research
For the past six months, I’ve been very interested in processing methods for coffee. I started looking up methods applied to robusta coffee. I found one on Modifying Robusta coffee aroma by green bean chemical pre-treatment. So I decided to try it out using apple cider vinegar.
Long story short, I think I over developed the roast.
The theory in the paper was that a treatment of the beans before roasting could reduce the amount of arabica needed to blend with robusta to make a good blend. I was curious if it could take a robusta and make it better.
I chose one I had from Sweet Maria’s. I had made some blends before with this robusta, but I wasn’t sure if it was adding better flavors. The trouble comes when roasting because robusta roasts differently due to the difference in bean density.
I let them soak in a 2% acetate solution by diluting 2 parts apple cider vinegar with 3 parts of water.
Then I rinsed them and dried them using a dehumidifier function on my oven.
I roasted, but then ended up being pretty dark.
I wanted more immediate results, so I did a cupping with a sourdough yeasted bean from El Salvador and an Ethiopian bean aged in a whiskey barrel.
Based on smell alone, I knew I messed up the robusta.
The whiskey barrel aged coffee tasted like whiskey. The sourdough one was alright.
While this experiment certainly failed, I still wrote it up because I thought it was a odd way of processing beans. I also wanted to bring attention to robusta because what it lacks in sweetness, it makes up in mouthfeel. I would try again, but I’m in the middle of a larger set of experiments involving different yeasts and coffee beans.
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