[HN Gopher] Scientists rediscover lost coffee species suited to ...
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Scientists rediscover lost coffee species suited to a warmer
climate
Author : throw0101a
Score : 248 points
Date : 2021-05-21 11:01 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cbc.ca)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cbc.ca)
| throw0101a wrote:
| Coffea stenophylla:
|
| > Coffea affinis _and_ C. stenophylla _may possess useful traits
| for coffee crop plant development, including taste
| differentiation, disease resistance, and climate resilience.
| These attributes would be best accessed via breeding programs,
| although the species may have niche-market potential via minimal
| domestication._
|
| * https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpls.2020.00616...
| selfsimilar wrote:
| Slightly OT but is there a resource to find local coffee
| alternatives - plants that produce caffeine or other mild
| stimulants - to try to reduce one's shipping/carbon footprint? I
| found it difficult to even know what local alternatives there
| are. For reference I'm in the US midwest, but I'm curious about
| how one finds local alternatives that are not one-to-one more
| generally.
| doodlebugging wrote:
| Yaupon holly, which grows all over the southeastern US from
| Texas to Florida is the only naturally-caffeinated plant in the
| US.
|
| https://lostpinesyaupontea.com/pages/yaupon-tea-caffeine-con...
|
| I have several yaupons in my yard's landscape and have dried
| the leaves as described and made tea. It has a good flavor and
| is pleasant to drink. I drink so much coffee though that I
| could not tell whether I was getting any caffeine. I just felt
| normal.
|
| The bushes grow to small trees that can, over time, completely
| cover a landscape since the send up sprouts from their shallow
| roots. This is a sustainable, easy to grow, source of caffeine
| for areas where it will grow.
|
| The berries are excellent food for birds in winter. Our trees
| were attacked and stripped by flocks of birds in the last days
| before the big freeze this February. I thought the trees had
| frozen out but they are now as bushy and vibrant as ever.
|
| As far as real coffees from their native environments are
| concerned I would gladly volunteer my place as a test site for
| growing a drought tolerant, freeze-tolerant variety as long as
| I get to taste test it.
|
| I drink my coffee New Orleans style with chicory. It is the
| most delicious morning, noon, evening, and night drink that I
| have ever had. Smooth, non-acidic, rich, vibrant, fragrant,
| just plain great liquid energy.
| nieve wrote:
| > The bushes grow to small trees that can, over time,
| completely cover a landscape since the send up sprouts from
| their shallow roots.
|
| That makes me worry about it acting as an invasive.
| masklinn wrote:
| Yaupon is native to the southern US. If it were going to
| cover the land it would already have done so.
|
| Also technically this description encompasses strawberries.
| If that were sufficient to be invasive, there's be way more
| strawberry bushes out there.
| ianai wrote:
| Your link: " We think the magic is actually in the balance of
| caffeine and theobromine. In addition to caffeine, yaupon
| also contains theobromine, which most people know from
| chocolate. Theobromine is similar to caffeine, but has a
| milder effect. And its uplifting effect is one of the reasons
| chocolate is known as an aphrodisiac. Theobromine has health
| benefits as well!"
|
| They buried the lede! Theobromine is awesome! Mix in some
| theanine and enjoy being in flow (or pretty close).
| Jarwain wrote:
| Every so often I like to brew up some cacao instead of
| coffee; it's like a chocolate tea and feels quite nice
| wernercd wrote:
| > naturally caffeinated
|
| Isn't there ways to cross pollinate stuff? I've been out of
| school for awhile and I never got into biology... but why
| couldn't we get caffeine in, say, apples? or wheat?
| caffeinated bagels would rock...
| xef wrote:
| https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/edible/vegetables/vgen/cro
| s...
|
| > First, cross pollination can only occur between
| varieties, not species. So, for example, a cucumber cannot
| cross pollinate with a squash. They are not the same
| species. This would be like a dog and a cat being able to
| create offspring together. It is simply not possible. But,
| cross pollination can happen between a zucchini and a
| pumpkin. This would be like a yorkie dog and a rottweiler
| dog producing offspring. Odd, but possible, because they
| are of the same species.
| kuerbel wrote:
| For the very low chance someone wants to give this a try,
| be wary of any zucchini you grow yourself, if it tastes
| even mildly bitter it might kill you. The chance that
| this happens is greatly increased if cross pollination
| occurs. Most people don't seem to know this.
| justinclift wrote:
| > ... if it tastes even mildly bitter it might kill you.
|
| Hadn't heard of this before either. Looking around
| online, and yep, it's a real thing (was kind of wondering
| ;>):
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marrow_(vegetable)#Toxicolo
| gy
| pabs3 wrote:
| Do the berries also have caffeine in them?
| doodlebugging wrote:
| I believe that the berries may have some small amount of
| caffeine but in quantity they can make you sick.
|
| This link is a really good link to explain harvesting and
| enjoying yaupon tea.
|
| https://www.foragingtexas.com/2008/08/yaupon-holly.html
| nabilhat wrote:
| That depends a lot on your availability to participate in
| preparation. Other commenters have mentioned yaupon. I'd bet
| you have camellias growing locally as well. Commercial tea
| comes from camellia sinensis, but can also be made from other
| camellias. If harvesting and preparing isn't your thing, there
| is some tea that is grown and sold in the US. Not much to
| choose from, but it's available.
|
| If it's not obvious, I've been giving this some thought for a
| while. I've homeroasted coffee and discovered that I enjoyed
| the process more than the quality of the outcome. Coffee won't
| grow well where I live, but camellia does great, and that would
| give me the opportunity to take on the entire process from root
| to cup and truly seize the means of my own caffeination.
| WaxProlix wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffeine#Natural_occurrence
|
| Not sure what they're referring to by unrelated plants in
| 'temperate climates', which I suspect parts of the midwest
| might be generously described as.
|
| I bet you could grow some of the linked items in a garden or
| smallish greenhouse, though.
| cout wrote:
| Wikipedia lists multiple places in the US that grow tea. The
| most notable is a large tea plantation on Wadmalaw island near
| Charleston, SC.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_production_in_the_United...
| SECProto wrote:
| In terms of carbon footprint, coffee (as a low gram-per-serving
| product) is probably low.
|
| For example, I consume ~200g/week of coffee (10kg/yr), all of
| which would be shipped in 25kg bags from the producing locale
| to my local roastery. The shipping carbon impact would likely
| be easily offset by a single consumer item purchased from
| overseas
| maddyboo wrote:
| Water usage may be a larger concern than shipping. From
| Wikipedia:
|
| > Coffee production use a large volume of water. On average
| it takes about 140 liters (37 U.S. gal) of water to grow the
| coffee beans needed to produce one cup of coffee, producing 1
| kg (2.2 lb) of roasted coffee in Africa, South America or
| Asia requires 26,400 liters (7,000 U.S. gal) of water. Coffee
| is often grown in countries where there is a water shortage,
| such as Ethiopia.
|
| So, assuming those numbers are accurate, your 10kg year of
| coffee required 264,000 liters of water, or just over 10% the
| volume of an Olympic swimming pool (2,500,000 liters).
|
| That's a lot of water.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee#Ecological_effects
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| > Coffee is often grown in countries where there is a water
| shortage, such as Ethiopia.
|
| I would imagine that the water shortage is a problem in the
| low altitude arid deserts near the coast, while coffee is
| grown in the high altitude inland mountainous regions.
|
| Coffee needs a high altitude tropical climate with a lot of
| rainfall, that's why it is grown in tropical
| monsoon/rainforest climates (Brazil, Indonesia, Africa)
| where rain is abundant
| SECProto wrote:
| Yes, water usage is likely a concern (though not the one
| the original comment had raised/I responded to). That
| section of the Wikipedia article is very poorly cited,
| linking to a single EBI source [1] which doesn't cite a
| primary source. I'd be unsurprised if coffee (particular
| wet-processed coffee) used a fair bit of water, but other
| agricultural products also use more water than people
| expect - a 500g loaf of bread would need 250 to 2000L of
| water, according to this one random source [2]. Daily
| household water usage in North America is in the ~400 litre
| [3] range (~150000L/yr per person).
|
| [1] https://www.eib.org/en/essays/on-water
|
| [2]
| https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2013/jan/10/how-
| mu...
|
| [3] https://www.hamiltonproject.org/charts/domestic_water_u
| se_pe...
| hundreddaysoff wrote:
| How about chicory? It's naturalized to the US. Easy to grow
| perennial with pretty flowers that would look great in the
| garden.
| WaxProlix wrote:
| Afaik there is no caffeine in chicory, if that's a meaningful
| discriminator.
| bioinformatics wrote:
| So, was it warmer before?
| mackal wrote:
| I don't think it was in the article, but apparently it has a
| lower yield and smaller berries. So basically economics caused
| it to stop being commercially cultivated.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Maybe try reading the article.
| axaxs wrote:
| I wonder why they made no mention of Liberica, which is currently
| grown in very hot climates? I'd be interested in how they
| compare.
| cratermoon wrote:
| Good question. A quick search suggests that right now it's not
| widely grown, less than 1% of all coffee grown, and the flavor
| profile - sweeter and fruitier - is not popular with the coffee
| world. It's also said to be less productive than arabica and
| robusta.
| axaxs wrote:
| Perhaps if you drink it lightly roasted? I had some made in
| Batangas and it was dark roasted, and tasted like your
| typical dark roast of anything else...to me.
| re wrote:
| Lake Street Dive released a song last year that touched on the
| impact of climate change on coffee, among other things. One of my
| favorite songs of the year, though it doesn't make me feel great.
|
| > To the next generation, / Merry Christmas / You're working
| harder than ever now / And the coffee sucks / You know, Colombia
| and Kenya got too damn hot / And now you're making do with what
| you got
|
| https://smarturl.it/makingdo
| Udik wrote:
| And the news are yet another proof that many of the climate
| change doom scenarios start from the assumption of a perfectly
| static world incapable of change or adaptation. This coffee
| species seems to taste even better than the one we use now (and
| yet the production with the current plant, far from decreasing
| because of climate change, has in fact grown 60% in the last 20
| years).
| hourislate wrote:
| This is one of the main reasons I won't be able to go to Mars.
| Unless they can bring coffee on regular resupply missions, I'm
| stuck on this planet forever.
| dicroce wrote:
| at least we'll have coffee when climate change roasts us.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| Best coffee I had was local coffee in Hawaii, which is like 27
| degree celsius everyday, and low of 16. So a very small
| temperature swings.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| As a hardcore coffee addict, this makes me happy.
|
| I wonder if some major corporation (I think we know the one that
| comes to mind) will find a way to corner the species, and act as
| a licensing gatekeeper...
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| Oracle?
| mullikine wrote:
| The main takeaway from this is that the future of our species is
| secure once again
| soniman wrote:
| Articles like this are probably planted by an industry group. The
| article mentions that the species was never lost because samples
| are held in labs, so there really isn't any news content here.
| What is probably going on is that coffee prices have been in a
| long term slump, producers are barely making money on arabica
| beans, and they want to introduce a cheaper variety that isn't
| low-margin robusta in order to survive as the low prices persist.
| alexpetralia wrote:
| A slump until the last year it seems:
| https://m.investing.com/commodities/us-coffee-c-historical-d...
| soniman wrote:
| https://www.macrotrends.net/2535/coffee-prices-historical-
| ch...
| MattRix wrote:
| Nonsense, the news story here is based on a new scientific
| paper, which in turn is based on new data. This new data shows
| that stenophylla can grow in much higher temperatures (6.8
| degrees C) than arabica, which is huge news considering the
| now-certainty of global warming.
| detritus wrote:
| Which labs? Or do you mean botanical specimens held in places
| such as the British Museum, with which they can compare with to
| check the species - but not propagate from - as they're long-
| since dead?
|
| Seems to me the excitement in this news, which has been doing
| the rounds for at least a couple of weeks now, is that the oft-
| threatened single species Arabica has a similarly-tasting
| 'backup' in case of a global coffee rust pandemic.
| soniman wrote:
| "Stenophylla had not been seen in the wild in Sierra Leone
| since 1954 and anywhere since the 1980s in Ivory Coast, Davis
| said. A few examples were held in coffee research
| collections."
|
| I think that means that there are a few labs with plants or
| seeds, but the discovery here is of a _wild_ variety of the
| plant. Could be wrong.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Nah it's buzz generated out of some research from some
| botanists. The species itself was mostly lost in the wild and
| no longer cultivated as a crop because it wasn't economical at
| the time -- samples in labs is something else entirely.
|
| The spin that the media is putting on it is a bit weird, but as
| a person who breeds grapes and is a botanical geek, I'm used to
| seeing strange press distortions of these kinds of things.
|
| My understanding is that this species is not a cheaper producer
| at all. While it grows in hotter climates it producers lower
| volume and is harder to pick. Its value will be in breeding.
| Probably hybridizing with arabica.
| HaggardFinical wrote:
| Your last paragraph is on point. James Hoffmann made a video
| about this (link at the top of this thread) featuring the
| researchers and basically this is exactly what they said as
| well.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| It is cultivated - just by small growers, not by massive
| industrial combines. Which I guess counts as "not cultivated"
| these days.
| maxerickson wrote:
| There's a constant shortage of the light roast I prefer. It's a
| national brand, not anything terribly fancy, and it could just
| be that a couple new people started buying it from my local
| store.
| andrewxdiamond wrote:
| A hacker news favorite, James Hoffmann, got the opportunity to
| taste this lost coffee about a month ago.
|
| As typical with a James video, it's high quality and worth a
| watch.
|
| https://youtu.be/iGL7LtgC_0I
| phnofive wrote:
| TL;DW: it's got a clean, sweet, mildly acidic flavor.
| pedroma wrote:
| Maybe this is the joke, but it seems he says that every
| video.
| masklinn wrote:
| Because it's basically what you're looking for in a good
| coffee? Unless you got into wine tasting stuff with <<
| notes of chocolate and raspberry >>.
| rorykoehler wrote:
| Who decides what's good? People have different
| preferences. My mother doesn't like the "good coffee" as
| per your description for example (I love it however).
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| Not in the videos where he tastes 50 year old coffee beans
| someone found in their attic. :)
| mths wrote:
| Aged coffee is a thing. I tried something in the 10-15yo
| range once, and for a dark roast it wasn't bad.
| prox wrote:
| Aged fermented tea is as well. A Chinese tea house had
| tea's reaching into the hundreds of dollars (for one
| brew!)
| rorykoehler wrote:
| Best tea I've ever had was 20 year old Pu'er tea.
| koolhaas wrote:
| Do you have a recommended legit online source for med -
| high quality Pu'er?
| cyberpunk wrote:
| meileaf.com -- you can find it cheaper elsewhere but the
| stuff on there is curated and I've never had a lemon from
| them.
| koolhaas wrote:
| Thanks!
| cyberpunk wrote:
| They also have a pretty good YouTube channel with lots of
| tips and tricks on gongfu brewing etc, definitely
| marketing related and sure drove a lot of sales, but it's
| worth checking out their masterclass playlist :)
| Stratoscope wrote:
| Was this coffee that was roasted and _then_ aged for that
| long? That doesn 't sound good.
|
| I have gotten some nice aged coffees, an aged Sumatra and
| a monsooned Malabar (they age it in a warehouse open to
| the monsoon wind and moisture).
|
| But these were aged while green and I roasted them fresh.
|
| I wonder if what you got was something more like that,
| aged green and then roasted after aging?
| belval wrote:
| A dark roast that is aged would taste bland. Usually
| darker roast = faster degradation.
| klyrs wrote:
| A good dark roast is often oily, so they tend to go
| rancid in a span of months unless hermetically sealed
| lostlogin wrote:
| Dark roasts hide a lot. I say this as someone who is
| terrible at roasting, so compensate.
| dccoolgai wrote:
| Hence Charbucks. Someone in the coffee industry once told
| me their real innovation was recognizing most Americans
| don't have the pallette necessary to distinguish "burned"
| from "strong". So Starbucks just bought all the lowest-
| quality beans for cheap, charred them and sold the coffee
| at a premium.
| frogpelt wrote:
| I'm guilty. I have tried many light roasts and I always
| come away thinking it tastes weak. Where can I get a new
| palate?
| atatatat wrote:
| Tea.
| klyrs wrote:
| I love a good dark roast, brewed thick enough that it's
| got mouthfeel. I dated a barista for a while, who was big
| on light roast pourovers. I'm still not into them, but I
| did find a preparation I like: a blonde cold brew with a
| dash of lime juice. It's delightful and refreshing, so
| far from my usual that it's almost in a different
| category
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| I would recommend trying a few "natural process" (the
| beans are dried before removing the fruit) light roasts.
| They're often far richer in flavor, with much more
| pronounced fruit notes. Then if you can find a natural
| process dark roast (rare in my experience), compare.
| You'll notice that while you may still taste the fruit
| notes, they'll be masked pretty heavily by the roast.
|
| It was a natural process roast that got me to even care
| about the difference, and now I almost always go out of
| my way for light roasts.
|
| If you're in/near/visit Seattle or have access to any of
| these roasters: Seattle Coffee Works specializes in light
| roasts, most of Victrola's single origins are light, and
| many of Ladro's are as well. All three often have at
| least one natural process. They're all quite good!
| ajmurmann wrote:
| Also peachy and light like coffee grown at higher altitude
| madaxe_again wrote:
| It's not lost? It just isn't currently commercially viable.
|
| Read the article carefully - they say "in the wild" about a
| dozen times.
|
| Stenophylla is known as Highland Coffee in Liberia and Leone
| (distinct from Liberian coffee, Liberica), and is cultivated
| and roasted on a small scale. Little to none is exported.
|
| I've tried it. It's ok. Somewhere between arabica and Liberica.
| Can't recommend Liberica though, I thought it tasted like
| burning rubber.
| bamboozled wrote:
| How do we know what burning rubber tastes like ?
|
| I know the flavour you describe.
| durovo wrote:
| Probably because what we perceive as taste is also related
| to our sense of smell [0] and you have probably smelled
| burning rubber before.
|
| 0. https://flavourjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.118
| 6/s1...
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