Scientists rediscover lost coffee species suited to a warmer climate | Hacker News Reader

Scientists rediscover lost coffee species suited to a warmer climate

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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

TL;DW: it's got a clean, sweet, mildly acidic flavor.

Maybe this is the joke, but it seems he says that every video.

Not in the videos where he tastes 50 year old coffee beans someone found in their attic. :)

Aged coffee is a thing. I tried something in the 10-15yo range once, and for a dark roast it wasn't bad.

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?

A dark roast that is aged would taste bland. Usually darker roast = faster degradation.

A good dark roast is often oily, so they tend to go rancid in a span of months unless hermetically sealed

Dark roasts hide a lot. I say this as someone who is terrible at roasting, so compensate.

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.

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?

Tea.

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

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!

You can use higher doses, but you'll be losing nuance. Part of the point (for those who care) is to reveal the fruitier elements in the coffee. That means treating it a bit more like tea.

Aged fermented tea is as well. A Chinese tea house had tea’s reaching into the hundreds of dollars (for one brew!)

Best tea I’ve ever had was 20 year old Pu’er tea.

Do you have a recommended legit online source for med - high quality Pu’er?

meileaf.com — you can find it cheaper elsewhere but the stuff on there is curated and I’ve never had a lemon from them.

Thanks!

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 :)

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 ».

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).

Also peachy and light like coffee grown at higher altitude

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.

How do we know what burning rubber tastes like ?

I know the flavour you describe.

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/10.1186/s1...

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.

A slump until the last year it seems: https://m.investing.com/commodities/us-coffee-c-historical-d...

https://www.macrotrends.net/2535/coffee-prices-historical-ch...

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.

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.

It is cultivated - just by small growers, not by massive industrial combines. Which I guess counts as “not cultivated” these days.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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.

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.

How about chicory? It's naturalized to the US. Easy to grow perennial with pretty flowers that would look great in the garden.

Afaik there is no caffeine in chicory, if that's a meaningful discriminator.

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

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

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_use_pe...

> 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

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.

> 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.

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.

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).

Every so often I like to brew up some cacao instead of coffee; it's like a chocolate tea and feels quite nice

> 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...

https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/edible/vegetables/vgen/cros...

> 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.

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.

> ... 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)#Toxicology

Do the berries also have caffeine in them?

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

Do you drink your coffee with chicory in it, or made out of the chicory itself? I'd love to try it anyway, mind elaborating?

I drink my coffee with ground chicory added dry before the boiling water is poured. I use a stainless steel French press and add coffee grounds first in the amount that I have found yields the best flavor profile for that press and then I add the ground chicory to the coffee grounds again measured to yield a consistent flavor. Once the coffee water boils in the kettle, I pour and stir until the grounds are all wetted and then I add water if necessary to the edge of the pour spout so I have a consistent volume of water. After three to five minutes of steeping I press the grounds and pour the coffee into my almost never-washed cup.

I find that it makes a delicious brew that has all the flavor of the coffee you use but none of the acid profile even if you use a dark roast or espresso base. It really is the best I have ever enjoyed.

In old times past, chicory served as a coffee substitute. It has no caffeine but it does produce a delicious brewed drink flavored similar to coffee. When coffee was more scarce or people could not afford it, chicory was the drink of choice.

You can buy bags of chicory from Community Coffee company in Louisiana where I buy it. They will ship it right to you. There are probably other places where it is available.

If you would like to try New Orleans style coffee which was my introduction to it when I worked in the oilfield, buy the New Orleans blend of coffee and chicory and try that to see if it is to your taste.

If that works for you, buy bags of chicory and your favorite coffee (Community has many flavors and I really like all of them) and then design your own blend.

I think you will like it.

Here is a link to their chicory page where you can buy both products.

https://www.communitycoffee.com/products/coffee#/filter/Coff...

Good luck and let us know what you think if you try it.

That's quite an an answer, thanks for going into such detail. I also almost never wash my cup, and love a french press, but have been doing pour-overs most of the time lately. I visited Baton Rouge a few years ago and would love to return, especially now knowing about chicory.

> Good luck and let us know what you think if you try it.

Are you an owner?

Not an owner. I considered putting that disclaimer in earlier and should have but forgot.

I am just someone who has loved coffee and enjoyed it for decades. While working in the oilfield many years ago I found myself in need of coffee and for that rig, the coffee was provided on contract by the local Community Coffee sales person. They serviced many rigs in the region. After grabbing a cup I ended up liking it enough to ask about where it came from and found out about Community Coffee. It turns out they provide coffee for a lot of rigs in the industry probably because a lot of people in the industry are from Louisiana.

I also found it as the company brand in several other O&G companies where I worked. In Texas, many stores carry it so it is not hard to find. Once my wife and I discovered that we could order it online though we started ordering in volume so that we would hopefully never run out. LOL.

Everyone who visits and ends up with a cup of my coffee to drink always remarks about how delightful and smooth it tastes. It really is fantastic stuff. I love it.

There are other companies that sell ground chicory and coffee/chicory blends but the one that I enjoy the most is the one from Community. Pure nostalgia and a pleasure to drink hot, warm, or cold. I prepare a liter at a time and usually end up finishing off 3-4 liters per day minus the single cup my wife enjoys daily. She occasionally has two if the weather is cold.

Man I love that stuff. I love coffee with chicory. I should write a song about this but I'm not a writer, I just love coffee with chicory. Maybe I've had too much today. Time to make another pot to test that theory.

What an eloquent story. I love how much you love coffee, it really comes comes through in your description. I thought I drank a lot, but 3-4 litres is next level.

Most of the companies I've worked for have had the most upsetting coffee possible, and I certainly wouldn't expect to find good coffee on a rig. Logically I would, because you'd stand to make your workers less miserable (as for any company), but companies don't seem to think that way most of the time.

Recently I've been buying the light roast beans from the roaster in my neighborhood (via a grocery store also down the street) and they're usually roasted within a week or two of me buying them. How are you able to buy in such quantity for personal use and keep them fresh? Do you just stagger your orders or have them scheduled?

My gf also only has about a cup a day, and I could pretty much have a cup going all the time. It doesn't have much of an energy effect after the first, but I do have to resist making a new cup at midnight if I want to get to sleep.

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.

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...

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

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).

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...

The main takeaway from this is that the future of our species is secure once again

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.

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.

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...

Oracle?

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.

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.

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.

at least we'll have coffee when climate change roasts us.

So, was it warmer before?

Maybe try reading the article.

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.

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