I heard on ABC radio this afternoon that it is fungi that give coffee its distinctive flavor. I have no reason to think this research is wrong. Indeed it rationalizes the fact that the half-drunk cups of coffee that I discover, after several days, in nooks and crannies around my office, are often encrusted in a mattress of mould. It also explains the response made once to me in a café when I asked the proprietor how he made his coffee so well. The claim: the trick is never to wash the coffee-making equipment.
Well, maybe...but I have been fooled...
Years ago I heard that great French burgundies were enriched by throwing a shovel of cow manure into each barrel. The claim was it gave wines that element of French pong (more correctly, 'feral characteristics') so appreciated by burgundy lovers - this is distinct from burying female cow horns full of the stuff in fields where burgundy is produced. I naively believed this preposterous claim for years until I asked a knowledgeable wine-maker what effect this additive to pinot noir was likely to have.
His laconic (and, with hindsight, obvious) response: It would probably kill you!
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
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2 comments:
My granma maintained that one should never use more than a small rinse of water in the teapot - just sufficient to remove the old leaves. Don't even think of taking a potscrubber to it. The brown crusting adds to the flavour.
Burying cowhorns of manure in fields is of course the bio-dynamic original. I've always assumed that this was a pre-industrial era method of supplying legume inoculant material.
As for putting it in the wine - surely 14% alcohol will dispose of any pathogens. After all, this is one reason why wine was drunk like water.
The work on coffee and fungi came out of Brasil I think. It may only apply to Robusta beans
Another interesting fact is the remarkable length of time coffee grouts can be left before a mould takes hold.
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