Let’s talk about Coffee

Let’s talk about Coffee
Let’s talk about Coffee, growing it, processing it,  substitutes, natural flavorings and anything else you can think of.
I will be the first to admit, that I LOVE coffee, and drink it despite sometimes getting heartburn. I love the flavor of it, not just in a cup, but added to cakes and deserts too. Give me tiramisu or coffee ice cream any day, and I will be happy.
Buying a version, that has been grown naturally and tested for pesticides and other chemicals, means lots of research and they are usually expensive.
As a homesteader growing food in Southern California, I have the option of growing my own, but I will have to find a way to decaffeinate it, or add a substitute to lower the amount of caffeine in the final product aka a cup of coffee.
Does anyone know how to decaffeinate homegrown coffee beans?
Any tips for growing coffee?
Btw, the reason for needing it low in caffeine, is that I have tacky cardia, so my cardiologist is having me stay away from my usual 4 pots of espresso 😆.
So, now I am testing and trying out different options, that I can use to lower my caffeine intake and still get my beloved drink.
Substitutes:
The first substitute I have looked into, is chicory. I seeded and planted it last spring, so it’s about a year old now. I just don’t know when I should dig up the root. The research I have done, says to dig it up when it’s done flowering, and in general has died down. Well, mine has been flowering for over 6 months now, and leaves keeps coming back. I think it might be perennial where we live. Does anyone know when I should harvest the root?
Another substitute I have looked into, are coarsely ground, cocoa beans. This really works, but it’s best if you use a good quality fresh beans. Doing half coffee beans and half cocoa beans makes a really nice chocolate flavored coffee. I was lucky enough to get acquainted with a grower in Ecuador, who brought me some, when she came to the US recently. I have also seen adds for ground cocoa beans, meant as a coffee substitute.
Natural flavorings:
Flavored coffee drinks taste amazing, but are often full of chemicals like artificial flavorings and corn syrup, and they are expensive. So, what to do?
I make my own flavor extracts, like Vanilla extract, Cinnamon, anise and many more. For coffee, my favorites are vanilla extracts made with Kraken run, or cognac. Add brown sugar and cream, and you have a really nice drink.
Adding spices to my coffee, was something I learned, many years ago, from my mother in law. She always added cardamom to the coffee in the filter, for drip coffee. Cardamom has many health benefits. It makes the coffee easier on the stomach, promotes digestion and helps with depression. Later my son started experimenting and found that grains of paradise goes very well with coffee, and gives it kind of a kick, that makes it interesting and brings out flavor notes, that otherwise goes unnoticed. Pumpkin spice is another favorite spice mix we all love adding to coffee.
In our household 3 of us don’t tolerate dairy, which brings in a complication when you want a latte. What I have found out, is that if you add collagen powder, and dairy free creamer to the coffee and blend it, you get a nice thick foam, and the added benefit of 4 grams of protein pr scoop.
To make iced coffee drinks, we prefer to use a percolator. It makes a stronger coffee, similar to espresso, and spices can still be added before brewing. I pour it over a mix of ice, marble syrup and dairy free cream. It also makes a nice espresso.
To make a coffee with more intense strong flavors, we love Turkish coffee. It’s not just strong, but kind of foamy too. In your mouth it’s a flavor explosion. Btw. Don’t ask me how to make Turkish coffee. My son always makes it, so I haven’t learned how yet. My son is worse than me, when it comes to coffee. He weighs everything precisely, constantly checks the temperature etc, something I can’t do, since my brain needs coffee to reboot, before I can think straight.
When the kids were younger, they said I could be a little scary until I have had my first cup. It meant that they started bringing me coffee in bed every morning, something they still do. Now they are older, I will sometimes take that cup of coffee out into the garden, and drink it while watching the birds and critters. It’s a great way to wake up.
I don’t know a lot about growing coffee, so if anyone does, please post. I have done some research and have two coffee trees, we are planning on transplanting in April. For now, they are in my grow room, getting to know each other. So far I have learned that, the leaves will droop, if they need something. That they love getting a bath with Castile soap, and likes the soil to dry out before watering.
This is it for me. What are your tips, histories and experiences with coffee?

I have grown coffee chicory for some years now.  There are improved varieties available that make big smooth roots superior to wild chicory.  In most climates it grows like a biennial....making a big clump of dandelion like leaves the first summer, and then shooting up to bloom and make seeds the next.  Often some sprouts show up around the first plants and keep going that way so it acts like a perennial.  The tradition seems to be that the best roots are the ones going into the first winter, before they bloom.  Once they start blooming, or afterwards, the quality diminishes.  But I'm not sure how it would behave in a warm climate like yours.  If you're not irrigating through the dry summer they might even reverse the growing season and grow through the winter and die down in the heat?  But the main point is that they are at their best before they bloom...

While I enjoy the varied drinks that come from the coffee bean, I also am interested in the leftover grounds!

Add them to compost, use them as grit on ice, feed them to worms, topdress your plants, repel insects, and many more uses.

Adding coffee grounds to compost is my main use. They are a nice jolt of nitrogen and can get a cooling core to fire back up. It is one of my most consistent producing 'green' components especially in the winter.

This is my favorite way to make coffee.  

https://permies.com/t/16387/eco-coffee-maker-cowgirl-coffee

A nice pyrex 4 cup measure


And an extra fine tea strainer




When I am on the road I do it like this in a mason jar

Ulla Bisgaard wrote:Does anyone know how to decaffeinate homegrown coffee beans?

You can decaffeinate coffee by soaking the whole roasted beans in cold water.    A 12 hour soak in cold water will get most of the caffeine out.   Then dehydrate the beans and you can grind them as usual.

Ulla Bisgaard wrote:The first substitute I have looked into, is chicory. I seeded and planted it last spring, so it’s about a year old now. I just don’t know when I should dig up the root. The research I have done, says to dig it up when it’s done flowering, and in general has died down. Well, mine has been flowering for over 6 months now, and leaves keeps coming back. I think it might be perennial where we live. Does anyone know when I should harvest the root?

I would harvest the root in the winter when the plant has gone dormant.  That is when the most energy is in the root.    If the plant stays green all winter I would still harvest it then.  In the spring and summer the energy is up in the above ground parts and the roots will be more woody and likely have less flavor.

Eating Breyer's coffee ice "cream" as I read this...nuff said.

I would harvest the root in the winter when the plant has gone dormant.  That is when the most energy is in the root.    If the plant stays green all winter I would still harvest it then.  In the spring and summer the energy is up in the above ground parts and the roots will be more woody and likely have less flavor.

We don’t have winters here. We have a cold season, that lasts 3-4 months, but it’s not winter. When I look at statistics our cold hours are usually around 200 hours. Day during the cold season range from 70’ to mid 80’. While some of my fruit trees do go dormant, it’s a very short period. The chicory didn’t go dormant. It’s still producing flowers and lots of greens, but I will dig it up and see what I have.
Thank you for your input.

i'm a coffee holic =)
recently got an inexpensive used small home scale espresso machine and i love making a nice latte every morning, with some good quality beans ground extra fine.

In my opinion - there is no substitute for coffee !
one other thing to mention is for decaf they burn the beans extra dark. dark roast will have the least caffeine, and even a good decaf will still have a tiny amount of caffeine.

Chicory is added to coffee, I don't know about making chicory from just chicory ...

I like the suggestion for coffee ice cream as it is the next best thing to a cup of coffee!

We've added our coffee grounds to the compost for years. Works.

It's also a great oil absorber. For decades, I did what I was taught when working in a commercial kitchen -- soaked up loose fat in a pan with salt. The salt was just part of our maintenance supplies. Somewhere, I read something about using coffee grounds for the same purpose. We've been doing that recently and it works fine.

The oil/fat soaked salt wound up in a milk carton which when full was taken to the dump. The oil/fat soaked coffee grounds do the same. It doesn't really create a lot less garbage for us, but it does eliminate (or nearly) "cleaning salt" from the shopping list. Buying "less stuff" to begin with is great, even if what it really means is that we will just buy salt much less often!

So I've grown coffee for several years, it does well here (9b) but, for me, ultimately only 1 or 2 trees does not make enough coffee to justify the work of harvesting, drying, dehulling, fermenting, prepping for storage and roasting (at the end of the day it might make me coffee for 2 weeks, maybe). That said, it is a pretty plant, especially when it flowers and has berries, and in the future when I have space I'll probably plant that two dozen or so trees that wuold make it worthwhile. There is also the question of varieties, I think what grows best here is the Conilon varietal, which is a bit "rougher" tasting and also IMHO crazy caffeinated (the first time I drank local coffee I thought I was going to have a heart attack).
In the meantime, I eat the ripe cherries as a garden snack and spit the seeds!

I hear you about the caffeine. One thing I've recently been doing (as the price of coffee has gone sky-high) is using half good coffee and half coffee sub- we have a lot of 7th day Adventists here and I can get good coffee substitutes. Right now I have a roasted corn powder, sometimes I have chicory, sometimes it's barley-based. I mix it half and half and put it in my moka pot or pour-over and I truly can't tell the difference. "They" say right now that's what's happening with standard coffee in the stores anyway here, as coffee is easily twice its normal price right now.
It fits in well with my current desire to consume less caffeine anyway- I tend to have palpitations and caffeine makes it worse.

permies to me has always been a bit of a virtual coffee shop, as i come here often in the morning with my coffee, although usually i am in reading quiet mode just absorbing some info on building and gardening, etc. so yeah some more stuff, with my second latte today ...today is a lot of work ahead so going for a second.

to make turkish coffee is very easy. its basically cowboy coffee with a fancy pot and no filtering, you leave the grounds in, but they sink to the bottom.
you dont actually need the pretty pot though.

depending on how strong you want it - you use more or less coffee per cup of water, and also the fine grind. the smaller you grind it, the stronger and thicker it is.
after you start the water to boil, you add the fine grounds. right when it comes to a full boil it quickly expands and rushes to the top of your pot, this is when its done and good to get it just as it does this otherwise it will flow out of the pan.
give it a stir after turning off the heat, wait a minute or three and a lot of the grounds will sink to the bottom. it isnt filtered, you just try not to get that many grounds in there, but they will sink to the bottom in the pot, and further they will sink to the bottom of the cup. that frothy yummy stuff is usually filtered out when you use a filter.

besides espresso, usually i am a french press gal, i think the french press is quite like turkish coffee, only the grounds are pressed down so none in the cup. but it has that similar frothy good stuff not getting filtered out, especially the beginning of the pour. also no electricity needed, back in new york i am off the grid so every watt counts.

my experience roasting coffee is pretty limited. i used to be able to get burlap sacks from a coffee roasting place for free - often there would be a handful of beans in each sack. so i have only tried to roast green beans once. it reminded me of making granola -- thin layer on a cookie sheet, evenly spaced out, keep stirring it up a few time while baking. you would want to cook them extra long to get darker roast/ less caffeine.

I'm allergic, though not deathly so (yet), to coffee. I have to be pretty careful about where I work, shop, dine, and recreate because every goddamn person on Earth has to have coffee with them at all times. It's a real slog.

And coffee is the second most important hobby for my wife. To accommodate our mixed needs, we built her a "coffee house" (shed) that she can go out to every morning so she can drink her burnt beans and I get to keep on breathing.

I'm an addict, I'm addicted to coffee and my problem is bruce, god grant me the scerinioty to accept the things I cannot change.
I dont know what I would do if I could not have caffeine. when I was young one of my best friends was columbian and every time they had a relative visit they would bring fresh sella de rojo. the red bag
WOW

when I lived in Louisiana I was introduced to chicory. for me anyway, let me put it nicely, it left a lot to be desired.
I think I still have an unopened can from cafe dumonde, you know, the place where the cafe' is strong, the doughnuts are too hot to touch---thanks jimmy buffet
for me now the best fresh columbian beans that are consistent ive found at Costco
I guess if bags of fresh roasted beans were no longer available for some reason. I would be hunting for chicory to plant.
but thats just me. you mileage may vary

Christopher Weeks wrote:I'm allergic, though not deathly so (yet), to coffee. I have to be pretty careful about where I work, shop, dine, and recreate because every goddamn person on Earth has to have coffee with them at all times. It's a real slog.

And coffee is the second most important hobby for my wife. To accommodate our mixed needs, we built her a "coffee house" (shed) that she can go out to every morning so she can drink her burnt beans and I get to keep on breathing.

I am sorry for your coffee allergy. My oldest daughter can’t have it either. I totally get the problem. I am allergic to fragrances and bio chemicals. This includes essential oils. I am also systemic allergic to acrylates, which is in most plastic products, including glasses and hearing aids.
I can’t open the door, when the bell rings, I can’t bring in and open packages, and can’t leave the house without double masks, Epi and IV Benadryl.
The thing is though, that I have learned to live with it. I try to live each day as it was my last, to enjoy things around me, and try to make people happy and leave the earth I have, in a better state than when I got it.
I only drink 1 cup of coffee a day, so the rest are tea mostly from herbs that I grow. Right now I am sipping chamomile tea, from flowers we harvested last summer.

No way I can grow my own coffee way up in the frozen Northeast. However, I do roast my own beans, have for over 20 years. Nothing like freshly roasted coffee. I buy my beans from sweetmarias.com (out of Oakland CA) and sometimes from my son's friend who has a coffee shop (Milford NH) and buys in bulk (like 60kg bag for $600). I use a Behmor roaster.

I posted this article in some of my FB gardening groups as well, and got an interesting suggestion, I am going to try. The suggestion was to use pigeon peas as a companion plant for the coffee. The writer said that it would help nitrogen uptake, and provide shade during the hotter parts of summer. It’s definitely something I am going to try doing. I have also decided to plant two tea plants in the same area, as they have similar needs. It will be an interesting experiment going forward. If it works, I will probably add more coffee and tea plants to the forest garden.

That's interesting, Ulla. I have pigeon peas and they're a good crop, they tolerate drought and nobody seems to bother them. Good for green peas and dried beans (green peas are a pain to shell but worth it for eating) and the rabbits enjoy the foliage.

Tereza Okava wrote:That's interesting, Ulla. I have pigeon peas and they're a good crop, they tolerate drought and nobody seems to bother them. Good for green peas and dried beans (green peas are a pain to shell but worth it for eating) and the rabbits enjoy the foliage.

Our plan is to use them as a feed for our chickens and rabbits. Feed has gotten so expensive now, so I have started growing things that makes a good feed for them, since we have the space for it.