Koffie Kàn

Roasting coffee is nothing else than caramelizing the natural sugars in the beans, which makes the beans go brown. When coffee beans have been roasted too quickly and at temperatures that are too high, they contain lots of burnt sugars and burnt aromatic oils. The human body has difficulty digesting these burnt substances and they lie heavy on the stomach. When a cup of coffee gives you heartburn or a heavy feeling, that is due to the speed and method of roasting. The excessively high temperatures used in industrial roasting techniques destroy the natural essential oils or colloids (which contain the aroma of the coffee). That is why quickly-roasted, dark coffee has less aroma.

Koffie Kàn won’t give you any trouble!
When the coffee is roasted slowly and lightly ('Slow Roast' cfr. Slow Food), the beans undergo a gradual and natural process of caramelization, resulting in fewer ashes and much more taste. This coffee is easily digested and even acts as a digestive. After a meal, this type of coffee stimulates the gastric juices and encourages a good degradation and absorption of the nutrients.

Good to know: The Koffie Kàn blends are roasted at relatively low temperatures, resulting in a natural caramelization. All Koffie Kàn coffees are roasted lightly, to a golden brown (and not burnt to a crisp), which means they are easy to digest.

Is it healthy to drink coffee?

No single foodstuff has been tested so often and for so many effects as coffee. The numerous scientific studies carried out by renowned universities all over the world all prove one thing: two to three cups of coffee a day are good for you. Coffee sharpens the mind, relieves headache and fatigue, stimulates digestion and helps you to keep fit. Coffee makes a valuable contribution to your nutrition: it does not contain any calories at all, but gives you lots of precious minerals (coffee is rich in magnesium, among other things) and trace elements. If you drink a lot of coffee, you also meet a part of your daily need for liquids. But it’s best to choose your coffee wisely: mildly roasted (to make sure it digests well) and with a low caffeine content (so that it does not overly excite you). A Norwegian study proves that coffee provides in more anti oxidants than vegetables and there is scientific proof that coffee is good for you: coffee drinkers are less likely to suffer from asthma, to commit suicide, or to get colon cancer, cirrhosis of the liver, Parkinson’s disease or Alzheimer’s.

What does caffeine do to our body?

Just like all hot drinks, coffee passes through the stomach rather quickly and affects our organism quickly too, but only for a short time. Caffeine is the most active ingredient of coffee. For instances, it acts as a mild stimulant on the kidneys, which has a diuretic effect. For the same reason, the coffee itself is eliminated quickly too. Caffeine stimulates quite a few bodily functions. It also acts on the central nervous system, speeding up the heart a little and widening the blood vessels. We experience this as the pick-me-up in the morning at breakfast or after a good meal. It also helps our mind to be more alert. People’s reaction to coffee can be very different. Some people can consume large quantities of coffee without any problems. Others may have trouble after drinking just a single cup. This may be genetically determined, but body weight also plays a role, as well as the speed at which the coffee is consumed. Some people’s bodies simply convert caffeine more quickly than others: this can take anything from a few hours to a full twenty-four hours.

How much caffeine is there in a cup of coffee?

That depends on a number of factors: the type of beans, the roasting method, the quantity used... As a rule, an average cup of coffee, whatever the brand, contains 100 to 250 mg of caffeine.

Good to know: One cup of Koffie Kàn coffee contains only about 100 mg of caffeine! That’s no more than a bar of milk chocolate.

What contains most caffeine, an espresso or a filter coffee?

Espresso experts claim that an espresso contains less caffeine, thanks to the short time needed for its extraction. But of course, the quantity of coffee used plays a role too. To make one cup of espresso coffee, most people use about 7 grams of coffee. When prepared as an espresso, and depending on the coffee blend used, that yields about 55 to 85 mg of caffeine per cup. For an average cup of filter coffee, you need to use about 10 to 12 grams of coffee, which results in an average caffeine content of 100 mg a cup. But then the cup is much larger too. In other words, if you were to make a cup of filter coffee using only 7 grams of coffee, you would not end up with more caffeine than in a cup of espresso.

How do they get the caffeine out of the coffee?

In fact, the principle is very simple, so simple that you could try it out for yourself at home, just to see how it works. If you boil unroasted coffee beans in water, you will see a white substance floating on the surface after about twenty-four hours. That is the caffeine. Of course, boiling the beans for a whole day ruins the coffee completely, as it extracts most of its flavour and aroma along with the caffeine. That is why professionals use a different method. First, the green beans are steamed with pure water at about 93°C, to make them porous. Then they are steeped in hot water, to which an organic solvent has been added (methylene chloride, also called dichloromethane), of a quality especially intended for use in the food industry. This organic solvent acts as a conductor for the caffeine, making it dissolve more quickly. The process is repeated a couple of times. Then, the beans are steamed for a considerable length of time to remove all traces of the solvent. Finally, the beans are dried with hot air and cooled with cold air.

Does coffee increase the cholesterol level in the blood?

Coffee contains a small amount of lipids. These are fatty substances that stay behind on the filter paper when preparing filter coffee. When you prepare coffee using the Turkish method (i.e., boiling ground coffee in water) or in a plunger pot (also known as a ‘French press’ coffee-maker or cafetière), which has no filter, only a plunger to press the ground coffee down, these substances are not filtered out. You drink them along with the coffee and they eventually have an effect on the fats in your blood. Espresso coffee also retains some coffee oil, but as you usually only drink a small cup of it, its effect on your blood cholesterol level is minimal. However, all this does not lead to a permanent increase of the cholesterol level. The effect is only temporary and short-lived. If you want to keep your cholesterol level under rigorous control, you should only drink coffee that has been made using a paper filter. But a much more efficient way to control your cholesterol is to cut down on meat and cheese, eat a lot of green leafy vegetables, and use olive oil...

Which water is the best for making coffee?

Do you ever consider, when you are drinking a cup of coffee, that you are in fact drinking 99% water? It is therefore extremely important, apart from using the best coffee, to use truly good-quality water. Water always has a certain acidity (pH). In Belgium, mains water is given a neutral acidity of 7 pH, so that the supply system will not corrode and oxidise. This kind of neutral water is ideal when it comes to allowing the aroma of your coffee to develop to the full.

When is coffee organic?

Organic coffee is grown without artificial fertilisers or chemicals. The coffee farms are planted with shade-giving trees. The soil between the judiciously planted coffee trees is covered with a mulch of finely-chopped wood and straw, and weeding is done manually and with the machete. The coffee berries are selectively picked by hand (only the ripe red berries, in two or three picking turns), after which they are dried in the sun and processed without adding any foreign elements. The flesh around the seeds is composted and later mixed with the coffee husks (the ‘pergamino’). Together with the organic fertiliser from the cattle kept by the same company, this compost is used to fertilise the coffee trees.

Good to know: Try Koffie Kàn’s BIO and BIO DECAF, i.e. certified organic coffee from the highlands of Mexico

How many varieties of coffee are there in the world?

There are hundreds of varieties of the coffee plant, but for us coffee-lovers, it is enough to know the difference between two families: Arabica and Robusta. Between them, they fully determine the flavour and quality of a coffee blend.

Arabica is superior coffee. Originally, this was the only known species. The plant is delicate to grow and very sensitive to the slightest change in fertilisation, soil and climate. The finest species grow high in the mountains of Central and South America, Kenya and Tanzania, usually on small plantations. The higher the Arabica coffee plant grows, the lower the caffeine content of its beans. High-grown Arabica coffees also yield the most flavoursome and most aromatic qualities.
Robusta is to Arabica as a regional wine is to a good Bourgogne. In regions where the demanding Arabica cannot thrive, the planters grow Robusta, especially in Africa and a few countries in Asia. As the name says, this plant is more robust, i.e., it is more resistant to coffee diseases and less choosy about its soil and environment. Robusta is usually cheaper too, which means that low-price coffee blends usually consist mainly, if not entirely, of Robusta beans. A coffee brand that makes a point of selling only the best quality will offer coffee blends containing little or even no Robusta. All Robusta does is make the blend cheaper, higher in caffeine content, and more bitter in taste. In other words, Arabica is by far the best!

Where does coffee come from?

Coffee is grown in countries situated between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn. These are countries in Central and South America (which produce the best Arabica coffees), in Africa (mostly Robusta, with the exception of Kenya, Tanzania and Ethiopia, which also grow Arabica) and in Asia (generally Robusta, with Vietnam as the most recent largest producer of Robusta in the world.)

Do you drink origins pure or blended?

A cup of coffee will only have a really well-balanced and full taste if it is made from a blend of different varieties, judiciously mixed. This is best left to the coffee roaster, who has experience with growing methods, planters and tastes. He knows perfectly which origins go well together, what their qualities are, and how they can be combined to make a perfect cup of coffee. Blending is a job for experts. Coffee specialists make blends on the basis of certain fundamental principles. Each blend will consist of:
- a basic coffee: a mild, sun-dried coffee with a more or less neutral flavour, which is tasted especially in the front of the mouth, such as a good Santos from Brazil;
- a ‘taste booster’: a coffee that is an excellent complement to the basic flavour, so that you will taste it over the whole area of your tongue. It helps to fill out and boost the flavour. The varieties used for this are mainly from Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Mexico, Honduras, Nicaragua, Mysore, etc.;
- and a ‘perfumer’: a coffee that adds aroma to the mixture. These are usually varieties with a strong and distinctive aroma, e.g. Kenya, Java, Mocha from Ethiopia, and Maragogype (those beautiful large beans).

How does the coffee go brown?

Raw coffee beans go brown when exposed to heat. The process is the same as what happens when sugar is heated and turns into caramel: the natural sugars in the coffee beans caramelize. This has to be done at a relatively high temperature, around 200°C. It should not be much higher than that, or the coffee beans will carbonise (burn), turning the insides of the beans to ashes and making the coffee indigestible.
In practice, the roasting time for coffee varies between 2 and 15 minutes.
- Good roasters will always respect the natural cell structure of the beans. This means they will allow the caramelization process to take place gradually, roasting them slowly (for about 15 minutes).
- Large-scale companies have to make a profit at this stage too, so they have a commercial interest in roasting quickly. They speed up the process and can often get the brown beans out of the roasting drum after only 2 minutes. But then they need to keep the roasting under strict control and cool the coffee off quickly. That is done with lots of water. When red-hot coffee beans (240°C) are cooled off quickly by giving them a cold ‘shower’, some of the essential oils, i.e., the aroma, will evaporate, just as it evaporates when the coffee is eventually made. That means a considerable loss of aroma, which results in a cup of coffee with a lot less taste.

What is the difference between coffees produced by traditional methods and industrially produced coffees?

Industrial Coffees
The industrial approach to coffee is large-scale from the start. The beans are grown on enormous plantations, where the emphasis is on quantity and a massive yield. The harvesting is less selective, and the beans are transported in bulk. The coffee is then roasted and processed by large industrial companies. The main concern here is to achieve a standard quality, without overly noticeable deviations. Unpleasant flavours are avoided, but so are refined and delicate flavours, because they would be drowned anyway in the blends that are made from many different varieties. When a large-scale coffee producer mentions ‘quality’, he means coffee that can be entirely machine-processed, that can be roasted and packaged without having to allow for variation, and that can be distributed without a problem, all at the lowest possible cost. For an industrial coffee company, the primary concern is economic profit.

Traditional methods of processing coffee
Traditional coffee is a speciality in itself. The expert roaster has perfect control over all stages of the process, from purchase to sale. He buys high-quality varieties from selected plantations, usually small ones. He can afford to look around and compare the harvest of small coffee growers and carefully compose the best blends. His turnover is smaller and his customers are choosier. When a roaster who uses traditional methods mentions ‘quality’, he is mainly referring to the coffee that will eventually be poured into the cup of his demanding customer.

How long does coffee stay fresh?

- Ground coffee, whether vacuum-packed or hermetically sealed in a valve bag, should definitely be used within a month of opening it.
- Coffee beans should not be kept for longer than three months.

What is the best way to store coffee?

Oxygen, moisture and large fluctuations in temperature must absolutely be avoided before you turn the beans into your favourite drink. Buy your coffee from a specialist shop and choose a suitable and durable packaging that will protect the coffee aroma as much as possible. Soft hermetically sealed valve bags are better than hard vacuum packs. If you want every cup of coffee to taste as good as the first, then you must certainly not stock up on it. (See: How long does coffee stay fresh?)

If you like to keep stores of ingredients in jars or tins, then make sure that your coffee container protects the aroma. A stoneware jar with a good seal is ideal (glazed earthenware or china). A glass jar may be nice to look at, but it lets the sunlight in, so make sure to put it in a dark place.

Always clean your container thoroughly before filling it with fresh coffee. Make sure there is no trace of the old taste. If the shop supplies the coffee in a strong, non-porous bag, it is best to leave it in the bag. Keep the top of the bag rolled down tightly, down to the level of the coffee, to keep the air out as much as possible.

You can freeze coffee. Make sure the packaging is waterproof, and apply the general rule for all things frozen: once you take it out of the freezer, use it immediately. Only freeze coffee in case of emergency (e.g. when you’ve got some left-over ground coffee and you won’t be home for weeks). It’s much better to regularly buy fresh coffee from the shop.

What is the secret of a good cup of coffee?

1. Always buy your coffee as fresh as possible.
2. Don’t lay in a stock of coffee.
3. Keep your coffee in a dry place, but not too warm.
4. Don’t keep the coffee in the kitchen cupboard over the cooker, but in a dry and cool place, far from moisture and cooking smells.
5. Grinding the coffee just before you make it is the nec plus ultra in coffee-making.
6. Use seething water to make your coffee (just off the boil) and use a good method of making coffee (see further on this site).
7. Good methods for making coffee are the manual drip method, the plunger pot or cafetière and the espresso method. If you use a manual drip coffee-maker, it’s best to use a large-size filter (1x6 or 1x10), so that you can pour the water on in one long go. Manual drip produces better results than automatic drip coffee-makers.
8. Never boil coffee up again. Remember: ‘Café bouillu, café foutu!’
9. Don’t keep the coffee warm on a hot plate or in a Thermos flask. That makes the coffee go sour. A Thermos will kill even the very best coffee.
10. To keep your coffee hot longer in a natural way, rinse the coffee pot with hot water before use, so that the porcelain or china itself is hot. Keeping coffee in a Thermos flask is bad for the taste. Precisely because the carriers of the aroma and taste break down in a flask and give the coffee a sour taste.
11. When you buy a coffee pot and cups, go for porcelain, smooth china (non-porous) or glass. These materials protect the aroma of your coffee, though glass is not so pleasant to drink coffee from.
12. If possible, drink your coffee without milk or sugar. Enjoy the full, pure taste. If you use really lightly-roast Arabica blends, there’s no need for additions that spoil the taste.
13. It’s a good idea to rinse the pot out with hot water after use. Do it very thoroughly so that no old tastes are left to mess up your next cup. If necessary use a non-caustic washing-up liquid, but then rinse very well indeed.
14. Never mix old coffee or lesser varieties with high-quality fresh coffee. Old and bad always gain the upper hand. The same of course applies to coffee that’s been made.
15. Do not make more coffee than you intend to drink. Instead, always make fresh coffee and use a method suited to your circumstances.
16. Do not concentrate your enjoyment only on the coffee your pot makes for you, but cherish the pot itself and all the little things you do with it...

Will drinking coffee help me stay slim?

Drinking a few cups of coffee a day boosts the body’s consumption of calories, without supplying any calories itself. Caffeine actually activates the burning of fat and can therefore help you keep your weight under control. Another effect is that it gives you more energy, improving your performance, for instance in sports. Which, in turn, helps you to stay slim.

Is coffee = exploitation?

Coffee comes from third-world countries and we are aware that the lives of the ordinary people there are usually not much fun. Coffee is an extremely important product for these countries, since it provides them with hard foreign currency and creates employment. Coffee is the second most valuable commodity exported by developing countries. Recent estimates show that coffee provides a livelihood for over 75 million people in Central and South America, Africa and Asia. In many countries where coffee is grown, the coffee farmers are united in a national coffee federation, which provides their own safety net. These professional associations have a power that is not to be underestimated, and is very important for the planters and their workers.

Similar concern and idealism have given rise to a number of private initiatives which strive to improve the living conditions of coffee growers. For instance, there are the Fair Trade coffees of Oxfam, which are sold in the Belgian Wereldwinkels and Magasins du Monde, and the coffees of the Max Havelaar Foundation, which are bought from affiliated plantations and co-operatives.

In addition to the support of these organisations, whose sphere of action is naturally limited, a coffee roaster can also look out for the most direct possible trade. Arabica varieties of superior quality are usually to be found on small coffee plantations, where the farmer still takes exceptional care with his product, and where the good name of his plantation and consistent quality he supplies every year guarantee his income. These planters usually receive more than the current market price for their coffee, since the certainty of quality also has a value. Koffie Kàn is committed to maintaining a loyal relationship with these small-scale, high-quality plantations. Not only because it’s part of our trade, but also because it means we can supply our customers with delicious coffee, while the small coffee farmers with whom we regularly trade know they are assured of the income they have earned.

In addition to various blends of high-grown Arabicas from small plantations, Koffie Kàn also offers Pachamama, a blend of which the profits go towards a project of the Efico Foundation for better life on the coffee plantations.
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Is coffee good for your sex life?

If you drink one cup of coffee a day, you can be sure of an active sex life until well past 60.
That claim was made in the professional journal ‘Archives of Internal Medicine’. The scientists studied 744 men and women aged over 60. Women over 60 who drank a cup a day were nearly twice as likely to still be sexually active than women who did not drink coffee: 62%, compared to 39% of the studied women. And the same was true of the men: only 36% of the male coffee drinkers experienced erection problems, as against no less than 59% of the men who did not drink coffee. This heartening difference is probably due to the stimulating effects of caffeine.
A Brazilian study has determined that drinking a few cups of coffee a day will also increase male fertility. According to scientists at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, the caffeine in coffee appears to increase sperm “motility,” that is, the speed at which they move. Since sperm “hyperactivity” is critical to fertilization, heightened motility increases the odds of pregnancy.
And Cuba's high number of centenarians say their longevity is down to laying off alcohol, but indulging in cigars, sex and...coffee .
Now isn’t that good news?

Throughout the long history of coffee, there has always been controversy about the influence of coffee on the human body and on people’s mood. A lot of it had to do with a conservative attitude towards women, the body and in particular, sex . Thanks to contemporary scientific insights and the broader outlook on ‘pleasure’ in general, we can now appreciate coffee for what it is: a tasty drink to accompany some of the better moments of life...

Can I drink coffee and have no regrets?

Oh yes, you can enjoy a good cup of coffee, with Koffie Kàn!
Because Koffie Kàn sees to it that you can choose from the best Arabica blends, full of aroma and low in caffeine. This is coffee you drink for the pleasure of it, or because it gives you just that lift you need... but never the shivers.
Koffie Kàn has developed a unique technology for roasting coffee, called DYCOLOTE® roasting. This careful treatment of the coffee beans does not only make the aroma develop to its full extent, but it also ensures that your cup of ‘Java’ will go down smoothly, without giving you any trouble.
Are you looking for a coffee that has more than any other coffee? Coffee that is not only simply delicious, but also grown and processed with respect for nature and the coffee grower? Or are you a caffeine-sensitive coffee lover and are you looking for a blend you can drink to your heart’s content?
Then you have found what you’re looking for with Koffie Kàn. Discover all about our delicious blends in our on-line shop.