Coffee

Composition of coffee beans,

Physico-chemical changes during
roasting of coffee beans
 Coffee
• Coffee is native to Africa (Ethiopia).
• Coffee tree or shrub belongs to family Rubiaceae
• Depending on the species, it can grow from 3–12 m
in height.
• Shrubs are pruned to keep them at 2–2.5 m height
• The coffee shrub thrives in high
tropical altitudes (600 – 1200 m)
with an annual average temperature
of 15–25°C and moderate moisture
and cloudiness.
 Coffee

• Fruit or berry has a green outer skin which,

when ripe, turns red-violet or deep red and
encloses the sweet mesocarp or the pulp and the
stone-fruit bean.
• Bean consists of two elliptical hemispheres with
flattened adjacent sides.
• A yellowish transparent spermoderm, or
silverskin, covers each hemisphere.
 1: Center cut
2: Bean (endosperm)
3: Silver skin (testa, epidermis),
4: Parchment (hull, endocarp)
5: Pectin layer
6: Pulp (mesocarp)
7: Outer skin (pericarp, exocarp)

Longitudinal section of a coffee fruit

 Coffee varieties
Only 3 of the 70 species of coffee are cultivated:

 Coffea arabica - 75% of the world’s production;

 C. canephora (C. robusta) - About 25%;
 C. liberica and others - less than 1%.
 Green Coffee
• Harvesting and Processing

December to February North of

Equator to the Tropic of Cancer,

May to August, south of the

Equator to the Tropic of Capricorn

Harvesting is done by hand-picking of each ripe berry or by strip-

picking all of the berries from three branches after most of the
berries (often present as clusters) have matured.
 Green Coffee
• Processing commences with removal of the
fleshy pulp by using one of the two following
processes
1. Dry or natural process - Mainly used in Brazil
• Rapid transport of the harvested berries to a central
processing plant,
• Whole fruit is spread out on sun-drying terraces and dried
until the beans separate by shrinking from the surrounding
parchment layer.
• Dehulling Machine - Remove the dried husks and
parchment from the dried berries and, as much as possible,
the silverskin.
• Dehulled and cleaned coffee beans - then classified
according to size and packed
Green Coffee
Dry or natural process
• Often, the fresh cherries, instead of being
spread on the drying terrace, are piled up, left
for 3–4 days under their own heat to ferment
the fruity pulp
• Then processed as wet (washing) process
 2. Wet (washing) process
• Central America, Colombia & Africa.

• Pulping - Freshly harvested berries are brought to a

pulper in which the soft fruit is squeezed between a
rotating cylinder or disc and a slotted plate
• Rubbing action which detaches the skin and the pulp
from the beans without damaging the seed.
 Pulped beans still have the silver-skin, the
parchment and a very adhesive mucilaginous
layer (mucilage).
 2. Wet (washing) process

• Fermentation - Coffee is carried into water

stream fermentation tanks made of concrete,
the water is drained off and the beans are left
to ferment for 12–48 h.
• Mucilaginous layer is hydrolyzed by enzymes
of the coffee and by similar enzymes produced
by microorganisms found on the fruit skins.
2. Wet (washing) process

• The mucilage is degraded to an extent which can

be readily dispersed by washing with water.
• The beans are then collected, sun-dried on
concrete floors or dried in mechanical dryers in a
stream of hot air (65–85 ◦C).
• Dehulling - Beans dried in this way are still covered
with the parchment shell (“pergament” coffee or
“cafe pergmino”) and are further processed by
dehulling machines as in the dry process.
• This yields the green coffee beans.
 Green coffee processing
Classification and cleaning
Wet process Dry process

pulping Drying of whole

bean (8-10 days)

screening sun drying

washing & clarifying Dehusking

Fermentation Polishing, sorting &

grading
Dry underwater

drying

Removal of perchment Polishing, sorting & grading

 Composition of Green Coffee
Constituents Arabica Robusta
Insoluble polysaccharides 46-53 34-44
Soluble carbohydrates 9-13 6-12
Lipids 15-18 8-12
Proteins 11-13 11-13
Caffeine 0.9-1.4 1.5-2.6
Trigonelline 0.6–1.2 0.3–0.9
Minerals 3-4.2 4-4.5
Chlorogenic acidc 6.7–9.2 7.1–12.1

Values in % of solids.
Water content of raw coffee: 7–13%.
 Roasted Coffee

• Green beans smell green-earthy, they must be heat treated

in a process called roasting to bring about their truly
delightful aroma.
• Roasting in the temperature range between 100 and the final
temperature of 200°C causes profound changes.
• Beans increase in volume (50–80%)
• Green is replaced by a brown color, a 11–20% loss in weight
occurs, and there is a build-up of the typical roasted flavor of
the beans.
• Specific gravity falls from 1.126–1.272 to 0.570–0.694
• The horny, tough and difficult-to-crack beans become brittle
and mellow after roasting.
 Roasted coffee
• 4 major phases are distinguished in roasting
Phase Temperature Changes
 Initial changes occur at or above 50°C when
the protein in the tissue cells denatures and
Drying Around 50°C
water evaporates.
 Browning occurs above 100°C due to
pyrolysis of organic compounds,
accompanied by swelling
Development About 150°C  Release of volatile products (water, CO2, CO)
which results in an increase in bean volume
 Recognizable by the beans being forced to
pop and burst (bursting by cracking along
Decomposition 180–200°C the groove or furrow);
 Formation of bluish smoke; and the release
of coffee aroma.
Optimized at  During which the moisture content of the
Full Roasting around 180– beans drops to its final level of 1.5–3.5%
200°C
 Composition of Roasted coffee
Characterized by a decrease in old & formation of new compounds
Content (%)a
Component
Arabica Robusta
Carbohydrates 38 42
Lipids 17 11
Protein 10 10
Caffeine 1.3 2.4
Trigonelline, niacin 1 0.7
Aliphatic acids 2.4 2.5
Chlorogenic acids 2.7 3.1
Volatile compounds 0.1 4.7
Minerals 4.5 4.7

a
Based on solids. Water content varies between 1 and 5%.
 Composition of Roasted coffee
• Proteins
Protein is subjected to extensive changes when
heated in the presence of carbohydrates.
Shift of the amino acid composition of coffee protein
acid hydrolysates before and after bean roasting
Total amino acid content of the hydrolysate drops by
about 30% because of considerable degradation.

Arginine, aspartic acid, cystine, histidine, Stable amino acids, particularly alanine,
lysine, serine, threonine and methionine, glutamic acid and leucine, are relatively
being especially reactive amino acids, are increased.
somewhat decreased in roasted coffee,
Amino acid composition of the acid hydrolysate
of coffee beans prior to and after roasting
roasting
 Carbohydrates
• Most of the carbohydrates present, such as
cellulose and polysaccharides consisting of
mannose, galactose and arabinose, are insoluble.
• During roasting a proportion of the polysaccharides
are degraded into fragments which are soluble.
• Sucrose (5-7%) present in raw coffee is
decomposed in roasted coffee up to concentrations
of 0.4–2.8%.
 Lipids
• Lipid fraction appears to be very stable and
survives the roasting process with only minor
changes.
• Linoleic acid is the predominant fatty acid,
followed by palmitic acid.
Lipid composition of roasted coffee beans
 Acids
• Formic and acetic acids predominate among the
volatile acids
• Nonvolatile acids are lactic, tartaric, pyruvic and
citric
• Chlorogenic acids are the most abundant acids
of coffee. The content of these acids drops on
roasting
Chlorogenic acid content as a function of the degree of roasting
 Caffeine

• The best known N-compound is caffeine (1,3,7-

trimethylxanthine) because of its physiological
effects
• It is mildly bitter in taste.
• Caffeine content of raw
 Arabica coffee - 0.9–1.4%,
 Robusta variety - 1.5–2.6%.
• Other purine alkaloids are
 Theobromine (Arabica: 36–40 mg/kg, Robusta: 26–82 mg/kg)
and
 Theophylline (Arabica: 7–23 μg/kg, Robusta: 86–344 μg/kg).
 Trigonelline, Nicotinic Acid
• Trigonelline (N-methylnicotinic acid) is present
in green coffee up to 0.6% and is 50%
decomposed during roasting.
• The degradation products include nicotinic
acid, pyridine, 3-methyl pyridine, nicotinic acid
methyl ester, and a number of other
compounds.
 Minerals
• Ash – 4.5-4.7%
• Potassium – 1.1%
• Calcium – 0.2%
• Magnesium – 0.2%
• Phosphate – 0.2%
• Sulfate – 0.1%
 Coffee Beverages
Composition of coffee beveragesa

• Coffee beans must be

ground and brewed to
create a beverage.
• Almost all methods of
preparing coffee require the
beans to be ground and
mixed with hot water long
enough to extract the flavor,
but without over-extraction
that draws out unnecessary
bitter compounds. 
 Instant Coffee
• Instant (soluble) coffee is obtained by the extraction of roasted
coffee - Switzerland
• Ground coffee is batch-wise extracted under pressure in
percolator batteries or continuously in extractors.
• The water temperature may be as high as 200°C while the
temperature of the extract leaving the last extraction cell is 40–
80°C.
• The extracts exhibit a concentration of ca. 15% and are
evaporated in vacuum film evaporators to a solids content of
35–70%. 1.0–6.0% moisture
7.6–14.6% minerals,
• Spray or freeze dried 3.2–13.1% reducing sugars
2.4–10.5% galactomannan
12% low molecular organic acids
15–28% brown pigments
2.5–5.4% caffeine
1.56–2.65% trigonelline
 Decaffeination of coffee
 Due to adverse effect of caffeine - coffee is
decaffinated (< 0.1%)
 It is always carried out on the green beans but
also used for roast beans & of soluble extract
 Swelling of the raw coffee with water or steam at 22–
100°C up to a water content of 30–40%
 Extraction of the caffeine-potassium-chorogenate
complex with a water-saturated solvent (methylene
chloride, ethyl acetate) at 60–150°C,
 Treatment with steam at 100–110°C to remove the
solvent (deodorization),
 Drying with warm air or under vacuum at 40–80◦C.
Decaffeination of coffee
• Indirect process, used in the USA,
• Initially all the water-soluble compounds including
caffeine are extracted from the green beans.
• The aqueous extract is decaffeinated with an organic
solvent (e.g., dichloroethane), then added back to the
green beans and evaporated to dryness with the
beans.
• Use of super critical CO2
 It reduces the caffiene content below 0.1% on a dry
weight basis.