Coffee Bean Facts: These Beans Taste Like Potatoes

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Coffee beans from Burundi and Rwanda both have a potato flavor? If you want to know, let’s take a look.

Burundi

Burundi

Population: 8,749,000

Production in 2013 (60 kg/bag): 167,000 bags

Coffee taste:

Burundi's high-quality coffee has complex berry flavors and a delicious, juice-like taste.

Burundi is a small country, so there is no clear production area. As long as the geographical environment and altitude are suitable, coffee trees can be grown throughout the country. The country is divided into different provinces, and coffee plantations are concentrated around wet processing plants.

Coffee came to Burundi during the Belgian colonial period in the 1920s. From 1933, it was required that each farmer take care of at least 50 coffee trees. When Burundi became independent in 1962, coffee production began to be privately owned; in 1972, it became state-owned due to the change in political situation; and from 1991, it gradually returned to private hands. Coffee cultivation has been growing steadily in Burundi, and 90% of the people rely on farming for their livelihoods. The total export volume of coffee and tea accounts for 90% of foreign exchange earnings.

Burundi's geographical environment is very suitable for growing coffee. It is mountainous and has a suitable altitude and climate. There are no coffee plantations in the country. Burundi coffee beans are mainly produced by many small farmers. The best coffee in Burundi is processed by the water washing method, mostly Bourbon, but there are other varieties.

Rwanda has many similarities to Burundi; in addition to similar altitudes and coffee varieties, both are landlocked, which can be a hindrance to exporting green coffee beans quickly to consumer countries in top condition. Like Burundi, Rwandan coffee is also prone to the potato-flavor defect.

Rwanda

Rwanda

Population: 10,537,000

Production in 2013 (60 kg/bag): 300,000 bags

Coffee taste:

Excellent coffees from Rwanda tend to have fresh fruity aromas, reminiscent of red apples and red roses. Berry and floral aromas are also very common.

Coffee is grown throughout Rwanda, so there is no geographical restriction. Coffee roasters can use the region name plus the wet processing plant or coffee farmer group name when labeling.

Rwanda is known as the "Land of a Thousand Hills" because of its latitude and climate conditions for growing excellent coffee. Coffee was brought to Rwanda by German missionaries in 1904, but it was not until 1917 that Rwanda's coffee production was large enough to be exported. The first coffee tree in Rwanda was planted at Mibirizi Monastery in Cyangugu Province, which also became the name of Rwanda's first coffee variety, a variant of Bourbon coffee.

By the 1990s, coffee had become Rwanda’s most valuable agricultural export, but something happened that almost destroyed the coffee industry. The 1994 genocide killed nearly a million people, and the price of coffee plummeted across the country, which had a huge impact on the coffee industry. After the genocide, coffee production had a positive impact on Rwanda’s overall recovery. With the world’s focus on Rwanda and foreign aid, the coffee industry began to receive great attention.

Does it really taste like potatoes?

This particular and uncommon coffee smell only occurs in Burundian and Rwandan coffees, and is caused by an unknown bacteria that invades the coffee fruit skin and produces a toxin. It is not harmful to the human body, but when these defective coffee beans are roasted and ground, they produce an easily recognizable and strong strange smell that is directly reminiscent of the smell of peeling potatoes.

It is also a novel experience to drink coffee that tastes like potatoes.

Do iced coffee beans taste better?

Recently, Maxwell Colonna-Dashwood and Christopher Hendon, a researcher at the University of Bath and a PhD in chemistry, conducted a scientific exploration of coffee flavor.

(Maxwell Colonna-Dashwood and Christopher Hendon at Colonna Smalls, a cafe in Bath.)

It turns out that coffee beans have more flavor if they are chilled before grinding.

The above conclusions were drawn based on a relatively rigorous experimental procedure. The researchers placed coffee beans in environments ranging from room temperature to -196°C. After several sets of control experiments, they found that coffee beans in a lower temperature environment would have smaller and more uniform coffee particles when using the same grinder, which directly led to more complete extraction, thus expanding the current understanding of flavor in the coffee industry.

"The principle of grinding coffee beans for extraction is to turn them into smaller particles so that they can be dissolved in water in a more convenient way. Therefore, the size and quality of the ground particles will directly affect the taste of the coffee," said Maxwell Colonna-Dashwood.

"If you get a smaller, more uniform grind, you can push the flavor up a notch," said Christopher Hendon, PhD, a chemistry PhD student at the University of Bath. In addition to flavor, finer particles can make more coffee from a single bean, or reduce extraction time.

"The experiments we have done will affect the entire industry." Maxwell Colonna-Dashwood is very confident about this. Currently, the research results have been published in the academic journal Scientific Reports.

Of course, it will take time to verify the impact of this research on the entire coffee industry. If you are interested, you may try it yourself.

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