Coffee has been around for a long time. Nobody seems exactly sure when people began using it, but there are tales of African shepherds who noticed their goats enjoying the beans and decided to roast them up.
Not only is coffee extremely popular, but more people are starting to enjoy the science behind brewing the perfect cup of joe, as is evident from Good Fika’s coffee brewing journals.
The aged coffee trend is much newer. Basically, the beans are stored in various ways, most commonly in recycled wooden vats like the ones used to age wine and whiskey. The idea behind it is that the aging process alters the quality and flavor of the beans themselves.
Aged Coffee? You Heard Right!
Yes, you heard right. Aged coffee is a real thing. It’s really based on the same principle as aging in other types of beverages like wine, sherry, or spirits. The principle being that careful and controlled storage alters various flavors in a beneficial way.
As with other foodstuffs like cured meats, or even tobacco, the way you store and maintain things over time lends character to the flavor. Done correctly, these slow alterations can arrive at many different characteristics, depending on what you’re going for.
In the case of coffee, the wood from the vats themselves will slowly leech into the beans and create that deepened aroma we experience with other drinks. Acidity levels are brought down and replaced with that oaken feel from the barrels.
It’s really all about control. You have to source the best dark coffee beans and place them in vats or barrels made from the right quality woods. Then, it’s all down to meticulously maintaining humidity, temperature, and so on to achieve that perfect balance.
Since this is a new area, there will be a great deal of experimentation going on among brewers of our favorite daytime drink to see exactly how much we can do with the process. Creating new experiences is what it’s all about.
Coffee Trends of the Past
Coffee trends are not a new thing. When Europeans first tasted the coffee bean in the 16th century, it spread across the continent like wildfire. Coffee houses sprang up very quickly in all the major cities of Europe, creating a new fad wherever they went.
By the 17th century, coffee was here to stay. More traditional people saw the craze as the work of the devil, with a petition against coffee being launched in London in 1674. It was a petition by women claiming that coffee houses had stolen their husbands from them!
So, new and exciting crazes are not by any means a recent phenomenon. They’ve probably been going on since before recorded history, with time itself proving to be the ultimate arbiter here.
Anything which genuinely works, we tend to keep. So, while things may pop up one moment and be gone the next, when things are broadly popular, they get a certain staying power that enables them to last and continue to be changed and adapted over time.
Some Thoughts
Just like with a thousand other things, coffee trends will ebb and flow. Some will stick around, while others are more transient and brief. With the aged coffee trend, though, there’s every indication this one’s a stayer.
There are just so many advantages to the aging and curing process that it’s really easy to see why. After all, it’s a process we use on a great many other foodstuffs for the very same reason. Blending things together to create new experiences is something we’re good at.
We have long ago abandoned the notion of food as purely practical necessity, and have done truly great things in the creative culinary realm. Our best guess is that aged coffee will be with us for some time to come.
Kyla Stewart is a former content writer, who decided to start her own blogging site and become a digital nomad. She managed to create a platform where all her previous clients are gathered - so they can merge and learn from each other! Her main motto is “sharing is caring” and her goal is to see the world from different perspectives!
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