Coffee has evolved into vastly different styles across different regions of the world. In East Asia, Japan uses slow roasting and low-temperature pour-over to create a mild, sweet, and mellow taste; in Southeast Asia, the method of coating beans in sugar helps coffee beans withstand the hot and humid climate; North America has gone through three waves, moving from instant coffee to a specialty route that emphasizes regional flavors. This article sorts out the historical origins, craft characteristics, and flavor orientations of these three major coffee cultural circles, helping coffee enthusiasts understand how different cultural backgrounds shape the taste in the cup. Whether you prefer the sweet, mildly bitter Japanese style or the rich condensed-milk flavor of Southeast Asia, you can find the corresponding cultural lineage here.
One of Asia's Two Major Coffee Cultural Circles
North Asia (Japan) | Mild, Sweet, and Slightly Bitter
Coffee was introduced to Japan in the 16th century. At the end of the Meiji era (1888), the first teahouse selling coffee, "Kahiichakan," appeared there. From then on, coffee culture gradually took root in Japan and developed its own characteristics, eventually forming the North Asian coffee cultural circle and influencing many neighboring Asian countries. Japanese coffee culture is deeply influenced by the umami seasoning tradition represented by "dashi" broth, gradually forming a style that is mild in taste, smooth in mouthfeel, and focused on the balance between sweetness and bitterness.
Ichiro Sekiguchi, owner of the long-established "Kohaku Coffee" in Ginza, Tokyo, was the world's oldest coffee roaster. He passed away in March of this year at the age of 104.
In order to make coffee with a sweet, mellow taste and mild mouthfeel, Japan generally adopts a slow-roasting, long-duration technique. From green beans to completion of roasting usually takes more than 20 minutes, far higher than the average 15-minute roasting pace in Europe and the United States. Slow roasting makes the coffee flavor spectrum more stable, and a sufficiently complete Maillard reaction causes the coffee to produce a larger amount of "melanoidin" components during roasting. This is the main reason why Japanese-style coffee has a mellow, substantial mouthfeel and a sweet, slightly bitter taste.
Japanese coffee customarily uses pour-over filtration or a siphon pot for brewing. In order to highlight the coffee's sweet flavor and reduce acidity, Japanese coffee prefers a lower brewing water temperature (for example, 82 to 86 degrees Celsius), which is very different from the standard brewing temperature of 93.3 degrees Celsius commonly used by specialty coffee associations in Europe and the United States. The technique of pour-over combined with low-temperature extraction spread from Japan to neighboring South Korea and even China.
Early domestic coffee culture was deeply influenced by Japanese coffee culture. Even today, there are still some old coffee shops in Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan that present an authentic Japanese style.
The cloth-filter pour-over coffee at "Kohaku Coffee" is served in a small cup with a rich taste.
The Second of Asia's Two Major Coffee Cultural Circles
South Asia | Sugar-Coated Roasting
The climate in Southeast Asia is hot and humid, prices are low, and average incomes are low, which means the natural conditions for storing coffee are relatively poor, and people's purchasing power also tends toward cheap coffee. As a result, Southeast Asia has traditionally been accustomed to using cheap coffee beans to reduce costs, such as lower-cost Robusta and Liberica varieties blended with more expensive Arabica beans. In addition, in order to cope with the high humidity and high temperature of the Southeast Asian climate, Malaysia and Singapore developed a very unique "sugar-coated" coffee bean production method.
Typical Southeast Asian coffee must use heavy ceramic cups; the coffee is deep in color and not bitter when drunk.
"Sugar coating" means covering coffee beans with a shell whose main component is sugar. Traditional Southeast Asian coffee adds white sugar during roasting (the ratio is about 12 kilograms of white sugar for 60 kilograms of coffee beans), corn kernels, and margarine, stir-frying them together with the coffee in the roasting furnace. When exposed to high heat, the melted sugar turns into a deep black, black caramel mixed with carbonized burnt ash residue. Finally, it is taken out and poured onto a large iron plate to cool with a strong electric fan, while several workers hold bars and shovels to forcefully strike the cooled, clumped caramelized coffee bean blocks, breaking them apart to become the "sugar-coated" coffee beans commonly seen in Southeast Asia. The charred black "sugar coating" on the surface covers the coffee beans completely, able to block out moisture and dampness, which coffee beans fear most during storage. Thus this black, unremarkable coffee bean is enough to resist the high-temperature, high-humidity climate of Southeast Asia and can be stored at room temperature for a long time without spoiling.
Southeast Asia is accustomed to heavier-flavored food and is used to the aromas of spices, coconut milk, and margarine, so it naturally developed a South Asian coffee culture with a rich taste, dark color, and frequent addition of condensed milk.
Traditional Southeast Asian coffee uses a long cloth bag for repeated filtering and pouring; the coffee liquid is deep black in color.
North American Coffee Cultural Circle
The Third Wave Coffee | and the Specialty Coffee Association
The North American coffee cultural circle is centered on the United States. It first spread to neighboring Canada, then to the United Kingdom, Germany, New Zealand, Australia, and even present-day Hong Kong, Japan, and Taiwan. Its influence can be said to be far-reaching. To understand North American coffee culture, one must first start with North America's three coffee waves.
North American coffee culture is centered on the United States. From the 1940s to the recent three coffee waves, its influence has been far-reaching.
The "first wave of coffee" began from 1940 to 1966, when returning soldiers brought the habit of drinking instant coffee to civilian life. Instant coffee produced from cheap Robusta coffee was inexpensive and easy to brew, causing a large number of families that had not previously drunk coffee to begin developing the habit of drinking coffee because of the convenience of instant coffee.
In 1966, Dutch-born coffee roaster Alfred Peet founded Peet's Coffee & Tea on the West Coast of the United States, bringing European-style dark-roasted coffee to the American people for the first time and astonishing people accustomed to drinking inferior instant coffee. This triggered the so-called "second wave of coffee."
The second wave of coffee emphasized brewing coffee from coffee beans. Peet introduced coffee beans from Sulawesi and Sumatra in Asia, which were rare in North America at the time. Their rich, full-bodied flavor allowed people to experience for the first time that brewing coffee from high-quality coffee beans was much better than cheap instant coffee! The dark-roasted second-wave coffee had a strong "roast flavor" with obvious bitterness, and people often drank it with sugar and non-dairy creamer or milk. The trend of dark-roasted coffee continued until the year 2000, until many small coffee operators who emphasized coffee's delicate flavors together gave birth to the "third wave of coffee."
Gradually, people found it hard to be satisfied with coffee that was just dark and bitter, so the "third wave of coffee," which emphasizes coffee origin, cultivation techniques, processing methods, coffee varieties, and even more refined roasting techniques and brewing methods, emerged in response.
The third wave of coffee emphasizes "from origin to cup." Roasters personally visit coffee origins, exchange and discuss with coffee farmers, and improve coffee cultivation environments and processing techniques in order to produce better-quality coffee beans. The third wave of coffee also emphasizes freshness, striving for freshness from before roasting to after roasting, so that coffee's most delicate "regional flavor" can be fully presented in the cup. It also emphasizes single-cup brewing. Third-wave coffee operators no longer brew a large pot of coffee and wait for customers to arrive, but instead brew a cup of coffee on the spot for the customer after they order it.
The degree of roasting is no longer mainly dark roast. Medium roast and light roast, which can highlight the flavor of the coffee's origin, have become a trend. The impact of the third wave of coffee is enormous. In addition to North America, it has also affected Central Europe, Western Europe, New Zealand, and even all of Asia. Today, there are many third-wave coffee shops in major cities around the world. There is no doubt that it is the most important coffee wave influencing the modern coffee landscape worldwide.
What cannot be omitted in North American coffee culture is the operation of the Specialty Coffee Association. The Specialty Coffee Association of America has merged with the Specialty Coffee Association of Europe and dominates many coffee competitions around the world, as well as the formulation of quality standards for coffee cultivation, roasting, and brewing. It has also established a complete coffee teaching and education system. The influence of the Specialty Coffee Association has spread across the globe and plays a pivotal role in the evolution of coffee culture worldwide.
For domestic coffee enthusiasts, if you want to experience the sweet, mellow style of Japanese slow roasting, Front Street Coffee's daily bean series includes medium-roasted natural Yirgacheffe, which can be brewed as pour-over at a lower water temperature to present a soft mouthfeel; if you prefer the rich flavor of Southeast Asia, Front Street also has dark-roasted beans such as Mandheling to choose from. Add condensed milk to recreate the heavy mouthfeel of Southeast Asian coffee shops.
The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.
