Hand husker, Painting by W. Hogart (1697-1764) showing the drinking of coffee. Every good office should have one.

Biology: The Coffea plant is native to subtropical Africa and southern Asia. It belongs to a genus of ten species of flowering plants of the family Rubiaceae. It is an evergreen shrub or small tree that may grow 5 metres tall when unpruned. The leaves are dark green and glossy, usually 100–150 millimetres long and 60 millimetres wide. It produces clusters of fragrant white flowers that bloom simultaneously. The fruit berry is oval, about 15 millimetres long, green when immature, ripens to yellow, then crimson, becoming black on drying. Each berry usually contains two seeds, but 5–10% of the berries have only one; these are called peaberries. Berries ripen in seven to nine months.

A standard size sack of coffee beans, the bean itself and an old tamper.

Cultivation: Coffee is usually propagated by seeds. The traditional method of planting coffee is to put twenty seeds in each hole at the beginning of the rainy season; half are eliminated naturally. Coffee is often intercropped with food crops, such as corn, beans, or rice, during the first few years of cultivation. Arabica coffee is considered more suitable for drinking than robusta coffee; robusta tends to be bitter and have less flavour than arabica. For this reason, about three-quarters of coffee cultivated worldwide is Coffee arabica. However, Coffee canephora is less susceptible to disease and can be cultivated in environments where Coffee arabica will not thrive. Robusta coffee also contains about 40–50% more caffeine than arabica. For this reason, it is used as an inexpensive substitute for arabica in many commercial coffee blends. Good quality robustas are used in some espresso blends to provide a better foam head and to lower the ingredient cost. Other cultivated species include Coffea liberica and Coffea esliaca, believed to be indigenous to Liberia and southern Sudan, respectively. Most arabica coffee beans originate from either Latin America, eastern Africa, Arabia, or Asia. Robusta coffee beans are grown in western and central Africa, throughout southeast Asia, and to some extent in Brazil. Beans from different countries or regions usually have distinctive characteristics such as flavour, aroma, body, and acidity. These taste characteristics are dependent not only on the coffee's growing region, but also on genetic subspecies (varietals) and processing. Varietals are generally known by the region in which they are grown, such as Colombian, Java or Kona.

Ecological effects: Originally, coffee farming was done in the shade of trees, which provided habitat for many animals and insects. This method is commonly referred to as the traditional shaded method. Many farmers have decided to switch their production method to sun cultivation, a method in which coffee is grown in rows under full sun with little or no forest canopy. This causes berries to ripen more rapidly and bushes to produce higher yields, but requires the clearing of trees and increased use of fertilizer and pesticides. When compared to the sun cultivation method, traditional coffee production causes berries to ripen more slowly and produce lower yields, but the quality of the coffee is allegedly superior. In addition, the traditional shaded method is environmentally friendly and serves as a habitat for many species. Opponents of sun cultivation say environmental problems such as deforestation, pesticide pollution, habitat destruction, soil and water degradation are the side effects of these practices. The American Birding Association has led a campaign for "shade-grown" and organic coffees, which it says are sustainably harvested. However, while certain types of shaded coffee cultivation systems show greater biodiversity than full-sun systems, they still compare poorly to native forest in terms of habitat value. Another issue concerning coffee is its use of water. According to New Scientist, it takes about 140 litres of water to grow the coffee beans needed to produce one cup of coffee, and the coffee is often grown in countries where there is a water shortage, such as Ethiopia, where it a the national drink.

The workers collecting sack, coffee grown on Guadeloupe, a worker.

Economics: Brazil remains the largest coffee exporting nation, but in recent years, Vietnam has become a major producer of robusta beans. Indonesia is the third-largest exporter and the largest producer of washed arabica coffee. Robusta coffees, traded in London at much lower prices than New York's arabica, are preferred by large industrial clients, such as multinational roasters and instant coffee producers because of the lower cost.

Coffee as a commodity: Coffee is also bought and sold by roasters, investors and price speculators as a tradable commodity. Coffee futures contracts for Grade 3 washed arabicas are traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) under ticker symbol KT, with contract deliveries occurring every year in March, May, July, September, and December. Higher and lower grade arabica coffees are sold through other channels. Futures contracts for robusta coffee are traded on the London Liffe exchange and, since 2007, on the New York ICE exchange.

The heat and aroma watching the final process was awesome. This machine finishes the roasting, shoots the beans into a hopper, grinds them to go for bagging.

Coffee berries and their seeds undergo several processes before they become the familiar roasted coffee. First, coffee berries are picked, generally by hand. Then they are sorted by ripeness and colour and the flesh of the berry is removed, usually by machine, and the seeds - usually called beans - are fermented to remove the slimy layer of mucilage still present on the bean. When the fermentation is finished, the beans are washed with large quantities of fresh water to remove the fermentation residue, which generates massive amounts of highly polluted coffee wastewater. Finally, the seeds are dried; the best, but least utilized method of drying coffee is by using drying tables. In this method the pulped and fermented coffee is spread thinly on raised beds, which allows the air to pass on all sides of the coffee. The coffee is then mixed by hand. and the drying that takes place is more uniform, and fermentation is less likely. Most coffee from Africa is dried in this manner and certain coffee farms around the world are starting to utilize this traditional method as well. Next, the coffee is sorted, and labeled as green coffee. Another way to let the coffee beans dry is to let them sit on a cement patio and rake over them in the sunlight. Some companies use cylinders to pump in heated air to dry the coffee beans, though this is generally in places where the humidity is too high to correctly get the moisture out.

The next step in the process is the roasting of the green coffee. Coffee is usually sold in a roasted state, and all coffee is roasted before it is consumed. It can be sold roasted by the supplier, or it can be home roasted. The roasting process influences the taste of the beverage by changing the coffee bean both physically and chemically. The bean decreases in weight as moisture is lost and increases in volume, causing it to become less dense. The density of the bean also influences the strength of the coffee and requirements for packaging. The actual roasting begins when the temperature inside the bean reaches 200°C, though different varieties of beans differ in moisture and density and therefore roast at different rates. During roasting, caramelisation occurs as intense heat breaks down starches in the bean, changing them to simple sugars that begin to brown, changing the colour of the bean. Sucrose is rapidly lost during the roasting process and may disappear entirely in darker roasts. During roasting, aromatic oils, acids, and caffeine weaken, changing the flavour; at 205°C, other oils start to develop. One of these oils is caffeol, created at about 200°C, which is largely responsible for coffee's aroma and flavour.

Depending on the colour of the roasted beans as perceived by the human eye, they will be labeled as light, medium light, medium, medium dark, dark, or very dark. A more accurate method of discerning the degree of roast involves measuring the reflected light from roasted beans illuminated with a light source in the near infrared spectrum. This elaborate light meter uses a process known as spectroscopy to return a number that consistently indicates the roasted coffee’s relative degree of roast or flavour development. Such devices are routinely used for quality assurance by coffee-roasting businesses.

Darker roasts are generally smoother, because they have less fibre content and a more sugary flavour. Lighter roasts have more caffeine, resulting in a slight bitterness, and a stronger flavour from aromatic oils and acids otherwise destroyed by longer roasting times. A small amount of chaff is produced during roasting from the skin left on the bean after processing. Chaff is usually removed from the beans by air movement, though a small amount is added to dark roast coffees to soak up oils on the beans. Decaffeination may also be part of the processing that coffee seeds undergo. Seeds are decaffeinated when they are still green. Many methods can remove caffeine from coffee, but all involve either soaking beans in hot water or steaming them, then using a solvent to dissolve caffeine-containing oils. Decaffeination is often done by processing companies, and the extracted caffeine is usually sold to the pharmaceutical industry.

Preparation: Coffee beans must be ground and brewed in order to create a beverage. Grinding the roasted coffee beans is done at a roastery, in a grocery store, or in the home. They are most commonly ground at a roastery and then packaged and sold to the consumer, though "whole bean" coffee can be ground at home. Coffee beans may be ground in several ways. A burr mill uses revolving elements to shear the bean; an electric grinder smashes the beans with blunt blades moving at high speed; and a mortar and pestle crushes the beans.

The type of grind is often named after the brewing method for which it is generally used. Turkish grind is the finest grind, while coffee percolator or French press are the coarsest grinds. The most common grinds are between the extremes; a medium grind is used in most common home coffee brewing machines. Coffee may be brewed by several methods: boiled, steeped, or pressured. Brewing coffee by boiling was the earliest method, and Turkish coffee is an example of this method. It is prepared by powdering the beans with a mortar and pestle, then adding the powder to water and bringing it to a boil in a pot called a cezve or, in Greek, a briki. This produces a strong coffee with a layer of foam on the surface.

Machines such as percolators or automatic coffeemakers brew coffee by gravity. In an automatic coffeemaker, hot water drips onto coffee grounds held in a coffee filter made of paper or perforated metal, allowing the water to seep through the ground coffee while absorbing its oils and essences. Gravity causes the liquid to pass into a carafe or pot while the used coffee grounds are retained in the filter. In a percolator, boiling water is forced into a chamber above a filter by steam pressure created by boiling. The water then passes downward through the grounds due to gravity, repeating the process until shut off by an internal timer or, more commonly, a thermostat that turns off the heater when the entire pot reaches a certain temperature. This thermostat also serves to keep the coffee warm (it turns on when the pot cools), but requires the removal of the basket holding the grounds after the initial brewing to avoid additional brewing as the pot reheats. Purists do not feel that this repeated boiling is conducive to achieving the best-flavoured coffee. There is a measuring convention adopted for automatic coffeemakers, that is unique to coffee preparation, namely, using "cup" to mean 6 ounces instead of 8 ounces of fluid. The increments labeled on the pot and water reservoir of an automatic coffeemaker usually correspond to this convention. This is because, typically, one uses about 1 rounded tablespoon of ground coffee per 6 ounces of water.

Coffee may also be brewed by steeping in a device such as a French press (also known as a cafetière or coffee press). Ground coffee and hot water are combined in a coffee press and left to brew for a few minutes. A plunger is then depressed to separate the coffee grounds, which remain at the bottom of the container. Because the coffee grounds are in direct contact with the water, all the coffee oils remain in the beverage, making it stronger and leaving more sediment than in coffee made by an automatic coffee machine.

The espresso method forces hot (but not boiling) pressurized water through ground coffee. As a result of brewing under high pressure, the espresso beverage is more concentrated (as much as 10 to 15 times the amount of coffee to water as gravity-brewing methods can produce) and has a more complex physical and chemical constitution. A well-prepared espresso has a reddish-brown foam called crema that floats on the surface. The drink "Americano" is popularly thought to have been named after American soldiers in WW II who found the European way of drinking espresso too strong; baristas would cut the espresso with hot water for them.

While we were sipping the local brew, Bear leapt up and led me to this rather attractive chap, marching at quite a pace, I particularly like his aerial on his bottom. Then he saw a slightly bloated one floating on top of the decorative water feature. He rescued it and realising it was still alive, gently put it in the hedge amongst the leaves, stabbing his forehead on a thorn along the way, bleeding my St Francis returned triumphant.

As we left the museum I looked at Bear and said " I bet you that our fancy caterpillar friend grows up to be big, brown and furry", not dissimilar to the person I was looking at !!!!! I checked later on line and indeed I guessed correctly. He grows up to be the Tetrio Sphinx Moth. Apparently our friends do huge damage to crops and cost a small fortune.

ALL IN ALL an interesting look at something we have always taken for granted in lovely surroundings. A well laid out and informative look at coffee, in a well laid out little museum in a quiet, gentle back water.