Hevla Low Acid Coffee Blog

Article SNIPLETS taken from Coffee Review.com
Coffee Review.com:

The Coffee Review began cupping and publishing reviews in 1997. We pioneered the ground-breaking concept of 100-point coffee reviews, similar to those in the wine industry. Our goal is to entertain and educate coffee lovers, the coffee trade, and food service professionals with a credible coffee guide based on objective reviews from some of the most experienced individuals in the specialty coffee industry. Over the past decade, CoffeeReview.com has become one of the most respected and widely read coffee publications in the world.

May 2007
Low-Acid Options for Coffee Drinkers
by Kenneth Davids

For example: What is acidity in coffee? The tart yet sweet sensation that animates the sensory character of the finest coffees and keeps them from falling into woody neutrality? An edgy sourness that messes up our tummies? Prime contributor to coffee’s newfound status as the leading contributor to cancer-fighting antioxidant activity in American diets?

All of the above, it seems. Including the last, perhaps unfamiliar definition. Because to further complicate the acidity issue, it turns out that organic acids in coffee, particularly those broadly described as chlorogenic acids, are major contributors to coffee’s antioxidant, cancer-fighting activity, which current research indicates considerably exceeds the antioxidant properties of beverages like green tea.

Goal: High Flavor, Low Acidity

So the question of the month: Are there coffees that can give us the flavor and the health benefits of a fragrant, lively cup while backgrounding the stuff that makes our stomachs sour?
And if so, where should an acid-sensitive yet flavor-sensitive coffee lover look for these garden-without-the-snake coffees miracles? In the form of naturally low-acid coffees? In other words, in the form of coffees that are naturally less acidy owing to tree variety and growing conditions? Or in the form of coffees that have been specially treated or roasted to reduce acidity?

We cupped twenty-five coffees for this month’s article, including a half dozen that were specially treated to reduce acidity and marketed as stomach friendly and/or low-acid, and about twenty that were not subjected to any special acid-lowering treatment, but came from origins – Brazil, Sumatra and India – whose coffees are relatively low-grown and generally associated with lower acidity. Let’s call this last group inherently low-acid coffees.

The Specially Treated Coffees
It appears that there are two fundamental approaches currently in play to reducing the tummy-suspect chlorogenic acids and their derivatives. The first is treating the green beans with steam to remove the waxy outer layer before drying and roasting them, the approach taken by the German company JJ Darboven for many years in its Idee Coffees, and also represented here by Hevla Coffees’ Low Acid Gourmet Coffee.

A Simple Test for Acidity: pH
Very general levels of acidity in brewed coffee in can be determined by a simple test of pH, or the relative acidity and alkalinity of a solution. Distilled water is neutral at 7. Numbers higher than 7 indicate solutions that are alkaline; numbers below 7 acid. Coffee generally is an acidy beverage, but a two-to three-point difference in pH is usually easily discernible on a sensory level by an experienced cupper, and may be significant in terms of impact on the digestive systems of acid-sensitive coffee drinkers.

The main lesson to be learned from this comparison is that darker roasted coffees are invariably less acidy than lighter roasted coffees, and degree of roast seems to make considerably more impact on acidity than does treating the green beans with steam. Both Hevla and JJ Darboven are steam-treated to remove acids, but the considerably darker roasted Hevla is measurably less acidy when measured by pH than the lighter roasted JJ Darboven. The Folgers Simply Smooth, which does not divulge its stomach-friendly strategies, is most acidy of all of the coffees we tested, again, probably because it is so light-roasted.

And for the technically inclined, acidity is chemistry, something to be measured and quantified. The common measurement for acidity is pH, with a figure of 7.0 indicating a neutral substance and numbers under 7.0 indicating increasing levels of acidity. Lemon juice, for example, registers a pH of around 2.0, tomato juice 4.0, and milk 6.5. A typical bright, acidy breakfast coffee might register a pH of 4.7 or so. I find that my palate tends to identify acidity as a major component of flavor at a pH of 5.0 or below.

Unfortunately for those who would like to rely on numbers alone, rather than taste, the measured pH, or relative acidity/alkalinity, of a coffee may does not equate in a simple way either to the bright, dry sensation admired by aficionados nor to the stomach-threatening edginess deplored by acidity avoiders. Coffee chemistry is complex, and the relationship among the various kinds of acids found in coffee and other factors that influence taste (and, presumably, impact on digestion) of brewed coffee the impact of these acids on the body is intricate and only partly understood. Nevertheless, our modest experiments suggest that a coffee brewed at normal strength that registers a pH of 5.0 or above deserves to be called a “low acid” coffee.