Comment by djha-skin

Comment by djha-skin 2 days ago

22 replies

View on Hacker News

Caffeine production is likely difficult in the face of a drier climate. Caffeine is present in the plant as a pesticide. Insects are a much bigger problem in wet climates over dry.

Having grown up in a wet climate (Chicago) but now living in a dry one (Utah) I can say that finding a droubt tolerant species which concerns itself with pesticide production may be difficult. The same water which coffee relies on is the same stuff pests rely on to reproduce. My mother was from Utah, and she always lamented at the small size of her flowers growing up in Chicago. They are much larger in Utah because they can get big without insects eating them.

(I say all this as a point of interest, but I don't drink coffee myself.)

tomrod 2 days ago

Not that this applies to you, but coffee is definitely one of the things the Utah-based religions and metacultures should reconsider. Both coffee and tea are extraordinarily healthy compared to their more commonly preferred soda/diet sodas, and much more satisfying. Further, they already allow tea in subculture rulesets like Korea (one can speak with former proselytizers that sold the ideas in the region if doubt is one's initial thoughts). Most trace back their current adherence to cultural baggage of the same diet notions that led to Seventh day Adventists's diets, Wheaties, Kellogg Cereals, etc. Some great articles in Dialogue for the Utah-metaculture based curious. It's clear that the health advice banning coffee is a remnant of earlier times and currently operates as a shibboleth and token of obedience without merit.

Reply View 5 replies
  • Y_Y 15 hours ago

    A favourite YouTube documentarist, https://www.youtube.com/@KnowingBetter , has done several hours on the fascinating connections between the "major cults", their histories, and mainstream US culture (especially wrt. health and diet).

    Reply View 0 replies
  • Kirby64 2 days ago

    > It's clear that the health advice banning coffee is a remnant of earlier times and currently operates as a shibboleth and token of obedience without merit.

    How is what you're describing any different than most tenants of faith-based institutions?

    Reply View 1 reply
    • tomrod 2 days ago

      Solely that it is the one relevant to the current conversation regarding Utah and (dis)affinity for coffee.

      Reply View 0 replies
  • djha-skin 2 days ago

    It was given as a revelation from God[1]. This is not some doctrine that came about from a philospher. It came from the top.

    The same revelation discouraged tobacco use, the problems of which wasn't understood until much later. I assume the same will happen with caffeine, tannins, and other coffee/tea things.

    1: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/dc-test...

    Reply View 1 reply
    • tomrod 2 days ago

      I would argue that this isn't a good forum to discuss the relative merits of outsourcing one's morality to a corporation, nor the merits of closing oneself off to examination of belief in light of conflicting reality, hence the respectful circumspect language earlier.

      Regarding your comment here, it would be accurate to say it is currently enshrined by a small group of Utah-based religions and metacultures as divine and potentially even protective, and no one else really cares if said adherents drink or don't drink coffee. What isn't in doubt is that coffee and tea are healthier than soda, and that said Utah-based religious schisms allow Koreans and other East Asian areas to drink tea (along with South Americans to drink Yerba Mate) in contravention to their doctrine, so any alleged health benefits from adherence clearly isn't the focus and outward manifestation of obedience is the goal for the malleable rule.

      Other groups that have health codes that have a good physical basis:

      - Seventh-day Adventism, ~22 million, Vegetarianism encouraged, no alcohol, tobacco, or caffeine

      - Islam, ~2 billion (Sunni + Shia), No pork or alcohol; fasting during Ramadan; ritual slaughter

      - Judaism, ~15 million, No pork or shellfish; no mixing meat/dairy; specific slaughter methods Holiness, cultural cohesion, obedience to God’s law

      - Sikhism, ~26 million, No alcohol, tobacco, or drugs; vegetarianism in some sects; uncut hair (kesh)

      - Rastafarianism, ~1 million, Vegetarian or vegan, no alcohol, processed foods, or salt; often no caffeine

      - Jainism, ~4–5 million, Strict vegetarianism, often no root vegetables, no alcohol

      - Hare Krishna (ISKCON), ~1 million+, No meat, eggs, fish, onions, garlic, or caffeine; food must be offered to Krishna

      - Baháʼí Faith, ~5–8 million, Abstain from alcohol; annual 19-day fast (sunrise to sunset)

      - Brighamite Mormonism (LDS), ~3-5 million (regular attending), abstain from coffee, tea, alcohol, tobacco; no longer adhering to low meat consumption or beer (encouraged, not considered a strong drink, circa 1825 liquors like whiskey were considered ills, wasn't until Prohibition in the 1930s that Brighamites added alcohol to banned list, and the 1960s/1970s entrenched through gatekeeping entrance for secret rituals, causing some ritual center managers to not be able to get their annual renewal)

      Reply View 0 replies
foenix 2 days ago

> My mother was from Utah, and she always lamented at the small size of her flowers growing up in Chicago. They are much larger in Utah because they can get big without insects eating them.

Counter-anecdote from a Utah local: every time we travel to a "wet" area (any travel but Arizona / Nevada) we always find the climate to be more verdant and flowery. Perhaps ecosystems are more multi-faceted in nature.

Counter-counter-anecdote: Our Roses love the weather here.

Reply View 1 reply
  • jofer 2 days ago

    Just moved to Utah (wife's job was relocated here) a couple of years ago after many decades in the southeast and midwest. Some stuff grows like crazy here, some stuff doesn't.

    Nothing in the continental US competes with the gulf coast when it comes to sheer masses of flowering vegetation. Everything is green and most of it flowers. Everywhere you look, there's actually really neat and beautiful plants. But most of it is what folks think of as "weeds". Non native stuff in yards (what people think of as "flowers") often struggles. E.g. yapon is native and is often an ornamental and it'll grow like crazy, or even worse, try planting some Mexican petunias... I love those things, but they are a purple swarm that will swallow everything.

    But plant your daffodils, and while they'll grow, they get overpowered and outspread by everything native. A lot of common ornamentals can't take the fully saturated then dry cycles and clay soils, too. Then there are the bugs. Everything gets eaten by something. So so so so so many bugs.

    But in Utah, those common ornamentals absolutely thrive _if_ they get water. When you irrigate here, things grow like crazy. Flowers are huge and there are basically no bugs here at all. (I don't count box alder beetles or brine flies as "lots of bugs".)

    But native vegetation can survive the actual climate here, while most ornamentals can't without extra water.

    Reply View 0 replies
mortos 2 days ago

That's interesting, it's something I haven't really thought about.

There is some desire for less caffeine as it adds bitterness. Eugenioides, a parent species to arabica the commonly cultivated species, inherently has less caffeine and is said to have a remarkably sweet cup. It's had some attention in barista competitions in the last few years.

Reply View 3 replies
  • klausa 2 days ago

    Eugenioides is sweet in a way that no other coffee I ever had is sweet.

    You sometimes see "sweet" as an axis of flavor of coffee, or as a tasting note on a bag of fancy beans; but eugenioides is very different.

    It's _the_ dominant note in that cup, and it is much less fruity or floral, it's just... sweet. You taste the sweetness, and then the rest of the "typical" coffee notes come in the background, but much less pronounced than usual.

    I've seen people describe it as a "cereal-like", and while I don't think I fully agree with that description, I do get where they're coming from.

    If you're a coffee person and ever see a bag of it on offer (and can afford it), I definitely recommend grabbing it — it's really, really unique (and quite rare!).

    (And I do not think this is in any way related to the caffeine content — otherwise most of decafs would be very sweet, and they obviously aren't).

    Reply View 2 replies
    • shepherdjerred 2 days ago

      When you say sweet, is that because the coffee has more sugar, or are there just other compounds?

      I guess what I’m asking is what’s the difference between what you’re describing and making a regular good cup of coffee and adding a teaspoon of sugar?

      Reply View 1 reply
      • klausa 2 days ago

        It's the "other stuff"/flavor compounds, definitely.

        I don't think brewed coffee contains any meaningful amounts of sugar?

        Coffee (filter/brewed, not espresso) is ~98.5% water by weight, even if the Eugenioides species has more sugar in the beans than Arabica (it might! literally no idea here) — if the difference would be "just" down to the sugar levels, I don't think it would be noticeable at the dilution levels we're talking about.

        The difference in the natural sweetness vs adding sugar is an interesting question, honestly!

        Sugar is usually added to coffee to hide/mask/round out the bitterness; whether naturally occurring or from overly developed roast. But it also masks/drowns out other notes, too. You'll get less bitterness, but less of the acidity, the floralness, of all the other subtleties that can make coffee great — you'll get _sugar_ sweetness (and it's a very different kind of sweetness than coffee can naturally have!), and less of everything else.

        Eugenioides is different because it just doesn't have that baseline note of bitter/hashness _at all_, and it's naturally pretty sweet.

        Instead of sugar, I think the "magic berries" (I never tried!) that mess with your bitterness perception might work better? I'm actually now curious to try it out...

        Reply View 0 replies
wil421 2 days ago

Google says Chicago has 45 days of full sun while Salt Lake City has 222 days. I think sun has much more to do with it than insects.

It’s the same reason Alaska can grow freakishly big produce in a short season. There’s not much darkness during the growing season.

Reply View 0 replies
chongli 2 days ago

As a daily coffee drinker I wouldn't mind less caffeine in coffee. I drink coffee for its flavour (and have tried dozens of different coffees from many different roasters). I have tried some decafs but they just taste different and generally much flatter. They also behave very strangely in my espresso machine, requiring a much finer grind to sustain brewing pressure. From my limited understanding of decaf processes, they all remove more than just caffeine, so the effect on flavour is unavoidable.

Reply View 4 replies
  • Kirby64 2 days ago

    The biggest reason decaf brews, tastes, and grinds so different is the processing essentially causes the beans to expands (so you can extract the caffeine out of the center of the very dense, green coffee) and then you need to dehydrate them back to the proper moisture content for roasting. You take a green coffee that is previously extremely dense and non-porous, and make it much much more porous. This leads to roasting difficulities and brittleness when grinding which seems to lead to fines.

    I'd agree, less caffeine in the bean without decaffinating would lead to a better tasting coffee (if you want the lesser caffeine).

    Reply View 3 replies
    • ifellover 2 days ago

      Huh. As an avid home coffee roaster, this is interesting to learn. I find that decaf also really struggles to “crack” when roasting, and emits way less smoke. I guess that’s because there’s perhaps nothing left to really crack anymore?

      Reply View 2 replies
      • chongli 2 days ago

        This makes sense! The coffee has expanded a lot from the decaf process so it's not going to expand as much during roasting, hence no "crack" (which is really the same kind of process as popcorn popping)! The reduced smoke may be due to the removal of the skins and residual dried fruit which would have been washed away along with the caffeine, whereas I would expect a natural process coffee to produce a lot more smoke (compared to the most common washed process coffee).

        Reply View 1 reply
        • Kirby64 2 days ago

          Less-so that it has expanded from the decaf process, and more-so that the additional porosity leads to the 'crack' you get from reaching that critical temperature is much less violent, since there's essentially already many micro-fractures in the bean. Think of it like attempting to burst a pipe with a leak in it, vs. a pipe that is sealed. The leak will bleed off pressure, so you need much more flow (in coffee roasting, this would be power from heat) to get the same build up and explosion.

          Reply View 0 replies
Y_Y 15 hours ago

Ah, so that's why they don't drink much coffee in Utah. I thought it was because of some Broadway musical!

Reply View 0 replies
rurp a day ago

One sort-of exception are the mormon tea plants that grow readily in the region. They don't have caffeine, but they do contain several other strong compounds that likely evolved to combat pests. Those plants love hot dry conditions and sandy/rocky soil.

Reply View 0 replies
Straw 2 days ago

Current models don't predict the climate overall getting drier with climate change- in fact average rainfall goes up slightly.

Some areas will get drier, others (like the Sahara and Sahale for example) have and will get wetter.

Reply View 0 replies
jddj 2 days ago

> finding a droubt tolerant species which concerns itself with pesticide production may be difficult

Tobacco, no?

Reply View 0 replies