Green is the true color of the coffee bean. The bean is harvested in Central and South America, Eastern Africa and Southern Asia. Green is the only natural color of the coffee bean, since What comes next is human-inflicted.
Gold is the coffee bean's color after a little bit of heat. It is poured into closed heating tubs, and after about 5 minutes, the coffee bean is roasting at around 150 degrees celcius. Here, the it is transforming into something it is not familiar with.
Brown. This is the color of the coffee bean after about half an hour of roasting, in the same heating tubs, now churning at over 200 degrees celcius. Brown is when the coffee bean has no green left in it. What comes next is variable and unknown to the bean. All it knows is that it is getting hotter and it is being churned around and around and if it doesn't keep up it'll probably end up in a scraps pile away from the other beans it looks similar to.
Darkened brown. How brown will depend on how much longer the coffee bean sits in the heating tubs. The longer it is kept inside, the darker it becomes, and the stronger its eventual taste. Soon the coffee bean will be packaged for export, darkened to match preferred tastes in household and coffee houses somewhat globally.
Of course, the packagers will leave a small valve open on the packages before they are sent away, otherwise they would explode due to the still self-roasting coffee bean releasing gases.
And as the coffee bean sits with its counterparts in its package, quietely roasting away, it acknowledges that it is among other beans just like itself. It cannot acknowledge which kind of green this bean used to be, and which kind of green that bean used to be. It cannot even acknowledge how green it was in comparision to all the other beans. All it knows is that it is know in a package with other look-a-like beans, and they are all heading for the same place.
From a green birth to a gold childhood, into a brown adulthood and a finally darker old age, how are we humans different from the culture of coffee beans? Today more than ever we seem to collide into eachother in heated circumstances, one often clueless of the other, and we claim to grow from our collective experience. How much are we growing if we are simply repeating eachothers stories without learning from them?
Gold is the coffee bean's color after a little bit of heat. It is poured into closed heating tubs, and after about 5 minutes, the coffee bean is roasting at around 150 degrees celcius. Here, the it is transforming into something it is not familiar with.
Brown. This is the color of the coffee bean after about half an hour of roasting, in the same heating tubs, now churning at over 200 degrees celcius. Brown is when the coffee bean has no green left in it. What comes next is variable and unknown to the bean. All it knows is that it is getting hotter and it is being churned around and around and if it doesn't keep up it'll probably end up in a scraps pile away from the other beans it looks similar to.
Darkened brown. How brown will depend on how much longer the coffee bean sits in the heating tubs. The longer it is kept inside, the darker it becomes, and the stronger its eventual taste. Soon the coffee bean will be packaged for export, darkened to match preferred tastes in household and coffee houses somewhat globally.
Of course, the packagers will leave a small valve open on the packages before they are sent away, otherwise they would explode due to the still self-roasting coffee bean releasing gases.
And as the coffee bean sits with its counterparts in its package, quietely roasting away, it acknowledges that it is among other beans just like itself. It cannot acknowledge which kind of green this bean used to be, and which kind of green that bean used to be. It cannot even acknowledge how green it was in comparision to all the other beans. All it knows is that it is know in a package with other look-a-like beans, and they are all heading for the same place.
From a green birth to a gold childhood, into a brown adulthood and a finally darker old age, how are we humans different from the culture of coffee beans? Today more than ever we seem to collide into eachother in heated circumstances, one often clueless of the other, and we claim to grow from our collective experience. How much are we growing if we are simply repeating eachothers stories without learning from them?
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