If you love coffee, you might be an adrenaline junkie. September 29th is National Coffee Day in the US and Canada. What better way to celebrate than talking about how coffee is made and the chemistry of coffee. Before we talk about the process of making coffee, we are going to talk about the molecule that makes coffee so beloved caffeine.
What is Caffeine?
Caffeine is a central nervous system stimulant. It is actually one of the most consumed psychoactive drugs in the world. Caffeine is an adenosine receptor antagonist. Like an antagonist in a story, a receptor antagonist is an ion or molecule that blocks or reduces a biological response. The receptor antagonist does this by binding to a receptor and blocking its activation from a different ion or molecule.
How Caffiene Functions in the Body
In our case, caffeine is a receptor antagonist to adenosine, a neural modulator. Adenosine is responsible for slowing neural activity down to make you sleepy when it binds to its respective receptor. The caffeine dilates your blood vessels. The blood vessels deliver a good supply of well-oxygenated blood to help repair your body while you sleep. It is important to note that coffee does not slow down neural activity. It just blocks the activation of a pathway that slows down neural activity. Caffeine can also trigger your pituitary gland to increase cortisol production, which initiates adrenaline production.
What is Adrenaline?
Adrenaline is a hormone that is secreted in conditions of stress. It causes an increase in blood circulation, breathing, and metabolic activity to prepare your muscles for exertion. So if you are a coffee lover, maybe you can call yourself an adrenaline junkie.
The Process of Making Coffee
So green coffee beans are planted, and once they grow and become fruiting coffee trees, the coffee cherries are harvested. After harvesting, the leftover debris like twigs and stones from the harvest are sorted out. The cherries are thrown into a water tank. Unripe cherries will float to the top, and then the ripe ones will sink to the bottom. Ripe cherries are one the ones that are used to make coffee. Once the ripe coffee cherries have been isolated, they are pulped to get rid of the skin. The fruit that surrounds the beans ferments, which is one way the beans get their complex flavor profile.
After fermentation, the coffee beans are allowed to get their moisture content to the perfect range. The beans are stored until they are ready to be milled. Milling is the process used to remove the remaining surrounding layers, and the beans are polished. After that, the beans are graded and inspected for defects, and then the rest of the process is very familiar to all of us; the beans are distributed, roasted, packaged, ground, and then brewed for you to enjoy.