, 1888-11-21
FIXING" THE COFFEE.
AN INFERIOR PRODUCT POLISHED
TO DECEIVE EVEN EXPERTS.

The Adulteration of tho Popular Berry q
Big Business According to a Chicago
Dealer-The Process of "aIilling'' Cofree.
Mocha
The adulteration of coffee is an evil of
so widespread and well recognized a kind
that a leading grocer of this city recently
had a two column lad" in the paper set
ting forth the peculiar methods employed
and the differences existing between vari-
u growths of coffee. This dealer was
seen the other day by q reporter, to whom
he said: 1.-THE authorization of coffee is a
business, and a large one at that. There
exist, under various names, in New York,
Philadelphia and Baltimore, firms who do
a furnishing business in this line.
''The work they do-and are paid for
handsomely-is the cleaning, securing,
polishing and coloring of the natural
bean. 1t must not be supposed, however,
that this is all done with the knowledge
and connivance of the retail or wholesale
grocers by whom the coffee is afterward
sold to the consumer. Not at all. Prob
ably fully so per cent. of these grocers
ig~norantly buy what they suppose to be
java Mocha and other high priced
coffee, when in reality they get inferior
grades. You see, it is a difficult thing to
determine exactly the quality of coffee in
the bean. There Is, in point of fact, no
sure test to be employed in sampling cof-
fees but the n Of taking the bean coffee,
roasting it, and making a liquor of it,
which is drunk. That Is the only reliable
test. What can be learned about coffee
would in reality fill a book, and it takes
years and good opportunities to become q
connoisseur.
"Now, what would you take this coffee
to be2" and the expert handed over two
small vessels of roasted coffee, showing
beans of handsome shape, uniform in
size and pungent of odor. THAT is Buca-
marango and the other Bogota. Now,
did you ever hear of such coffee or such
places before2 And yet this is very good
Central American coffee, apt to be mis-
taken for Jaw by even pretty good
judges. And what do you suppose this
is?' He showed another small vessel full
of unroasted coffee. The berries were of
all shapes, fiat and almost globular, some
four times as large as others. But this
coffee, though not roasted, exhaled a pow
erful fragrance, reminding one a little of
vanilla. This is genuine Mocha, sam
pied and bought by myself at Alden, Ara
bia. They say there is more SO called
Mocha sold here in Chicago than the
whole crop of real Mocha coffee amounts
to. 1t may be So"
And how about the real process of
adulteration2"
ut isn't called SO. It's termed fixing
or dressing in the trade. 1t gulls deal
ers as well as the public. I'll give you a
few samples Of how it works. Real Java
comes, for instance, in fattish woven
mats. On the trip across the ocean
gives the natural greenish tint of the
berry a tinge toward the yellow and
brown. 1t also swells the size of the
berry. To initiate Java, Macaraibo,
Guatemala and Santos Is used-al Ameri-
can %coffees. When subjected to a sweat
ing process they begin to look more or
less like Java, 80 much SO as to deceive
ever dealers who do not take the trouble
to test coffee by making a sample liquor
of it. Yet the difference in price is eight
cents q pound, or 38 per cent. Take
Guatemala coffee. That is an excellent
kind, handsome to look at and pleasant to
taste. But much of what is sold under
the name is nothing but Costa Rica, or
Rio. A polishing machine will In q few
hours give those the blush tint and the
glossy appearance of genuine Guatemala
Soapstone and Prussian blue are used in
coloring. Of Rio there is more imported
than Of all other kinds of coffee-probably
ten times as much. There are all kinds
of Rio coffee. Some is exquisite, as fine
in flavor as almost any coffee. Some arc
very poor. The small Brazilian farmers
will spread and cure their raw coffee right
on the pampas. In drying, the berry will
absorb the flavor of the manure sodden
earth, and such coffee will be, of course,
bad In taste. But you can't tell it half
the time until you roast the berry and
boil your coffee"
A local firm which the dealer referred
to as fixing" the coffee has a warehouse
that is crammed from cellar to roof with
sacks of coffee and with machinery to
Fix" it. They evidently do a very good
trade. The superintendent was watching
the loading of a cargo of several hundred
sacks of coffee consigned to a popular mill
in town. He was not averse to giving q
few points of information regarding the
business in which his house Is engaged.
"Nine-tenths of our work, he said, ICON
sists in milling coffee. That is another
name for polishing The machines used
In the business are plain, horizontal cyl
inders and centrifugals. If coffee is very
dry and husky We use a little pure water,
about one gill to the bag, so as to give it
a nice, clean and smooth appearance. The
polishing is done to smooth the berry
that's all. Whether dealers afterward
sell this coffee, improved in looks, for
higher grade than it actually is, is a mat
ter with which we have nothing to do.
We are just paid by the mills and large
dealers for cleaning and polishing coffee
that ends it as far as we are concerned.
What we are doing here, however, is q
thing which has been done In Germany
for over a hundred years. The polishing
is lone simply by attrition- No bluing or
soapstone is used n~owadays-at least not
much. No, sir, the bulk of the coffee
adulteration, properly speaking, is done,
not in this country, but before it reaches
here. Take Mocha as an example. The
ooffee-Malabar and Ceylon and others
which resemble the genuine article in ap-
pearance. These they mix with zeal
Mocha, and the product is then sen; all
over the world as Mocha Thus, you zee,
as a matter of fact, no genuine MochA cx-
lists in the trade, not If you were to send
your agent to Alden itself to buy it,
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