The illy blend

The coffee growing countries

Brazilian-grown coffee is the base of the illy espresso blend. Brazil is the world's top producer of Arabica, accounting for over one third of world production and 10% of its GNP and 20% of its exports: 5 billion coffee plants, 35-45 million bags a year, 5 million people employed by 300,000 producers.

With 10% of world production and nearly 12 million bags a year, Colombia is the second largest producer of Arabica, with its sweet coffee. Coffee from Guatemala, a country with a much lower capacity but high-quality production, is very sweet, of average acidity with an intense aroma ranging from chocolaty to flowery. It is the ideal complement for espresso blends.

African countries have limited production but very good quality. Kenya, with its mild, steady climate, produces acid, aromatic coffee particularly suited to brewed preparation, whereas Ethiopia produces the best washed Arabica: extremely flowery with notes of caramel.

Coffee from India has a full body, a pleasant bitterness and a spicy aroma.

Coffees from El Salvador, Costa Rica, Mexico, Panama and Honduras are sweet with more acidic notes and the typical characteristics of the "sweet and light" coffees from Central America.

The secret of the illy blend lies in the balance and harmony of its components-the best varieties of Arabica from 13 different countries.

It starts with a flower

The coffee plant, a shrub of the Rubiaceae family, is tropical by nature and requires a hot and humid climate to thrive.

The coffee flowers are short-lived and wither after a few days, bringing forth the fruit, or cherries, which change color from green to red as they ripen. Arabica cherries take about seven months to reach the optimal stage of ripeness while Robusta cherries average 10 months. The cherry is a drupe (a fruit containing one or more seeds surrounded by a fleshy layer of protective tissue) that usually contains two grooved, semi-oval cherrystones lying with their flat faces together-the future green coffee beans. Each bean is surrounded by a silver-colored membrane and enclosed in a tougher skin called the parchment. Robusta plants may grow to a height of up to 40 feet in the wild, while Arabica plants are shorter at about half that height. On a plantation, coffee plants are maintained at no more than 10 feet for the purposes of harvesting.

The blossoming cycle and maturation of coffee plants is not determined by the seasons; rather, the coffee plant blossoms after each rainfall and therefore a single plant can contain flower blossoms, unripe fruit and ripe fruit all at the same time.

Destination Trieste

Preserving the quality of the green coffee beans prior to roasting is essential for illycaffe. More than any other agricultural product, coffee undergoes a continual series of quality control tests to yield the best possible final product.

After purchase, the illy-branded 60 kilogram jute bags of coffee are shipped to the roasting facility warehouses in Trieste, Italy as quickly as possible. During shipping, many precautions are taken to ensure that it reaches Trieste in peak condition.

Upon reaching the roasting plant, further quality control tests are performed by an automated system and sophisticated machinery: robots pick up the bags, count them and place them on the conveyor belt.

Once the beans have been removed from the bags, they are placed on a vibrating screen which separates any remaining foreign objects. An aspirator removes the smaller, lighter impurities and a magnet removes any metal. At this point, the green coffee is stored in silos.

The last selection is conducted by six sophisticated bi-chromatic systems which electronically "photograph" each bean, detecting and eliminating any which do not meet strict color standards-an indication that the bean is not fully ripe, or is a "stinker", a fermented bean that can ruin a whole batch With this technology, each and every raw bean is inspected at a speed no human hand could match, and with precision beyond even the most highly trained human eye. illycaffe believes that this level of inspection is essential for natural coffees in particular and it is just one of many methodologies used exclusively by illy to approach its goal of "zero defects". Why does illycaffe go to such lengths? Because a single imperfect bean among the 50 in a cup is enough to spoil an espresso.

A single, perfect blend

Like a fine Champagne house, illycaffe believes in producing a single, unique, perfect blend of coffee for both brewed and espresso preparation. A single blend means that illy can always be counted upon to have the same consistent taste, cup after cup, year after year.

Because coffee is a natural product, its flavor and aroma tend to vary from crop to crop and from one geographical region to another. To achieve the same consistent taste in the final product, illy must blend different types of coffee together based on their individual characteristics, all the while adjusting the amounts of each type to achieve the desired balance and signature taste of the illy blend. The process takes great skill as well as finesse and it is as much art as it is science.

illycaffe blends its coffee before roasting to achieve the greatest homogeneity in taste and aroma. This is a more difficult process than blending after roasting, but it ensures a better quality coffee and affords greater control over the taste of the final blend. The illy blend is composed of the finest Arabica coffees handpicked from nine different growing regions around the world: a Brazilian base, making up over 50% to give the blend body and aroma, enriched with the sweetness and aromatic notes of washed African and Central American coffees.

The art and science of roasting

Roasting is what transforms the green beans into dark, fragrant coffee with its tantalizing aroma and flavor. It is the most critical stage in coffee production and at illycaffe, it is highly automated, and heavily monitored by both instrumental quality control checks and people with vast amounts of experience and skill.

Coffee roasting is performed in enormous roasting machines: large drums holding the coffee beans rotate over a flame, enveloping the coffee in a flow of hot air. The roasting process can be divided into three stages: a drying phase during which moisture is eliminated, a roasting phase where a number of complex chemical reactions take place, transforming the precursors into the aromatic flavor components of roasted coffee, and finally a cooling phase where the freshly roasted coffee is brought back to room temperature.

Drying

During the drying stage of roasting, the beans lose their residual moisture through evaporation, causing the beans to lose 20% of their weight and to take on a yellowish color. This phase takes about half of the total roasting time. The more homogeneous the green coffee beans, the more uniform and better the drying process. Indeed the 1500 substances responsible for the flavor and aroma of coffee are formed in this crucial quarter of an hour, when the beans lose about 18% of their weight and gain 60% of their volume.

Roasting

The greatest transformation occurs during the roasting phase where the coffee is heated to a temperature of 428°F (220°C). During this phase the beans puff up, doubling in size due to internal pressure exerted by carbon dioxide. The beans also become a light tan color, but as the roasting temperature continues to rise, the color deepens and the beans lose weight and become more brittle. The last moments of the roasting phase heavily modify the chemical composition of the beans: sugars carmelize in what is known as a Maillard reaction; more than 700 new compounds are created, including key volatile aroma compounds responsible for the characteristic coffee flavor; and carbon dioxide is released. illycaffe has two roasts: a lighter, roast with a smooth, rich flavor and a dark roast which is more robust and intense.

Cooling

The final step is to cool the freshly roasted beans, which can be accomplished by either the use of water showers, or by streams of cool air. illycaffe treats its beans delicately, employing only the cool air method which is slower and more expensive, but which leaves the precious aromas intact and protects the coffee from humidity. At this point, the beans are gently transported to the packaging area on a current of air.

Pressurizing: packaging par excellence

Oxygen is roasted coffee's worst enemy, and roasted coffee exposed to air will lose 40% of its aroma after only eight hours. Another enemy is humidity which also jeopardizes flavor and can cause mold.

It was this problem of preserving freshness that led Francesco Illy to invent pressurization in the 1930's. Pressurization extracts the air from the can and replaces it with inert gasses at a higher-than-atmospheric level of pressure. This method guarantees a longer preservation time, maintaining the coffee for over 2 years until it is prepared. At the same time it 'ages' the coffee, improving its aroma over time by causing its volatile aroma compounds to bind with the oils that are contained in the beans. Simple vacuum packing cannot achieve this flavor transformation. The positive pressure exerted by the pressurization method actually forces these aroma compounds back into the coffee so they can be released in the cup. The effect of the aging process is similar in many ways to the development of complex flavors when a fine red wine is aged under proper conditions.