Here's an explanatory alt.coffee post by Jack Denver:
This question comes up periodically (like most). Search the deja archives for more info, but the short answer is that its just what it sounds like...the coffee is roasted together with a large amount of sugar, up to 50/50, until the sugar caramelizes. This style of coffee appears mostly in Latin countries. The caramel taste of the sugar is thought to enhance the flavor of the coffee (and also serves as a economical stretcher, since sugar is much cheaper than coffee beans). Often people grow to love the taste of substitutes that were originally introduced to save money or in times of shortage (chickory,"barley coffee", etc.) and continue to use them long after the crisis is past and the unadulturated product is again available/affordable.
"Torrefacto" is Spanish for roasted, so it's literally roasted style roast coffee. Presumably, they're implying that it's roasted in the traditional Spanish style.
That one stumps me. My hazy memories of Spanish and Italian vacations tell me that there's more regional variation in the way Italians roast and blend, while the Spanish coffees are more uniformly dark roasted and mellow, like in Southern Italy. But I could very well be wrong.
hirsato Senior Member Joined: 24 Nov 2002 Posts: 1 Location: Concordia, Honduras Expertise: Professional
Posted Sun Nov 24, 2002, 4:39am Subject: Re: What is sugar roasted mean?
Dear Sir:
I see you have your answer and it is a good one. I thought I might share some of what we do for sugar roasting. We roast at our farm with the sugar cane that we grow. We use a large amount of sugar as the previous writer explains and it is slowly coating on the beans as they go through the roasting process. We hand roast for our own use and then machine roast for our packing and distribution in areas of Honduras. We fine the people like the flavor and it smooths the coffee to a really wonderful taste. Our coffee starts out as a shade grown high altitude above 3700 feet arabicia bean of high quality developed by the agricultural department in 1990 for our use. We enjoy sugar coated and yet we market much of our coffee without the sugar coating as there are so many different people with different taste. I hope you enjoy the sugar coatings as they usually represent the true farm culture of a coffee grower from the old farms. regards,
jim_schulman Senior Member Joined: 19 Dec 2001 Posts: 3,772 Location: Chicago Expertise: I live coffee
Posted Sun Nov 24, 2002, 6:05pm Subject: Re: What is sugar roasted mean?
hirsato Said:
Dear Sir:
I see you have your answer and it is a good one. I thought I might share some of what we do for sugar roasting. We roast at our farm with the sugar cane that we grow. We use a large amount of sugar as the previous writer explains and it is slowly coating on the beans as they go through the roasting process. We hand roast for our own use and then machine roast for our packing and distribution in areas of Honduras. We fine the people like the flavor and it smooths the coffee to a really wonderful taste. Our coffee starts out as a shade grown high altitude above 3700 feet arabicia bean of high quality developed by the agricultural department in 1990 for our use. We enjoy sugar coated and yet we market much of our coffee without the sugar coating as there are so many different people with different taste. I hope you enjoy the sugar coatings as they usually represent the true farm culture of a coffee grower from the old farms. regards,
Symbols: = New Posts since your last visit = No New Posts since last visit = Newest post
Forum Rules: No profanity, illegal acts or personal attacks will be tolerated in these discussion boards. No commercial posting of any nature will be tolerated; only private sales by private individuals, in the "Buy and Sell" forum. No cross posting allowed - do not post your topic to more than one forum, nor repost a topic to the same forum. Who Can Read The Forum? Anyone can read posts in these discussion boards. Who Can Post New Topics? Any registered CoffeeGeek member can post new topics. Who Can Post Replies? Any registered CoffeeGeek member can post replies. Can Photos be posted? Anyone can post photos in their new topics or replies. Who can change or delete posts? Any CoffeeGeek member can edit their own posts. Only moderators can delete posts. Probationary Period: If you are a new signup for CoffeeGeek, you cannot promote, endorse, criticise or otherwise post an unsolicited endorsement for any company, product or service in your first five postings.
= No New Posts since last visit 