All arabica coffee is genetically similar: how can beans taste so different?

As an engineer and a lover of coffee with a barista certificate...<p>* soil,<p>* climate,<p>* harvesting process (for example, you get different results if have somebody harvest by hand the ones that are ripe vs when you send a machine to harvest an entire side of a hill),<p>* fermentation&#x2F;preparation process,<p>* roasting process,<p>And that is before even you choose what you do with your beans. Any grinding, brewing method will produce potentially very different flavour profile because coffee brewing is notoriously sensitive to minute changes in grind sizes, grind size consistency, temperature, pressure, duration, level of flow of water through the grinds, etc.<p>And then the question of how much you dilute the brew or what you add to it.<p>You can get very different results from two different processes:<p>a) make espresso into the cup, pour milk, add ice<p>b) put ice into the cup, make espresso over the ice, pour milk onto it<p>which is exact same ingredients, just a different order.<p>You can get the coffee to taste very, very differently based on what you put in your mouth <i>before</i> you drink the coffee. Try drinking a sip of coffee, then put a piece of cake in your mouth, eat the piece, then make another sip of coffee. You will find the coffee now tastes completely different.<p>The dimensionality of the space of all parameters is enormous.

When I was a kid, we had a pear tree growing in our yard. Yet the various foods which mom made from the pears varied greatly in taste.<p>With the pears, it was visually obvious to the pear-pickers (us kids) that each pear was different, and that their character varied from year to year. (I&#x27;d guess based mostly on weather.) Similarly obvious how pears that were only cooked enough to start melting the ice cream scooped onto them would taste quite different from pears cooked down into jam, or pears that were caramelized in a fry pan (to be put on top of ice cream), or...

Headline: All arabica coffee is genetically similar<p>But:<p>&gt; The study found evidence of significant chromosomal rearrangements, especially in a varietal of C. arabica called Bourbon. There were deletions, in which fragments of chromosomes were missing — in some cases large chunks — and even instances in which entire chromosomes were absent.<p>Does this really count as genetically similar? I would have imagined that the presence and order of genes was an important aspect of genetic variation.

I’ve loved the concept of <i>terrior</i> since first hearing it:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Terroir" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Terroir</a><p>Seems to not only explain crops and tastes but also more abstractly people, and the differences in outcomes by zip codes, for instance. You are where you grow.

Generally, an organism&#x27;s phenotypes (observable characteristics) are a combination of its genes <i>and</i> its environment.<p>It&#x27;s a bit like saying &quot;These twins are genetically identical despite growing up at different altitudes, so how can their skin tone be so different?&quot;

Brassica oleracea would have a word there.

This matters a great deal as the coffee crops are under threat from climate change and if they are to survive at scale will need broad domestication. Large scale effort is going into it as it is a very important cash crop.<p>Understanding where they get their flavor and how to replicate it can only lead to better success in this effort.

Best example of this are the coats of cloned cats. Genetically identical but they look very different. Nature vs. Nurture is an old question but it&#x27;s hard to appreciate the things that nurture encompasses that on the face might seem purely &quot;Nature.&quot;

Didn’t see it mentioned anywhere but this is a great espresso resource: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;espressoaf.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;espressoaf.com&#x2F;</a>

I wonder how much of it is simply fake&#x2F;psychological like wine tasting.

See: dogs.

Flower farmer here. Without reading: terroir. All coffee is grown in soil and the soil around the world is different. All plants will grow if they get the right inputs (water&#x2F;light&#x2F;air&#x2F;macros&#x2F;micros), but how they grow and the makeup of their harvestable material is going to vary by the _amounts_ and _timing_ of those inputs. I&#x27;d expect the same harvesting and roasting techniques applied to beans sourced from opposite ends of the earth would perform differently.

Terroir. That’s it, that’s the post.

All coffee and all wine tastes the same to me, can people really tell the difference or is it mostly an upper class pantomime?

The headline isn’t the original paper authors’ fault, rather the news side of the Nature editorial office. Sadly it leans on an all-to-prevalent crutch and oversimplification of the genetics field. A large component of coffee taste comes from processing after picking, which includes several fermentations. Massive flavor swings occur here, but are left unmentioned. Not everything is in genes .<p>We don’t even need to discuss roast and brew chemistry.