The lastest “it” flour: coffee.
Google chefs create treats with coffee pulp made into flour
When sipping that daily espresso, cappuccino or other cup of coffee, you may pride yourself in knowing where the beans originated, their roasting method and whether they’re Fair Trade certified. But what you might not realize is that every pound of coffee produced creates an almost equal amount of waste.
With the movement to quash food squandering reaching a fevered pitch these days, complete with its own hashtag, #foodwaste, a number of companies are taking notice. They’re reclaiming coffee pulp waste that was once discarded and transforming it into an array of new beverage and food products.
Chief among them is Coffee Flour. Headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, with its sales and business development office in Redwood City, it is the first company to dry and mill the coffee pulp on a large scale, turning it into a type of gluten-free flour that has five times the fiber of whole wheat flour and more iron than any other grain.
“Our goal is to get billions of pounds of wasted nutrition onto the global menu,” says Andrew Fedak, co-founder of Coffee Flour.
Coffee flour already has been turned into pastas, breads and other baked goods served regularly at Google in Mountain View. Google chefs, who have been experimenting with the flour for more than a year, have found it to be a hit especially in waffles, chocolate chip cookies, and chili, which takes on an especially rich color reminiscent of Mexican mole, says Helene York, Bon Appetit’s global director of responsible business, working for Google.
“One of the foundational pillars of the Google food program is innovation,’’ says York, who adds that Google will eventually serve the Coffee Flour products in all its cafes worldwide. “We are encouraged to try new products, especially products that could be game-changing. Coffee Flour exemplifies that idea.’’
New York chef Dan Barber featured it in dishes this spring at his WastED pop-ups devoted to food waste and re-use. In June, Brooklyn Roasting Co. became the first coffee cafe in the country to sell baked goods made with coffee flour. The gluten-free brownies, cookies and coffee cake have sold exceedingly well at its four locations, says co-owner Michael Pollack.
Coffee flour also is a prime ingredient in new Earnest Eats hot cereal cups sold at Sprouts markets. It’s in Yebo energy bars. Later this year, it will star in a new variety of Jcoco chocolate bars. And next year, Coffee Flour hopes to start selling its own baking mixes. (The flour is not yet sold directly to consumers.)
Although the flour maintains a marginal level of caffeine, it actually tastes nothing like coffee. Instead, it has a strong citrusy, cherry flavor that can be overpowering if used in large quantities. When added to chocolate, it dampens bitterness and heightens spiciness. Because of its density, it requires more moisture when used in baking, which makes it better suited to being blended with other flours rather than used on its own.
Coffee pulp waste is produced when the coffee bean is separated from its fruit, called the cherry. That leftover cherry pulp can be used as fertilizer or to feed livestock, but most of it ends up as waste, often polluting rivers, according to Dan Belliveau, co-founder of Coffee Flour and former technical director for Starbucks.
Coffee Flour offers coffee farmers an outlet for that waste. It is gathered at the harvest site in various coffee-producing regions, then shipped to Apfells Coffee Co. in Los Angeles, where it is milled.
“We pay (the farmers) after we sell the flour,” Fedak says. “In some cases, they are now making 25 percent more in annual income.”
Established four years ago, Coffee Flour is now working with 25 percent of the global coffee crop, roughly 4 billion pounds, Fedak says. By the end of next year, it anticipates producing 10 million pounds of flour through processes developed with the aid of Intellectual Ventures, the Bellevue, Wash., company founded by Nathan Myhrvold of Microsoft and “Modernist Cuisine” fame.
Coffee Flour is not the only company to reuse coffee waste. Oakland’s Back to the Roots turned 5 million pounds of spent Peet’s coffee grounds into the growing medium for its mushroom-sprouting kits before switching to farm waste such as rice hulls, wheat bran and husks. Verve Coffee Roasters of Santa Cruz makes Cascara, a tea created from the skin and pulp of coffee cherries. And KonaRed of Hawaii makes an energy drink from coffee fruit grown on the Big Island.
“None of this is waste,” says Danielle Nierenberg, president of Food Tank, a nonprofit that spotlights sustainable ways to alleviate hunger, obesity and poverty. “Everything can be used. Any value-added product that can raise awareness and benefit small farmers is worthwhile.’’
“We are encouraged to try new products, especially products that could be game-changing. Coffee Flour exemplifies that idea.’’
Helene York, working for Google