Coffea stenophylla: A forgotten bean that could save coffee from extinction

Maybe the answer is for someone to work on boosting natural caffeine levels in yaupon holly tea.

It grows wild all over the SE US and can withstand multi-year drought or regular floods though it does best in a situation where it gets regular rainfall. You may have some in your own yard used as a hedge plant. I have several large trees on my place. It spreads underground by suckers and will take over an area if you do nothing to contain it. It is very strong once it forms a thicket. I have driven across a yaupon thicket in a seismic buggy and been in a situation where none of the tires were touching the ground as I drove because I was crossing a thick tangle of yaupon that supported the vehicle.

Caffeine levels are lower than coffee beans (40-60 mg versus >150 mg I think). Yaupon does also have theobromines, vasodilators, that are supposed to help it prevent the caffeine crash.

I have some leaves dried and drink it make a tea occasionally when I want a boost but not a cup of coffee level boost. It tastes great and is easy to prepare at home.

[0]https://yauponbrothers.com/blogs/news/is-yaupon-better-than-...

There are other sources of information about yaupon holly. It is proposed that the British naturalist who discovered Native Americans using it in their own ceremonies and drinking it casually decided to name it ilex vomitoria not because it was dangerous or poisonous to consume but because since it grew wild in the colonies, it could be a serious competitor to English tea so he used the name to make it less attractive.

There are so many interesting native plants that provide alternatives to our extremely rigid globalized food systems.

Also to note Ilex vomitoria is in the same genus as yerba mate, Ilex paraguariensis.

Can you rebrand a species? Drinking vomitoria sounds less than appetizing.

Yes you can. See Patagonian Toothfish -> Chilean Seabass.

Or Chinese Gooseberry -> Kiwi Fruit.

Maybe I’m just too deep into coffee at this point, but unless yaupon has different origins, processes, or varietals, I don’t really see folks in the specialty coffee world making the switch.

That said, it is interesting, and I’d definitely give it a try.

Some people do drink coffee just for the caffeine—but those folks aren’t usually worried about beans or brew methods. They’re just as likely to grab an energy drink or whatever’s convenient.

But for a lot of us, coffee’s more than that. There’s a whole culture around it, and I don’t see that going away anytime soon.

Then again, I'm deep into coffee, so I'm probably biased.

Oilseed rape / rapeseed became canola. Anything is possible.

To be fair, a lot of Asian ingredients have picked up such weird English translations that they could use a rebrand. Case in point: "Prickly pear ash" is an amazingly unappetizing translation of the spice's proper name, sanshō or sancho.

The naming of yaupon really ticks me off, of all the things that should get a scientific rename it's yaupon, clearly it was a successful marketing effort by the Empire, er, by the British to knock out a delicious and ubiquitous competitor.

> Maybe the answer is for someone to work on boosting natural caffeine levels in yaupon holly tea

The problem isn't getting caffeine, though. You can buy a tub of 200mg caffeine pills for $3. People like coffee. Substituting coffee isn't just a matter of caffeine for drinkers.

I agree. You can get your caffeine boost from a pill if that floats your boat. I too love coffee and for a variety of reasons. I was only mentioning that there is a native plant that produces caffeine and has a pleasant taste so that it could serve as a caffeine (or tea) substitute in the event that supplies of real coffee became unreliable for any reason.

I drink lots of coffee and various teas.

I can see the guy now as the realization that this native plant could undermine the British East India tea trade if people came to enjoy yaupon tea. It probably didn't take any convincing to get him to assign such an uninviting name to the plant and in doing so, save one of the British Empire's main trade items.

It was definitely a chickenshit move on his part though.

I agree that there is no likelihood that coffee snobs are gonna jump to yaupon tea. I mentioned this really just to point out that there is a native plant here in North America that produces caffeine so if one day we wake up and supplies of the real beans are short or interrupted for long periods we will have something totally free to brew up for a caffeine hit. If you're out camping in an area where yaupon grows wild you can always grab a few leaves, wash them and dry them until they're brown, crush them and boil some tea water. No need for a late night cup of coffee that could keep you too wired to rest when you can enjoy a simple cup of yaupon tea that won't leave you wired.

I drink a lot of coffee too. I enjoy the flavor and hanging around without a cup of coffee feels strange. Sometimes I just add some boiling water to the dust in the coffee cup, stir it up and see what happens. I've certainly had worse at more gas stations than I care to remember.

I enjoy checking all the native plants growing on my place. I discovered another yesterday that I would love to eradicate since it really takes over quickly.

It's in the geranium family Geraniaceae, and is one of the most ancient cultivated plants around. Its use was so common that it has spread from the Mediterranean area where it is native to most every other inhabited place. People ate it and fed it to their animals and it was used as a medicine so they had multiple reasons to carry some with them as they migrated across the landscape.

Redstem Stork's Bill [0]https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47687-Erodium-cicutarium

Supposed to taste like a parsley. I ate some yesterday and agree that it is close to parsley with a slightly more sharp flavor if you just eat the leaves and stems. I tried some of the seed pods and that was a no-go. They would need to be cooked to be edible since they are hard and fibrous raw. I haven't tried the root yet.

It's unlikely that I will ever eat my way out of this invasive infestation but I will add some to the salad to see whether my wife notices.

As the article states, the taste is complex beyond our understanding.

"When it comes to taste, coffee is amazingly complex. A single cup may contain up to 1,200 volatile compounds. Yet what you perceive in a cup depends on many things besides the plant’s genome: the environment in which it grew, the weather, the roast, the water used for brewing. Even the color of the cup matters. White makes coffee seem more intense, while clear glass makes it seem sweeter."

Yeah, pretty much. I drink tea from time to time, but I still prefer coffee. I don't know, feels more earthy or fuller? I also like the smell better.

Is that prickly ash? Like a toothache tree with all the sharp spikes on the trunk?

It looks like sancho is the berry produced by the tree. The leaves look similar to our toothache tree or Hercules Club as some call it. I know that the bark here in NAmerica has been used as a local anesthetic for a long time. It produces a tingly, numbing sensation when it becomes wet. I have used the bark to numb gums or throat pain. I never tried the berries.

My tree here died in the last drought. It was a birdshit variety since it was growing along the fence. The seed was dropped by a bird as it rested on the fence and I got a tree as a result! Gotta wait for the next one I guess.

I always thought it was called that because it was used by native Americans to make 'black drink' which they consumed ceremonially, tending to vomit afterwards.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaupon_tea

Does it taste better than Yerba Mate? That is definitely an "acquired taste" and while you can get used to it and even like it as much as tea, I don't think it can hold a candle to coffee.

Try loose leaf tea, specifically roasted oolong, black teas, or pu erh. r/tea has a good wiki on which reputable vendors to buy from [0].

[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/tea/wiki/vendors/page_01

"Prickly ash" is an ingredient in Chinese cuisine, particularly Szechuan cooking. We buy it in quantity at Asian groceries where it's pretty inexpensive.

In the US it's known as "Szechuan peppercorn". Preparing it for use requires carefully inspecting a handful for stems and thorns (which can be quite big), pan toasting and crushing/grinding to a coarse powder.

As pointed out in the sister comment, the spice has a mild numbing effect which counters the heat of chilis. Adding a little to hot dishes makes the flavor more complex and enjoyable.

For people who like to cook it's an ingredient worth experimenting with across culinary boundaries.

Different tree, same genus. I'm not sure if all species (of 250+) in the genus have edible fruit, but the berries of several Asian species are harvested for spices, including Sichuan Peppercorns, which are made from the dried berries.

I would bet that the flavor (citrusy, with a numbing effect) is similar among all the species, but varies in strength and pungency. I'm not sure if I would bet that any species is safe to eat, however.

Part of the problem with the English translations is this ambiguity. Sansho comes from a different species (Zanthoxylum piperitum) of the same genus, native to Japan and Korea. The flavor is different, but reminiscent. I keep both sansho and red Sichuan peppercorns for use in different dishes.

You might enjoy roasted dandelion root tea. The taste is about as earthy as it gets. Also, as a bitter herb it's great for digestion.

I'll need to look into the ways the tree was used by Native Americans and early settlers. I have known about the use of the bark for decades but don't recall anything about other parts of the tree. Thanks for the information.

It tastes nothing like coffee though. It tastes like other things that kind of taste like coffee, like chicory. They taste sort of like coffee and dandelion sort of tastes like them, so it's a little too removed.

tbh i drink a coffee in the morning every day, no sugar, i think it tastes objectively terrible, like bitter dirt, but it's hijacked my reward pathway in the same way that nicotine or ethanol does, that it makes me enjoy the taste somehow

Just out of interest: do you notice any difference at all between different brands of coffee? I am with on the idea that coffee tastes awful, but despite that I still prefer certain brands that taste subjectively better.

There are thousands of ways to enjoy coffee. I’m not a coffee nerd at all, but getting a whole bean that you like from a reputable (local if possible) roaster and grinding it yourself is pretty easy and you get coffee that’s considerably better than grocery store ground coffee. You have to try several different beans and brands to get an idea for what’s available, buy 8-10 ounce packs at a time then when you find one you like buy in bulk. Also, anything in pods is absolute garbage, so don’t even consider it.

Try adding cocoa powder, no sugar. Add the powder first, coffee liquid afterwards to minimize clumping.

The cocoa itself is quite good for you, dissolving it will cool the coffee, and it will deepen the flavor.

I should try cinnamon with this.

Edit: dutch-process cocoa powder uses sodium hydroxide to reduce acidity of cocoa. Non-"dutched" cocoa is much more healthy, but alas acidic.

I bought a case of Aldi's gingerbread coffee a year and a half ago. I am down to my last three bags. I like flavored coffees.

Maybe there is that, but it can also just be an acquired test.

No one likes bitterness initially, the ability to taste bitterness is essentially a poison detector, but it may still trigger with substances that are safe, at least at the dosage you are taking them. As you age, you get to recognize these safe cases with your other senses and override your poison detector, which lets you appreciate the taste.

Herbal tea, tonic water, grapefruit juice, etc... All bitter, and most people dislike them initially, but after a while some will appreciate, and people don't drink them for the psychoactive effect.

Personally, cinnamon and coffee can be a good combination, though it can get old too.

Cacao nibs and cocoa in general taste worse to me than coffee does, alone or with coffee. They belong in chocolate and nothing else (served to me, anyway).

Will take a look!

Will try!

You need to learn how to brew coffee, friend.

Bitter generally means "overextracted" (and sour is the indicator for underextracted) The remedy is some combination of cooler water (maybe 90C), shorter brewing time, coarser grind. Also, wait for it to cool off - excellent coffee is almost always bitter when piping hot, but gets delicious when it has become warm.

Freshly roasted beans, and freshly ground for the brew, is crucial as well. Green beans keep their flavor for, let's say, 15 months. Roasted 15 days. Ground 15 minutes. All preground coffee in the grocery store is garbage. (Let alone instant coffee, which was low-grade to begin with, brewed en masse, rapidly dehydrated, and the remaining solids put in a jar for rehydration)

Of course, many have no interest in any of this process, and that's fine. But they're stuck with bland and/or bitter coffee...

Though, you don't need anything fancy to make good coffee. French press is dead-simple and consistent, and you don't even need a French press - you can use any recipient (eg a jar) and then just carefully pour the coffee out and try to leave the sludge behind. A careful Cowboy coffee, essentially.

Give it a try - you might get some enjoyment out of your addiction. Though, I've basically quit coffee altogether as my body has become immensely sensitive to caffeine, to the extent that half a cup daily will subtly mess up my whole life.

> You can buy a tub of 200mg caffeine pills for $3

The vast majority of caffeine that is available to add to products is extracted from coffee arabica. Either from the creation of decaf coffee or from other plant matter. IE caffeine is a useful byproduct of coffee arabica production.

There are most definitely other sources of caffeine, but if coffee arabica is no longer grown/harvested in the quantity it is currently, you would expect the cost of caffeine to increase significantly. I doubt we’d have shortages or anything like that, but I suppose it’s possible.