I am not a coffee connoisseur but I love drinking coffee.
I make drip coffee every day at work and consider myself inoperable or maybe non-human yet before I have my cup of coffee in the morning. So if you see me in the morning and I look angry, please don’t take it personally.. I probably just haven’t had my coffee yet.
If I had a bigger place, I would learn how to make proper coffee at home but… #JapanTinyApartments.
So I just settle for an occasional trip to random cafes and trying out different coffees. That’s why when I was at Guesthouse Haretel in Shimane, I just had to try their specialty coffee and I really liked it! I can drink black coffee when it’s really good, but I add soy milk if it’s not and I can drink their coffee black.
The ARMS Method has a very interesting approach to making coffee and the barista was also funny.
What is the ARMS Method®?
–The name is derived from the abbreviation for the Association of Roasting Method Spreading (Japan Roasting Method Spreading Association, a general incorporated association). The Arms Method® is based on both extraction theory and roasting theory. By first learning the proper extraction techniques, you will be able to accurately judge the results of the roasting.
ARMS METHOD (Step by step):
1. First they Wash the beans for the first time in 50°C water.
–Even though the beans are so dirty, most people (over 90%) roast them without washing them. They roast the beans with the dirt still on them and then drip and drink them as is, so they drink the dirt as well. They say that they “burn off the dirt,” but roasting doesn’t remove the dirt. It’s the same as roasting and eating vegetables or fish with muddy water on them without washing them. Raw beans also contain moldy beans. Mold bacteria die when heated, but mycotoxins remain. The mold toxins aflatoxin and ochratoxin A remain even when heated at 300°C for an hour. The maximum temperature for roasting is around 210-240°C for around 30 minutes, so the mycotoxins enter the body while remaining.
What would happen if you roasted and drank these dirty raw beans without washing them?
- Local water (not suitable for drinking)
- Mold and mycotoxins
- Pesticides (post-harvest)
- Junk such as hemp thread, plastic pieces, dirt, dust, etc.
The above items are roasted together and ingested into the body.
Stomach bloating (pain), frequent urinary tract infections (diuretic), chest discomfort, headaches, stomach problems, and an unpleasant itchy feeling in the tongue and back of the throat that lingers after drinking. These symptoms are not caused by the natural ingredients in coffee, but by the above-mentioned polluting ingredients. Arms Coffee® is a coffee that even those who don’t like or can’t drink coffee can enjoy.
After reading that, I don’t want to drink just any coffee anymore. I never understood why some people prefer to buy their beans from a specialty store, now I do.
2. Picking out defective beans before roasting. (They do this 2-3 times after wash because it’s easier to pick the defective ones after washing.)
If you carefully pick out defective beans such as moldy beans, wash off the mycotoxins, dirt, and pesticides (post-harvest) on the raw beans with hot water at 50℃, dry roast the beans to the core with steam roasting, and remove the local water, you can make safe and delicious coffee even when it cools down. Coffee is a very healthy drink if you wash it.
“With the Arms Method, we visually pick out defective beans such as moldy beans, worm-eaten beans, and deformed beans. No matter how high the grade of beans, there will be defective beans. 5-8% of the beans are defective. Until now, there has never been a batch without moldy beans. It takes 10-15 minutes to pick 500g of raw beans.“
At roasters that roast 5-10 kg at a time, the time spent on picking varies. Carefully checking each bean for moldy beans takes about 2 hours to carefully pick 5 kg of raw beans. Some roasters take about 2 hours, some take about 30 minutes, some finish in about 10 minutes, and other roasters don’t pick at all.
3. Wash again with 50℃ water
4. Steam roasting
-The washed beans are roasted while still wet. By steaming, heat is applied to the core of the beans, and the local water that seeped in during the refining process can be removed. This prevents the inside of the beans from being undercooked, and the beans can be roasted without burning or smoking the surface.
After roasting, some roasters use a “Destoner“ to remove impurities such as dust that is lighter than the beans, and impurities such as stones that are heavier than the beans, and some roasters remove light-colored immature beans by visual inspection, but moldy and other dirty beans cannot be distinguished after roasting and cannot be removed.
4. First Drip®
-When dripping, the entire amount is not extracted, but only the first liquid that is free of impurities is extracted so Arms Coffee only brews the first 100ml without any impurities.
The concentrated concentrate is then diluted with hot water. The concentration can be adjusted to your preference by diluting it 2.5 to 3 times. This is the same principle as making dashi in Japanese cuisine, and is the first step in extracting dashi. As long as you have the concentrate, you can easily drink it hot or iced. You can also enjoy it in a variety of ways, such as cafe au lait, espresso, Vienna coffee, Irish coffee, and affogato.
Full procedure is on their website, Japanese and English available.
Please read more on their website because it is very interesting. It may change the way you want your coffee, because it definitely did for me.
