Awful Lot Of Coffee

A Houston Chronicle story this morning reports that the volume of coffee is up at the Port of Houston, and that’s a good thing. 

Coffee in the form of green unroasted beans has been a huge part of the commerce at the port for years, but took a huge surge after 2003.  That is when Houston became only the fourth US port certified as a green coffee exchange port by the Intercontinental Exchange, the organization that controls the trade of Arabica beans.

Years ago, when I was a service technician for 3M, part of my territory was the port.  I often made service calls on warehouses where green coffee was stored.  I was surprised to learn that green coffee doesn’t smell much at all – certainly doesn’t give off that wonderful aroma that covered the east side of town when the Maxwell House plant on Harrisburg Boulevard was roasting beans.

One of my first calls to a terminal warehouse full of coffee beans was to a warehouse that had previously stored bales of untreated cow hides.  Those hides had permeated the warehouse with the smell of rancid meat – that’s a smell that could turn you off of coffee forever.