Surrogates — Anything but the coffee

James Harper:

So Jonathan, a few months ago, I went on a very long trip, two or three weeks. I was in Colombia, Mexico, recording material for an upcoming podcast series. Very nice.

Very, very nice. Had a wonderful time. The thing about this sort of business solo travel is that I have a lot of time to myself.

And I ended up listening to over 50 hours of Dan Callen's hardcore history podcast. I hope you're charging him for the shout out there, James. I started from 1914, the beginning of the First World War, all the way to the Japanese surrender

And it just got me reflecting how, you know, especially these days, war, it sometimes feels like it's just on the horizon.

Jonathan Morris:

Yeah, definitely.

James Harper:

And I got me wondering, like, what would we do if indeed we found ourselves in the middle of a war? You know, international shipping grinds to a halt. What would we do if we couldn't get coffee?

Jonathan Morris:

Well, you are correct about, you know, what happens in a war. Shipping, big problem. Basically, what happens is you have to have something else that tastes like coffee.

Because once you have people who want coffee, then in a way, you've got to give them something that makes them think they have something like coffee. And that's really what we would call a coffee surrogate. A surrogate.

A surrogate. We have surrogate coffee, just like we have surrogate mothers. But I mean, war is not the only reason that people lose access to coffee.

Economic mismanagement, political mismanagement. You know, we've seen the ways that tariffs have gone up and down. Trump and his tariffs.

And then there's the whole health scares around coffee and, you know, is coffee good for you? Is coffee bad for you? Maybe you shouldn't be drinking coffee.

James Harper:

So there will be times in the future where coffee disappears again. We're going to have to drink things that are coffee surrogates. Yeah.

But I mean, come on, how concerned should we be? That looks disgusting. You put petroleum into a cup.

Jonathan Morris:

Based on our experiences, James, very, very, very concerned.

James Harper:

Well, it looks like filter coffee. Mmm.

Jonathan Morris:

James has just run to the sink.

James Harper:

And so has Jonathan. I'm James Harper, creator of Filter Stories, a coffee documentary podcast.

Jonathan Morris:

I'm Jonathan Morris, professional historian of coffee, author of the book Coffee, A Global History.

James Harper:

And this is A History of Coffee, the story of how a psychoactive seed changed the world and continues to shape our lives today. This is our third series on the history of coffee. And in this episode, we're exploring the history of coffee surrogates.

Jonathan Morris:

Why we couldn't get access to coffee or we didn't want access to coffee. What happened when we've been forced to drink something else instead, and whether we can be tempted away from the coffee drink that we all love.

James Harper:

So before we go deeper into the story of surrogates, I want to take a moment here to give a huge thanks to Malkoenig, manufacturers of coffee grinders, who have supported us to create this series, so we can create a free educational resource for the coffee community.

Jonathan Morris:

That's right. We went to Hamburg, we went to the Malkoenig factory, and we took with us my good friend and colleague Margrit.

Margrit Schulte-Bierbühl:

I'm a professor of history at the University of Dusseldorf.

Jonathan Morris:

And Margrit has probably pulled even fewer espressos than I have. This seemed like a good challenge for their new technology, James.

James Harper:

Yes, so their new espresso grinders have technology called grind-by-sync, where basically the grinder talks to the espresso machine, and if a shot is running too fast or too slow, the grinder automatically adjusts. But could it handle Margrit? Margrit, do you want to have a turn making a coffee?

Margrit Schulte-Bierbühl:

Oh my god, I never did this before.

Jonathan Morris:

That's why I'm asking you to do it.

James Harper:

We loaded up the hopper with some decaf beans. But before Margrit got behind the espresso machine, you know, we pulled a shot just to see if we were in the ballpark, but we weren't. Wow, that is bursting out like a rocket.

Jonathan Morris:

That is going to require some adjustment.

James Harper:

And it was running so fast because we were using decaf beans, which fracture differently when they grind. As Ansgar, one of Margrit's product managers, explained to us.

Ansgar (Mahlkönig product manager):

Because of this density of the beans, we need to grind much, much finer.

James Harper:

And so we adjusted the grind. And what's amazing is that Margrit could measure the precise distance between the burrs to the micron.

Jonathan Morris:

Correct. So in fact, we moved it from 120 microns down to 60, James. We have halved the grind setting.

James Harper:

And then finally, Margrit was let loose on the espresso machine. So left, spin it left, yeah, up, and then spin right. So Margrit, you have never made an espresso before.

Margrit Schulte-Bierbühl:

No, never.

James Harper:

And yet, with this technology.

Margrit Schulte-Bierbühl:

I can do this.

Jonathan Morris:

That's extraordinary.

Margrit Schulte-Bierbühl:

Yeah.

Jonathan Morris:

Her first shot was just a couple of seconds off target.

James Harper:

That fast. Now it's going to auto adjust here. So instead of Margrit struggling with a grinder and trying to adjust the grind setting, it just did it by itself.

The burrs automatically adjusted by a couple of microns so that the next shot she produced would be bang on. Very impressive technology.

Jonathan Morris:

So the point of all this, James, is once again that we need to say thank you to Malkoenig, because what they've done is to enable us to create this free educational resource for the coffee community. They have.

James Harper:

And if you are curious about how this grind by sink technology actually works, or if you want to see one of Malkoenig's beautiful Hamburg-built grinders up close, we've got a link in the show notes. And now, back to the surrogate story. Okay, so Jonathan.

Coffee surrogates. A surrogate is like a replacement. Correct.

For coffee to be replaced by something else, coffee has to be pretty firmly established in the first place, right? For people to even say that something's going to be a coffee surrogate. That's a fair point.

Yes. So my question is, what's an early point in history where coffee, it's super established, so established indeed that you need a surrogate? Because coffee disappears.

Jonathan Morris:

The French Revolution. So in the French Revolution, there were revolutionary crowds, and part of their demands when they put them on posters was better access to coffee. Wow.

They wanted to be able to drink coffee. They were protesting against the price of coffee. They're protesting against the difficulty of accessing coffee.

So at that point, we can say, yeah, it looks like there's a demand to at least be able to drink coffee. Let's test your history. I always enjoy testing your history, James.

Yeah. So the French Revolution, you know, all the French revolutionary leaders, yeah, people like Robespierre, the Directory, all of that kind of stuff. Who comes along and changes that?

Maybe stabilizes it in some weird way.

James Harper:

Ah, yes. Well, the only person I frankly know about when it comes to the French Revolution is, of course, Napoleon. Are we?

Jonathan Morris:

Napoleon. Napoleon Emperor. So what does he do?

Well, he likes war. You may have noticed this. Napoleon liked making war.

He did. But who was Napoleon's most detested country? Okay, well, I think it's the British.

That rivalry between the French and the British is so deep. Absolutely. So as this descends into conflict, the British have one big advantage over the French.

And that is we have the Navy. We have the ability with the Navy to blockade the seas. And what can we stop coming in to France?

Anything coming across the Atlantic. So France has a problem. Yeah.

The Emperor Napoleon has a big problem.

James Harper:

Right, because coffee is a tropical plant. And coffee is grown on a lot of islands in the Caribbean. Correct.

And to transport that coffee back to France, you have to go via the Atlantic. But the British have ships there. That coffee is not going to get through.

Correct. So what do the French do?

Jonathan Morris:

Simple answer is they start looking for a surrogate. And the big surrogate that they go for is bits of acorn, dandelion, chicory. Wow.

You know, all of these are the things that they start roasting to produce basically burnt bits of fibre that you can turn into something that looks like coffee.

James Harper:

So acorn, dandelion and chicory. These are things you can grow in France quite happily.

Jonathan Morris:

Yeah, well, these are things almost growing wild in France, aren't they?

James Harper:

Right. And then you just have to roast them up, grind them up, add water and voila. You have something that looks kind of like coffee.

Yeah. So Jonathan, for this episode, what we really wanted to do was put these surrogates to our lips. Put ourselves in the shoes of the poor people of France to drink this stuff during this moment in history.

We made a long list of surrogates.

Jonathan Morris:

One, two, three.

James Harper:

I took half the list. You took the other half. And we tried to get our hands on a dozen odd surrogates.

Yeah. These are commercially available surrogates that you could buy right now. In fact, we'll have links in the show notes if our dear listeners want to put themselves through the torture we also put ourselves through.

Through the tasting experience, James.

Jonathan Morris:

Acorn.

James Harper:

We went down to the roastery of your local roaster, your friend, Colin Smith. Smith's Coffee Roastery.

Jonathan Morris:

Yeah. So, I mean, Colin is not just my friend. I mean, Colin, as you say, he's been in roasting, goodness knows, well over 50, 60 years, I should think.

Colin is twice president of the Specialty Coffee Association of Europe. His knowledge of coffee is incredible. Colin goes all the way from commercial coffee up to specialty grade coffee.

And he does a lot of work locally, including with our local hospice, St. Francis.

James Harper:

He's in his late 70s and has a lot of experience. And he joined us in the tasting. Yeah.

Which you'll hear some of him as well. But the first thing we did at the cupping lab in Smith's is we tasted acorn coffee.

Jonathan Morris:

So, acorn. Acorn.

James Harper:

Looks like coffee. Just looking at it in the spoon. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Here we go. Oh, God, that is something.

Jonathan Morris:

Bloody hell.

James Harper:

Oh, God, that is awful.

Colin Smith:

That is dry. It got extremely dried. Finish.

James Harper:

It's astringent. Now, of course, tasting these surrogates like this in a cupping is not how the French would have drank their acorn coffee. It would have been blended with other things.

They probably would have added milk. And maybe it wouldn't have been this strong either. So what we also did is dilute it to see if it tastes any better.

It's better diluted. The bitterness is not as intense.

Colin Smith:

I think it's got a coffee essence about it. The actual texture of the drink is very similar to coffee.

James Harper:

So, concluding on the acorn coffee, it was pretty awful. Yeah. All right.

So, dandelion. Here we go. So then we tried the dandelion.

Colin Smith:

Oh, my God.

Jonathan Morris:

He's just found out. Bloody hell.

Colin Smith:

It's awful.

Jonathan Morris:

That's got a huge sweetness to it. And it's so... It's like sickly in the mouth.

In the middle, it's just like...

James Harper:

Slapsy. Slapsy. Syrupy.

We again diluted it just to see if it helped things. Oh. Oh, dear God.

Colin Smith:

It's not as intense, not as bitter. Very soft in its texture. But it does have that sort of sweetness which you would get from the smell.

Jonathan Morris:

Yeah, I think that's vegetative, isn't it?

James Harper:

Vegetative, that's the word. That's a very good word.

Jonathan Morris:

That's the word. I mean, sickly. That's the word I would use.

Really sickly.

James Harper:

Look, it wasn't as bad as the acorn. But I really wouldn't want to drink that on a regular basis. No.

And then we came to the final thing. The French were forced to drink back in the day. Yeah.

200 odd years ago. Okay.

Jonathan Morris:

Okay, we go. So here you go.

James Harper:

Chicory root.

Jonathan Morris:

You're now going chicory root.

James Harper:

And I gotta say, chicory, it's not a million miles away from coffee. Oh, interesting. Wow.

Okay, it's bitter. Yes. Syrupy.

Colin Smith:

It's got an aftertaste.

James Harper:

It's got very much an aftertaste.

Colin Smith:

Which is quite interesting. Very sweet.

Jonathan Morris:

Sort of like... Yeah, sweet to slightly sickly. Yeah, sickly, sugary finish.

To me, that one is one that I would say finishes medicinally. But in a way, that is probably the closest to coffee so far.

James Harper:

I'm getting herbal, strong herbal notes out of this one. Don't you think that's almost licorice?

Colin Smith:

It is, yes, yes, you're right. That's interesting.

James Harper:

Yeah, it's not dissimilar to like a darker roasted coffee.

Jonathan Morris:

Compared to the other two, it was sort of closer to coffee. Definitely. So of those, it was definitely the best

James Harper:

Yeah, if you were to like roast coffee very darkly, I could get some of the very darker roasted coffee notes in the chicory.

Jonathan Morris:

And in fact, James, of those three surrogates, our tastes line up with the wider population of the time.

Ansgar (Mahlkönig product manager):

Oh yeah?

Jonathan Morris:

Yeah, because chicory became the most preferred substitute out of those by a long way. No surprises. No surprises.

There's a very interesting article I was reading about acorn coffee the other day, which said you'll find plenty of books, plenty of medical treaties that recommend acorn coffee. You'll find far less evidence of people actually drinking it, particularly once they've had it once. So it was truly bad.

And as they pointed out, you know, we give this to common pigs and there's a reason why.

James Harper:

So if you're going to go to war, check your chicory supply

Jonathan Morris:

But coffee can disappear for more reasons than just war, James. It could disappear because of economic mismanagement, or it could disappear really because of economic ideology. And that we'll explore coming up next.

James Harper:

So Jonathan, we've seen how in times of war, when the French couldn't get coffee, they found chicory and acorn and dandelion. But you suggested that there are more reasons than just war for like why coffee might disappear entirely. And we have to find a surrogate.

Yeah. What are those other reasons?

Jonathan Morris:

Ideological reasons, James. Give me a concrete example of that. So, for example, recently we've seen Trump apply a big tariff briefly to Brazil.

Well, of course, if that had lasted, then it would have been really difficult to get coffee into the States or certainly would have made coffee very difficult to access for a number of, particularly the less well-off. Yeah, right. But there are other regimes, right, that actually have a more economic ideology that just excludes things like coffee.

They're focused on things like luxury and getting rid of what they think are luxury goods or goods that don't really add to basic necessities. So the one that always comes to mind, fascist Italy. Yeah.

James Harper:

So Italy and the Mussolini in the 1920s, 30s and 40s. Why would they be against coffee?

Jonathan Morris:

Because coffee does nothing for productivity as they saw it. Coffee was basically exporting Italian money to go buy the coffee instead of supporting the growth of an Italian economy and the ability to survive, as it were, on their own terms. So autarky, self-sufficiency of a state.

James Harper:

So here we have fascist Italy, right, and the Mussolini. They want to keep their money at home. And they don't want to spend it on coffee, which comes from tropical places from other parts of the world.

So what do they grow in Italy that could be used as a coffee surrogate?

Jonathan Morris:

Aha, orzo. I think that might have been part of your childhood, even. I see you sit up saying, when I say orzo.

Orzo is very famous.

James Harper:

Yeah, you see it everywhere. You go into any coffee bar in Italy today and you could order an espresso or you could order an orzo, caffè orzo.

Jonathan Morris:

And what is in said caffè orzo?

James Harper:

Well, orzo is just grain, like barley.

Jonathan Morris:

Exactly, it's barley. So, of course, Italy can grow grain and barley. And then you had these Italian coffee roasters, or positioning themselves as coffee roasters, who were producing caffè orzo, who were producing various branded coffees, caffiol, etc., all of which were basically surrogate products. So although Italians had increasing desire for coffee, that desire was being satisfied through surrogate coffee rather than real coffee.

James Harper:

Aha, so you're saying that Italians were drinking products that sounded like coffee but weren't coffee. Exactly right. Well, Jonathan, let's get to the tasting then.

Orzoro. Orzoro. We have orzoro, made by Nestlé, actually.

You can find it on supermarket shelves across Italy. And we brewed it up at Smith's. It wasn't bad.

It was not bad at all. Malty, sweet.

Colin Smith:

Tea, a bit, yes.

Jonathan Morris:

It's certainly drinkable. Tea with half a teaspoon of sugar, I think.

Colin Smith:

Very mild. Is it like coffee?

Jonathan Morris:

No, it's like tea.

Colin Smith:

No, it's more like tea. Hasn't got the depth of flavour that coffee's got.

Jonathan Morris:

So Jonathan, yeah, I could see how you could like it. Yeah, that is why, of course, it does have a presence in the Italian market today.

James Harper:

Which is kind of extraordinary, right? Like here we have the Italians practising ortaki, back in fascist Italy, 100 years ago at this point. And that nevertheless has this cultural influence that we still see today.

A lot of Italians, a minority, but a sizable minority of Italians, will drink orzo and love it and prefer it over coffee.

Jonathan Morris:

Absolutely. So James, now I want to take you to a very intriguing little historical anecdote, which is the story of Cuba, a country which has a long coffee history, which has some great coffee. Nonetheless, they have, in Cuba, developed a coffee substitute.

And the reason for that, of course, all ties back to economic ideologies.

James Harper:

All right, tell me more.

Jonathan Morris:

So Cuba, of course, is a coffee producer and Cubans absolutely love their coffee. Cuba became such a big coffee consuming country that famously Cuba, even though it produced coffee, actually was importing coffee. Wow. But post the communist takeover, in the late 50s, and particularly when the US then applies these huge trade sanctions and basically boycotts Cuba, then of course Cuba desperately has to find foreign exchange and it desperately has to find foreign partners and it finds them as we know in the Soviet bloc.

But a result of this is that Cuban coffee doesn't get consumed in Cuba anymore, it gets exported because they need the foreign exchange. So Cubans themselves are going to need something to drink in place of their wonderful coffee.

James Harper:

That's nuts, that is crazy, a coffee producing country exporting all their coffee and turn into surrogates.

Jonathan Morris:

Using surrogate blends. God. Exactly so.

James Harper:

And what do they choose?

Jonathan Morris:

Okay, here we go, ready? Chickpeas, 100%. We're heading in the chickpea, here we go, chickpea time.

100% chickpea. Chickpeas. Please be good, please be good.

James Harper:

Well, what do we make of them? All right, looks like nice filtered brewed coffee. Yeah.

Jonathan, would you believe that roasted brewed chickpea tastes like chickpea? Tastes like roasted chickpea?

Jonathan Morris:

Yes, though at least it wasn't liquid hummus. It's not bitter, it's a little bit sweet.

Colin Smith:

That was very sweet, it's very full of body, lots of body.

Jonathan Morris:

Yeah, not bad. And so, I mean, there are very particular blends even today, I mean, this is another one where you'll actually see openly stated, here is a blend 50% coffee, 50% chickpea.

James Harper:

It's fascinating too, because chickpea, you know, it's one of those foods they grow really well in hot places. Right. All right, so Jonathan, we've now covered two reasons why coffee might disappear.

One is because of war.

Jonathan Morris:

You can't get it in.

James Harper:

Or you could create an economic policy that punishes coffee.

Jonathan Morris:

You stop your population drinking it.

James Harper:

But, as we mentioned at the beginning, there is another reason why you may not be able to drink coffee. Health. Coming up next.

So Jonathan, what we've had so far are examples where for different reasons, people couldn't get coffee and therefore found surrogates. But as soon as circumstances changed, coffee came flooding right back in and people were very happy to stick with coffee. The surrogates were only ever temporary.

And yes, for like a small minority of people, they developed a taste for the surrogate and kind of went in that direction, but most people didn't. But in history, we also have examples of drinks that try to get people off coffee and to keep them off coffee forever. Coffee is abundant, but they're like, no, you shouldn't drink it, even though you easily could.

Jonathan Morris:

Yeah, absolutely. This is the story of the start of the health concerns against coffee. Tell me more.

The late 19th century, this is the point at which coffee really takes off as an industrial mass product in America, creating a general consumer audience, really capturing things. And then we reach kind of the 1890s. There's another movement that's beginning in America, which is this kind of almost what we might today call the well-being movement.

There's two names that I want to use. The first I think will be known to you, and that is John Kellogg. Do you know who John Kellogg is or can you guess?

Awful, awful breakfast cereal. Cornflakes. Exactly.

But Kellogg makes a huge fortune by promoting cornflakes as good for you for breakfast, right? And he also does a whole load of wellness stuff. Among his disciples is a guy called William Post.

James Harper:

So William Post, I'm just searching now to try and get a picture of him. Show me the image. Look at this man.

Oh my god. He's so put together. He's got a tie, neatly cropped short hair, not a fleck of facial hair.

But look at those eyes.

Jonathan Morris:

Oh my god. He looks like he's stiffed out of a horror movie.

James Harper:

Totally. Those eyes hide so much pain.

Jonathan Morris:

Yes, exactly right. Post, I mean, he's a terribly tortured character. He's desperate to be a success and he has all kinds of issues.

James Harper:

Sounds like an Elon Musk to me.

Jonathan Morris:

Yeah, the comparison is real. Not least because, you know, this is the guy who becomes the fastest millionaire ever on a startup for that period. He goes from zero to millionaire in seven years.

So that's millionaire... Back in the day. Back in the day.

James Harper:

What exactly makes him so rich?

Jonathan Morris:

Well, in 1895, James, he launches a coffee substitute product that he calls Postum.

James Harper:

After himself.

Jonathan Morris:

After himself, yeah. It's basically a cereal drink. It's made of wheat, really.

And it is wildly successful. By 1905, 10 years on, this guy is raking in millions of dollars. By about the 1910s, this guy's doing about a million and a half dollars on advertising his product alone.

You and I would probably be pretty head over heels if we had a million and a half dollars for an advertising budget now.

James Harper:

Yeah, right.

Jonathan Morris:

He's doing it in the 1900s. 100 years ago.

James Harper:

But what is that worth today?

Jonathan Morris:

Have a Google, my friend.

James Harper:

That today is roughly 50 million US dollars a year on advertising. Wow.

Jonathan Morris:

50 million dollars. But here's the thing. What was he advertising?

James Harper:

Well, surely his coffee substitute, Postum.

Jonathan Morris:

Well, he was advertising his product, but what he really was doing was something very different. He was doing negative advertising.

Unidentified tasting participant:

Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Morris:

So what he did was a huge negative advertising campaign about coffee in order to get people to switch to his surrogate product. Oh, my God. Which was being positioned as healthy.

Dirty. He would quote people or he would plant lines into people's head. So there's one ad that has a picture of coffee sort of coming out of a coffee cup, leaking out almost, and the text goes, constant dripping wears away the stone.

Perhaps a hole has been started in you. Try leaving off coffee for 10 days and use Postum. Wow.

And then just to top this up, OK, what he then does is he puts ads out basically saying, send me in your stories of using the product. Well, that's OK. I mean, we do that.

But it's basically send me in a story of how using the product made you feel better and I'll pay you for it. I'll pay you many greenbacks. And surprisingly enough, when you use the words, I'll pay you for it, a lot of people write you letters.

Oh, God. So here we go. There's one that goes, I was a coffee slave.

I had headaches every day. As soon as I took Postum, all my troubles vanished. My rheumatism is gone entirely.

My blood is pure. My nerves are practically well and steady. My digestion is perfect.

And I never have sick headaches anymore. And where's my check, God? I want my check now.

And where's my check? Yeah. Oh, Lord.

And he would give little lines around different things that you might be, you know, are you suffering from coffee heart? Do you have coffee neuralgia? Do you maybe have brain fag?

Brain fag? What is brain fag? I mean, we all know that you experience things with caffeine.

You're aware that coffee is having a little bit of an effect on you. So put those two things together. You have a vague awareness that coffee has some psychoactive power and you have this guy telling you it's killing you.

And the solution is go drink his stuff instead.

James Harper:

Right. So what we have here is a bad actor who's taking shots of coffee so he can shill his own product. And how did the coffee industry react to this?

You know, how did they fight back?

Jonathan Morris:

Well, they did fight back in the sense of sort of trying to commission their own reports that showed that coffee was OK. But they were petrified because the guy was taking their trade and there weren't really that much in the way of trading standards to rely on. Eventually, there are some sort of claims that are medically disputed, as it were.

But it takes a long time and that doesn't permeate very easily. And this guy would just pop up again and have another go.

James Harper:

Jonathan, OK, so I was actually able to get my hands on pasta myself. This drink. You were.

It's a funny story because you can only find it in America. And of course, I live in Europe. But Jonathan, you know, I have an eclectic range of friends.

And one of them, Corinne, she's an expert at the intersection of artificial intelligence and the occult.

Jonathan Morris:

What? Look, the only thing I can think of when you say this is that, I mean, the occult for me is a fabrication anyway, so we might as well get it done by AI.

James Harper:

I don't think you are the intended audience. You could be right. Anyway, look in the show notes if you want to read her substack.

So she was going to present at an occult conference in America. I bought some postum off Amazon, got it sent to her friend's house in America, and then her friend gave it to her and then she put it in a bag. And then as she was flying back to Europe, you know, she stopped at security control.

Yeah. And they asked her, what is this? And what she showed them was what I had bought postum, which, by the way, is in a tub that looks like C4 explosive and little granules inside.

And when they asked her, what is this? I didn't give her any context of what I'd bought. You know, she's about to say, I don't know.

Not a good look. In the end, she said, oh, I think it's just a coffee drink thing. But my friend works in coffee and then she got out.

OK, but it could have been very, very dicey for her. So thank you, Corinne, for putting your neck on the line for me.

Jonathan Morris:

By the way, James, how do you know what C4 explosive looks like?

James Harper:

I play too many zombie shooter games. Oh, OK. OK, now here's postum.

Here we go. So we tasted it. We finally tasted postum at Smith's.

We did. Well, it looks like filter coffee. And it was a spitter.

Jonathan Morris:

James has just run to the sink. It was awful.

Unidentified tasting participant:

Oh, yeah.

Jonathan Morris:

Yeah, that is the phrase. It's a spitter. That's so bad.

Ansgar (Mahlkönig product manager):

Oh, that's terrible. And so has Jonathan.

Unidentified tasting participant:

Jesus, God.

Colin Smith:

It is awful. Terrible. What is that?

It's like sugar in it. I mean, it's sugar, which is safe, which has got some pollution in it.

James Harper:

If you hold your reflex, your gag reflex, going for a second gulp, it's not too bad. It's kind of like warm and sweet and kind of branny, you know?

Colin Smith:

I can see it as a typical American drink because they love things very sweet.

James Harper:

Jonathan, honestly, did Post himself drink this stuff?

Jonathan Morris:

Well, this is the funny thing, right? Post did drink postum. Post used to abstain for coffee.

Right. But every so often he... I'm sorry, I'm still spitting.

Every so often he kind of lapsed. Oh, really? I mean, this guy was himself a terrible, nervous wreck.

He was a ball of contradictions and tensions and it permeated all through his life. But one of the weirdest things about this guy is he would every so often go on a coffee binge. Oh, really?

So the very man who's telling you coffee kills you, every so often he would lapse until he basically made himself so ill again, because he OD'd on it, that he'd go back into the postum. I mean, the guy's just...

James Harper:

He's unhinged. He's unhinged. And dare I say, what an impact he had on the cultural consciousness, right?

Because coffee's never been accepted as a health drink. It's always been treated with some suspicion.

Jonathan Morris:

Absolutely right. And can I say also about postum, I mean, his effect was by no means confined to America. One of the most interesting things about postum, I mean, he found a huge market in Sweden.

He launched in Sweden in 1926, partly, I think, because he got into trouble in America with his claims. Right. He goes to Sweden, but the Swedes are really alarmed.

The Swedes and the Scandinavians are high consumers of coffee. And one of the reasons for that was that they had a very, very strong temperance movement. And the temperance movement used to say, don't drink alcohol, drink coffee.

But then that kind of wellness thing that we're talking about also begins to kick in. And then they're, oh, my God, maybe we should switch from being alcohol addicts to coffee addicts. Oh, no.

And there are debates. Believe it or not, there are debates in the Swedish parliament in the 1910s and the 1920s about should they ban coffee? Is coffee a new vice?

So postum is hitting Sweden right at a receptive time. And boy, does he milk it, as it were. It's crazy, because all his anti-coffee advertising, it has impact.

He's completely mad. And he's a genius. He's literally the evil genius, because he is the man who makes negative advertising work brilliantly, brilliantly in the minds of people.

Despite the fact he is peddling what, frankly, is just utterly disgusting coffee substitute, as we found out.

James Harper:

As we did. And that's the thing, right? He failed.

Post failed. Postum is not a big drink in America. It is a niche drink that I really struggled to get access to.

And when you taste it, you know why. Absolutely. So Jonathan, you know, it seems to me that no one has successfully knocked coffee off its perch.

No.

Jonathan Morris:

No one has, James. But for me, what's interesting is the ways in which people have tried to knock coffee off its perch has changed.

Unidentified tasting participant:

Mm hmm.

Jonathan Morris:

They were sold as solving problems. Right. But the negatives change.

The problems change. Right.

James Harper:

And coming up next, we explore a company that thinks their coffee surrogate will save the world from the environmental damage that coffee brings.

Jonathan Morris:

Coffee after climate change.

James Harper:

So, Jonathan, you know, I've been working in the media space in coffee for a decade, and one headline I see so often is coffee is running out. Yep. We need to find a replacement to coffee because it's going to run out.

And so what are we going to do when climate change really gathers a pace and coffee trees don't produce as much? Coffee is too expensive. What are we going to do?

Jonathan Morris:

James, there's one radical solution that's being proposed coming out of the States. Seattle, no less. Coffee without coffee.

James Harper:

A drink that actually tastes like coffee, behaves like coffee, but isn't coffee. Which we haven't had so far successfully.

Jonathan Morris:

Exactly. Do you want to know the name of that company?

James Harper:

Go on. Otomo. Otomo.

Yes. Otomo. And so Otomo, they use these very advanced food engineering tricks to get like this whole range of different foods.

They ferment them in these special ways, then roast them up and then create this powder that according to them behaves very similar to ground coffee. And ideally would even taste indistinguishable from coffee.

Jonathan Morris:

Yeah. So, I mean, this is the thinking is you or I think, wow, this is actually coffee. Tastes like coffee.

I feel like I'm drinking coffee. But because I'm not drinking coffee, I'm using things that are much more environmentally friendly like oats and cornmeal and pea, which have all been grown locally. So low food miles.

And look, we haven't planted coffee all over the forests. And of course, by the way, coffee might disappear anyway because climate change is sort of knocking coffee out because it's too hot. No, all of this, I've done good.

I'm doing my bit for the environment because I'm not drinking coffee while I'm drinking coffee.

James Harper:

To be clear, this is the angle they went for this environmental angle when they first launched and one that I heard when I saw them in America at a trade show.

Jonathan Morris:

Yeah, absolutely. And just to just add to James, I mean, you can see sort of some of their early press conferences where the guy says, you know, we're taking out 10 central parks worth of trees a day with coffee. This is bad for the environment.

I feel guilty about it. But now I can assuage my guilt by using this product instead.

James Harper:

Right. I mean, I understand that from an environmental perspective, coffee does have its problems. The monoculture fulsome plantations you see in Brazil that stretch on over the horizon where deforestation has to take place and they suck up water reserves and birds cannot feed on any insects because they're all being killed by pesticides.

I get it. In many circumstances, coffee can be bad on the environment. But is the solution necessarily to avoid coffee?

Because many of the products that are in Otomo, where do they come from? The same monoculture type plantations and farms.

Jonathan Morris:

Well, what's in Otomo then, James?

James Harper:

So ingredients, beanless coffee.

Jonathan Morris:

What does that mean?

James Harper:

Open bracket. And now we have like 10 different ingredients, if not more. OK.

We have date seeds, cornmeal. Yeah. Oat protein, pea protein, chicory root, fenugreek seed, sunflower seed, caffeine, psyllium husk and carob.

Jonathan Morris:

So wait a minute. Our beanless coffee consists of most of the surrogates that we've already tried. Yes.

And some injected caffeine, did I hear?

James Harper:

That's right. Some added caffeine. In any case.

OK, here we go. Time for the Otomo. Let's get to the tasting.

So again, my dear friend Corinne brought back me some Otomo that I had to get from America. And look, I made a mistake. The Otomo that I bought was actually 50% coffee surrogate and 50% coffee.

Actual, actual coffee.

Jonathan Morris:

Yeah.

James Harper:

But in any case.

Jonathan Morris:

It tastes like bad coffee. It's just bad coffee. Yeah.

James Harper:

It's coffee, but not good coffee.

Jonathan Morris:

Yeah. I mean, it does. It has that advantage of having 50% coffee, but it's just not very good at all.

If you'd had that on a table, when someone comes in and says, Colin, I've got like a whole samples of coffee for you. Is that one you'd have gone back to, to think, oh, I could use that somewhere? Is that just like.

Colin Smith:

Oh no, definitely. I wouldn't use it anywhere. But it's the sort of taste you would get from a really bad coffee when you go to these places that buy it really cheap.

I mean, I can recall a hotel near Heathrow Airport that I had coffee that tasted like that.

Unidentified tasting participant:

It was awful.

Colin Smith:

If you've got a poor Robusta or something, that's what it would taste like. Yeah.

Jonathan Morris:

This was the point where also, not just Colin, but also his head of coffee, Lee came in and they obviously have real commercial palates for this.

Margrit Schulte-Bierbühl:

My name's Lee Ashby. I'm the head of coffee for Smith's Coffee Company.

Jonathan Morris:

Lee was very funny. He was not having it, I think might be the way I would put it. He was not having it.

Margrit Schulte-Bierbühl:

Tastes like really poor, low grade coffee. It's like HH grade stuff that I tried in Rwanda with Colin. Wow.

What does HH mean? Some countries use numbers and some use letters to grade coffee by quality. And anything under a certain grade is illegal to sell into Europe.

So HH would technically have been illegal to sell into Europe. I'm just saying it tastes, it may be above that grade, but it tastes very similar to what I had in Rwanda. So there we go.

James Harper:

But Jonathan, you know, what's also curious about this Otomo story is that they've recently changed how they market themselves.

Jonathan Morris:

Yeah, James, turns out that your mistake was not so much of a mistake, but a prediction because as far as I can see now on their website, everything that they do is a blend of 50% beanless, whatever, 50% coffee. Wow. They seem to have got rid of the pure thing.

They also advertised what they call upgrades, which would appear to be things not coffee that they say, oh, you could just mix this in with your ground coffee.

James Harper:

Things like collagen, prebiotic fiber, lion's mane mushroom. What's so funny about this story is that, look, they went with the environmental angle. It didn't work out.

They had to pivot how they sold this product and they just went for the health market because what else can you do? They kind of have to, because I think we kind of sussed the problem. What they are is a company which has had a lot of investor money behind them.

They've developed this solution, but it's a solution in search of a problem. Yes, that's exactly it. And the investors want their money back.

So let's see if this one works out for them.

Jonathan Morris:

Yeah, indeed.

James Harper:

So there we are, Jonathan. This is our story of coffee surrogates. I went into this.

Yeah. Really looking forward to tasting these surrogates because I can't drink caffeine after midday, but I do love warm beverages that make you feel nice and cozy. I was really excited to find my new love, my new favorite afternoon beverage.

Ansgar (Mahlkönig product manager):

My stomach is actually turning right now. Is it? I'm feeling a bit queasy.

Really?

James Harper:

Jonathan, I'll just say that on the back of that tasting, my stomach was turning over itself. I felt sick.

Margrit Schulte-Bierbühl:

So one of these hasn't agreed with you, then? I'm not sure which.

Jonathan Morris:

At the end of that session, James, I was so sick of those surrogates that I just went to Colin and asked if I could throw them all into the bin. Yeah. How big's your bin, Colin?

Because I think we've got a lot to throw away here.

James Harper:

Which would you like to take home, Lee?

Jonathan Morris:

Yeah, do you want any of these?

Colin Smith:

Pass. I'd like to put that in my museum.

James Harper:

He was like, no, Jonathan, don't throw them away. I'll put them in my museum.

Colin Smith:

We are honored to have left our mark on your museum. Okay, thank you.

Jonathan Morris:

And Colin made a little offer for anyone who wants to go along to his place, which is in Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire, just outside of London, and take a little gander around his museum and try some of his coffee. Link in the show notes. And what's the takeaway here

Please, God, don't make me drink any more surrogate coffee.

James Harper:

Let's try to make coffee sustainable and keep it around because I don't want to drink anything but coffee.

Jonathan Morris:

Thanks for listening.

James Harper:

Now, Jonathan, of course, one thing we didn't mention is that if you want to drink coffee without caffeine, you go for decaf coffee, like we showed you with the Marconi grinders near the top of the episode. We didn't cover decaf in this episode, but it is a super interesting story in its own right. And I'm actually writing an article for the coffee magazine, Standout, about the history of decaffeination technology

So if you want to check that out, there's a link in the show notes. But now, Jonathan, tell me, what's coming up next in this series?

Jonathan Morris:

Well, James, I'm very excited about this. We're going to Guatemala, where you and I have been. Indeed.

It has a really quite checkered coffee history, much of which revolves around the question, whose land is it anyway? That will be the last episode in this series.

James Harper:

On our Instagrams, we'll have some illustrations of all these surrogates we featured in the episode. On mine, you will be able to see for yourself the tasting we did and how they all look rather disgusting in different cupping cups.

Jonathan Morris:

I do hope there's going to be a selfie reel of you there, James, running for the sink. That, unfortunately, I did not get on video. No, you were too quick to go.

Yes, I will put up some pictures of some of these surrogates.

James Harper:

Our Instagram handles are in the show notes. Also in the show notes, listeners, they can find your book, Jonathan.

Jonathan Morris:

They can, Coffee A Global History. And they can buy you a coffee, James. Going to coffee.

Would you like to explain?

James Harper:

Indeed. If you would like to support my work creating these documentaries, you can basically buy me a coffee. It's ko-fi.com.

It's like Patreon, just run by nicer people. And that supports my work. He's been making these sorts of documentaries for you.

Jonathan Morris:

And so if you've enjoyed this episode and hearing James and I go through this pain, tell your friends, press subscribe, do rate and review us on the various platforms. It really helps. James, explain what you should do on Instagram.

James Harper:

Another thing that really helps is you can take a screen grab of you listening to this podcast on your podcast player, and then post it as a story. Tag Jonathan and I at filterstoriespodcast at coffeehistory.com. And we'll repost it.

Thank you.

Jonathan Morris:

So A History of Coffee is produced by myself, Jonathan Morris, and myself, James Harper. I also edit the episodes and I write and play the piano music. And James, please tell me there are no surrogates in Guatemala.

No, we're finally going back to tasty coffee.