Lupine coffee by Helen. Our local coffee alternative
Coffee alternatives have existed for centuries. Today, you will find lupine coffee being offered more and more frequently. If you are looking for a caffeine-free, coffee-like drink, you will likely find what you need in lupines. In the future, coffee alternatives will become increasingly important because coffee is threatened by climate change. We visited the farm of sweet lupine producer Helen Wegmüller and launched our own lupine coffee with her.
Lupine coffee is a brewed drink made from roasted, ground lupines that have had hot water poured over them. In addition to the now widely available lupine coffee, there are other coffee substitutes made from chicory, grains, and acorns.
But is the term "coffee" misleading? And does it perhaps create expectations that the drink cannot fulfill? For one thing, lupine coffee will not reach 80 points on a scoresheet. But perhaps it doesn't have to: perhaps it is enough just to be a caffeine-free alternative.
Helen - our lupine coffee
We named our interpretation of a lupine coffee after the producer, Helen. We roast the coffee in a Rational catering oven for six minutes at an air temperature of 250°.
Helen's lupines of the Jowisz variety result in a very sweet drink with our light and short roast. We taste notes of licorice and fresh, dark bread. We produce the lupine coffee in very small batches in our kitchen and grind it using a mill dedicated solely to the lupines.
A brief history of coffee-like drinks
Whenever something was hard or expensive to obtain, people have always looked for alternatives. First during the Napoleonic Continental Blockade between 1806 and 1812, but also in the post-war period, real coffee was in short supply.
A pound of coffee cost as much as 50kg of potatoes.
However, the desire for a coffee-like taste did not diminish: alternatives were sought, and various substitute products made from grains and roots were roasted and ground to obtain a coffee-like drink that could be brewed and drunk like coffee.
It is unclear when coffee began being derived from sweet lupines. The first mention dates back to 1897, when a lupine drink was named "Altreier Kaffee" after the village in Tyrol. Today, you can find lupine coffee more and more often, as well as other products made from lupines such as lupine flour or in the form of pasta.
That climate change will have an impact on coffee is clear. Exactly what local effects to expect cannot be predicted, but weather patterns will shift and predictability will decrease. Yet it is not only the coffee plant itself that is vulnerable, but also the complex value chain behind it.
Helen Wegmüller explains why she grows lupines and how it works.
As a rule, coffee passes through many hands and travels thousands of kilometers before it can be roasted by us. Coffee alternatives score points here with their robustness and their simpler, greatly shortened value chain.
A brief history of lupines
Lupines are one of the allergens and must be declared on menus. Nevertheless, you are finding lupines more and more on menus and in the product ranges of coffee roasters.
But what are lupines?
The lupine belongs to the legumes, just like soybeans, chickpeas, beans, and peas. It therefore serves as a plant-based protein source and is versatile in its application. The product list ranges from lupine flour to hummus, from lupine bratwurst and seasoning sauce to yogurt.
The sweet lupine is not only culinarily versatile, it is also good for soil health:
it can fix up to 100kg of nitrogen, which makes it an ideal plant for crop rotation with cereals and maize.
In addition to all the benefits, there is a risk. Lupines increasingly produce alkaloids when they are stressed by drought, heat, humidity, or pests. These cause increased bitterness and can be harmful to humans in concentrations that are too high. Therefore, limit values must not be exceeded in Germany (not yet in Switzerland).
This risk is problematic for farmers; the market price for food is far higher than for animal feed (for which lupines are also suitable). However, if the limit values are not met, it can happen that the farmers are left with their product. Therefore, there is a decline in the market (Luve, a well-known brand, is insolvent) and many of the farmers are looking for alternatives.
As with coffee, there are also different varieties of lupines. Some have a higher yield, others have fewer bitter substances. The white lupine variety “Frieda” in particular was heavily promoted by DSV-Saaten, lupine pioneer Linda from the Bioland farm Kelly told us in an interview.
Is lupine coffee a sustainable option as a coffee substitute?
Even though we do not yet have exact data for Helen's cultivation, we can make an initial estimate of the emissions based on a dataset from Carbon Cloud. Swiss lupines are listed there with a CO₂ footprint of 0.79 kg CO2e per kg of lupines. We add the roasting loss, which is approx. 15%, and the emissions generated by our roastery and transport.
The lupines that were made available to us by Helen were delivered by her while she was running other errands. The distance from the farm to the roastery is 73 km; we allocate 50% of the emissions generated to the lupines.
Following this simplified calculation, this results in 1.46 kg CO2e /kg of lupine coffee. The emissions are thus significantly lower than those of our coffees from Santa Rita at 2.96 kg CO2e /kg. This becomes even clearer if we also include the average value of a roasted, conventionally produced roast coffee from Brazil.
Preparation of lupine coffee
When we approached the creation of the recipes, we first had to forget everything we had learned about coffee up to that point. Tamping, for example, the compression of the coffee grounds in the portafilter, becomes unnecessary. We noticed in various extractions that tamping, if anything, had a marginal influence on the flow times.
The reason is that lupine coffee swells very strongly and expands in the portafilter. Thus, the "lupine cake" creates high resistance, through which the water now forces its way.
This brings us to the extraction times, which - for a classic espresso extraction - are outside the norm. However, the first extractions with 60 seconds were definitely not just drinkable, but very balanced. We noticed: the longer the brewing time, the sweeter the drink. We had expected it to get increasingly bitter, but: that would be the "coffee mindset".
In the lupine coffee mindset, we see that longer extractions with lighter-roasted sweet lupines can emphasize the sweetness.
We tried out various recipes. These are our three favorites:
Filter coffee with lupines / French Press
- we recommend the French Press, or the plunger pot
- we recommend 10g of sweet lupine coffee per 100ml of water
- the water should be used shortly after reaching the boiling point so that we achieve a high extraction
- we pour approx. 50ml of water over the lupines, stir so that all the coffee is well wetted, and fill up to the desired amount of water
- after three minutes we stir vigorously again and at 3:30 minutes we press the plunger down
Espresso with lupines
- the drink ratio of 1:2.6 appeals to us the most - the time is negligible
- we put 15g of lupine coffee into a double portafilter
- we extract 40g of drink quantity into the cup as a double espresso, or 20g per cup if you are using two cups
- depending on the pump pressure of your machine, you will manage this in a shorter or longer time; approx. 30 seconds could be a reference
- longer extraction times have no negative influence on the taste when combined with the light roast
Langer Kaffee with lupines
- the drink ratio of 1:7 or 1:8 appeals to us the most
- we use 12g of lupine coffee in a double portafilter
- we extract 90g total quantity into a cup
