You might be drinking twigs, earth and coffee every morning

That lovely cup of coffee you drank this morning which had subtle notes of nut, chocolate and was capped off by an earthy aftertaste and a textured mouthfeel? Well, it turns out that there’s a chance that you’ve been brewing up coffee with a few additional extras in it.

It might have been diluted with soil, twigs and other bits and bobs, for example.

Okay, so we’re pretty sure that this isn’t commonplace at the moment – and if it is we shall shed a couple of tears as our world crashes down around us – but a couple of scientists have begun to develop a way that can identify whether coffee is counterfeit or not.

Shortages caused by climate changes has, apparently, increased the chances that have grounds contain ‘filler’ substances such as wheat, soybeans, barley, corn and a whole manner of other items including twigs. Once it gets ground up with the legitimate coffee it can be quite hard to pick out.

To combat this apparent threat a team of researchers from Brazil, the country which grows the most coffee in the world, is aiming to come up with a process that can determine whether labelled coffee is pure bean or just being downright untruthful.

“With our test, it is now possible to know with 95 percent accuracy if coffee is pure or has been tampered with,” said Suzana Lucy Nixdor of the State University of Londrina, who is part of the academics looking into this issue.

Her team’s full findings are set to be unveiled in front of a meeting of the American Chemical Society later on this week.

In order to identify the imposters, the group use a process known as liquid chromatography which can separate components in order for identification. This could then be compared to the known physiognomies of coffee, essentially a ‘characteristic fingerprint’ as the team say, to check whether the coffee is coffee, or something else.

But why would people stoop to such a level?

 “With a lower supply of coffee in the market, prices rise, and that favours fraud because of the economic gain,” Nixdor said in a press release.

And we thought an earthy mouthfeel was a positive quality…