Why is it Called a Quaker?
In 2007 the National Park Service decided they would celebrate Abraham Lincoln’s 200th birthday in 2009 by fully restoring Lincoln’s Springfield, Illinois, home. They were determined to make every detail as historically accurate as possible. Although the home had long been painted white, there were some people involved in the restoration effort that believed white was not the color of the house when the Lincoln family occupied the home. A nerd fight ensued. Eventually, based on research and a brick discovered in the basement in the 1980’s, they decided on a light brown or tan color that some members of the restoration committee referred to as “Quaker Brown.”
For years I have wondered why the green coffee defect that reveals itself after roasting as a light brown bean—several shades lighter than rest of the coffee it’s roasted with—was known as a “Quaker.” I have searched through many old coffee books and magazines looking for an answer. Surely, at some point somewhere, somebody explained why they called these tannish beans Quakers. People have been explaining everything there is to explain about coffee for a very long time, but it appeared that nobody had ever explained why the Quaker defect is called a Quaker defect. Not that I’ve ever been able to find, anyway.
But this is how history works sometimes, probably more often than we might guess. Things that most people just understand because it’s obvious don’t get explained and they don’t get explained past the point where most people no longer understand them. Say you are a coffee roaster in 1850 and a friend is visiting you and watching you roast. As the coffee is cooling you reach down and pull a few light brown beans out of the roasted coffee, hold them up to your friend and say, “We call these Quakers.”
Your 1850 friend might nod or smile or even laugh. What your 1850 friend would probably not do is ask you why, because in many regions for much of the 19th century a not insignificant portion of people within Quaker communities wore simple light brown clothing.
It should be noted that there is a lot of diversity within various affiliations of the Society of Friends, diversity in belief and practices, including dress. This would have been true in the 1800’s too, but to a lesser degree. For long periods of time, it seems, enough people within the Society of Friends wore light brown clothing that “Quaker Brown” emerged as a name for the color. And, indeed, immature green beans that do not fully roast appear to be something close to this color.
When the word Quaker came into use to describe under-roasted coffee beans it happened because their color resembled the color of clothing that many Quakers were wearing at the time. It’s more than a guess but also wholly circumstantial. There is no smoking gun (yet) of someone explaining this in writing within the relevant historical context.
As the predominance of light brown clothing among the Society of Friends began to wane, so too must have use of the term Quaker Brown and, at the same time, the connection to coffee beans that don’t roast so much as they “tan.” As evidenced by the story of restoring Lincoln’s house illustrates, Quaker Brown must have survived as a regional colloquialism in various places.
Researching the term Quaker Brown is complicated by the fact that some of the most popular oatmeal-based products in the world are named Quaker Brown Sugar. But even after using the advanced search function, it becomes clear that Quaker Brown is not a common term in the world of color these days.
I Didn’t Discover “Quaker Brown”
Although I have spent some time exploring Quaker Brown I didn’t discover that it’s a thing, a thing that would give us every reason to believe it’s the reason we call a Quaker defect a Quaker defect.
Peter Giuliano, Executive Director for The Coffee Science Foundation and Chief Research Officer for The Specialty Coffee Association, and I share a passion for coffee history. We have also shared a mild obsession over the origin of the word Quaker to describe immature and therefore under-roasted coffee beans. It was Peter who came across the term Quaker Brown and understood the almost necessary connection to a coffee defect. He shared his discovery with me recently at the Specialty Coffee Expo in Chicago. My jealousy over his beating me to a very likely answer was eclipsed several times over by my pure joy at having an answer in-hand to explore.
Finally, it is understood that the word “Quaker” was originally intended to be derogatory. Over time, the Society of Friends took the negative power away from the word by adopting it themselves and neutralizing its effect. I have zero insight into whether or not the coffee industry was incorporating negative ideas into the word when they started using it, and I long ago gave up any attempt to act as an apologist for the history of the coffee industry. More often than not, it isn’t pretty and excuses are weak. I will only say that if you were looking down at a crowd of 100 people in 1850 and ten of those people were wearing nothing but Quaker Brown, they would be easy to identify.
