Is The Coffee Bean A Bean or A Berry?
Who would find a coffee bean interesting except for coffee lovers? Considering we drink a cup or two, it is interesting to know a little bit about these coffee flavored delights. Though most coffee drinkers know quite a lot about the coffee bean including which beans provide the best taste and how best to roast and grind them, there are nevertheless a few interesting things you may not know. For example, you may not know the largest coffee bean is a variety of the Arabica bean species known as the Nicaragua Maragogipe. Did you know that?
Coffee Bean Growing
Another interesting fact related to the coffee bean is that for the beans to be at their best requires that they get the right amount of sun, shade, rain and they should also be grown in the proper climatic conditions. Furthermore, for those of you that believe that the coffee bean is native to Costa Rica you will have to admit that this is not so because the beans were only introduced to that country in the year 1799 by a Spanish traveler known as Navarro.
Strangely enough, the coffee bean is not in fact a bean at all and they also do not belong to the legume family either but are pits that are generally found in the coffee berry. Furthermore, the coffee bean is graded in a number of different ways. For example, beans from Columbia are graded as Supremo and Excelso and Extra as well as Pasilla.
On the other hand, the coffee bean from Kenya is graded according to letter combinations such as AA, PB, AB, E, C and TT and also T and these grades refer to the bean’s size and shape and also density of the bean. Size is an important consideration when evaluating a coffee bean because the larger the size is the more oil it will contain and this helps to make the coffee tastier.
Even today it is still common to find the coffee berries being picked by hand and a typical coffee worker will be able to pick from hundred to two hundred pounds of coffee berries in a single day. Finally, an acre of coffee will provide you about ten thousand pounds of coffee berries that then works out to about two thousand pounds of coffee beans.
One thing everyone knows is that it is one of the, if not the, most popular beverage in the world…and that’s a fact!
