Coffee is a hugely popular drink, the top choice for a lot of businessmen, students, and everybody else that want the perk and punch the beverage gives any time of day.
More and more people like to grinder the coffee beans themselves and create a fresh cup of coffee with the coffee beans of their taste. Other people like to skip the grinding and just buy a pack of the best coffee beans. The process of making coffee is part of the whole experience and many coffee-lovers have their special way of doing this.
And whether you’re using a french press, single brew coffee maker, espresso machine or drip coffee maker, the most important thing is that can enjoy the perfect cup of coffee!
There are plenty types of coffee beans and in order to provide a good impression of each kind, you need some basic information first. Let us kickstart this article with essential information on coffee beans.
The Beans
Those varying types of coffee come from the pits of coffee cherries. Coffee cherries are the berry-like fruits yielded by trees belonging in the Coffea genus. These coffee cherries are then picked from those trees then the pits are taken away and processed, which in turn brings forth coffee beans. These beans are soon roasted, minced and brewed.
There are three kinds of coffee beans and they are the following:
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Coffea Arabica
Coffea Arabica was first discovered growing abundantly in Ethiopia. One of the earliest species to be developed, it remains to be the most common that’s cultivated for profitable purposes. It supplies around 70 percent on the global trade and is also considered as much more superior than other types.
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Coffea Robusta
Robusta is a species that was first discovered in Zaire. It has been reported that the kind has a high quantity of caffeine but is considered second-rate as compared with Coffea Arabica. It develops in abundance at lower altitudes, yields plenty of fruit and is more impervious to diseases than the Arabica type.
Countries who produce an abundance of Robusta are Brazil, Vietnam and West Africa. It is second to Arabica in terms of being developed and processed and contributes around 30 percent of coffee produced all over the world. Robusta is more affordable than Arabica to treat and is primarily used by a lot of commercial coffee firms in making instant coffee.
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Coffea Liberica
This is a species native to the Ivory Coast and Liberia. Its most distinguishing features are its flat and jagged beans. Its quality is as good as Robusta but it only contributes a few percentage among the coffees produced in the world. Liberica is cultivated in Malaysia and West Africa, however only a few amounts of it are marketed worldwide.
The flavor of Liberica is lesser measured up against Arabica but it was praised for its ability to resist parasites, is twice bigger than majority of the other beans and is an excellent graft base for growing new species of coffee trees.
The Cultivars
Cultivars are basically a plant variety that has been created through selective breeding. Because coffee is a popular beverage, many botanists and companies took part in producing and developing new coffee varieties for a wider selection of flavors.
The most common coffee beans among cultivars from the Arabica family include the Var. Bourbon and the Var. Typica. Var. Typica is the oldest among the Arabica cultivars and is the source of many other varieties.
It is assumed that the plants that were grown in the southwestern part of Ethiopia’s Great Rift Valley lay the earliest coffee plants. Plenty of these new hybrid species have been bred from those older Arabica varieties in order to multiply resistance to parasite attacks and gather a bigger yield.
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Bourbon
This is a Coffea Arabica cultivar which was first grown and developed on the island of Bourbon in the eastern part of Madagascar. It’s second to Typica in terms of commercialization and several varieties of Latin-American made coffees came from the Bourbon cultivar. Varieties of Bourbon offer a higher percent of genetic range as compared with Typica.
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Typica
It is a Coffea Arabica cultivar which is grown in Ethiopia. It is the oldest and the most well-known among coffee varieties and it comprises majority of the world’s coffee manufacture. Like the Bourbon variety, a few of the most celebrated Latin-American coffees came from the Typica source.
It yields lower as compared with other varieties but it compensates excellently enough when it comes to flavor.
Proof of coffee’s popularity can be seen through the vast number of coffeehouses all over the world and the hundreds of brands available at the moment.
Kopi Luwak is the most expensive coffee retailed and it’s priced as such because of the offbeat manner in which the beans were acquired. The beans are made from coffee beans that have been consumed then defecated by palm civets or civet cats, a cat-like mammal from Indonesia. The civet’s fecal matter are gathered then undergo the required processes to make it into coffee.
It’s assumed that the beans from this variety are topnotch because civets are very particular of the beans they eat, only choosing the ripest among the lot. Also it is believed that the natural enzymes found on the animals’ digestive tract makes the beans less acidic and bitter. Nowadays, Kopi Luwak retails from roughly $300 per pound.
