Posts
If you've ever wondered where exactly coffee comes from, we are today starting a series of posts about the origins of the bean that produces the drink consumed by most adults, and its journey from bush to brew.
Coffee is grown as a tree or bush, which resembles a camellia bush with jasmine-like blooms. In the wild, the evergreen arabica plant grows up to 20 feet, however, when cultivated is pruned to approximately 6 feet to maximize its yield and to make harvest easier.
Coffea arabica is not the only type of plant used to produce coffee; Coffea robusta is another species commonly used (common being an apt term since most robusta is not typically considered high quality enough to produce gourmet coffee; it is used to produce lower-quality coffee such as brands produced on a very large scale and sold at many supermarkets). One exception is the Kopi Lowak coffee, which is a very unusual gourmet robusta coffee "processed" by the Asian Palm Civet, a cat-sized mammal found in southeast Asia. This coffee retails for well over $120 US per pound.
There are several varietals of Coffea arabica, including C. arabica typica, C. arabica bourbon, C. arabica caturra, and C. arabica catuai. The typica is the base plant for many other varietals, produces a small amount of coffee cherries, but yields an excellent cup of coffee. The bourbon is named for the Isle of Bourbon (or Reunion Island) where it was discovered. This variety has a higher yield of fruit but produces less coffee, since each cherry is denser and more likely to fall off from wind and rain. This variety does well at higher altitudes. The caturra is a mutation of the bourbon, discovered in Brazil. It has performs well at lower altitudes but though it yields fewer cherries at higher altitudes, the quality increases. The catuai is a hand-engineered hybrid of the Mundo Novo (a natural hybrid of typica and bourbon discovered in Brazil) and the caturra. This is a high yielding plant that is great for areas with strong winds or rain because the cherries more stubbornly stay on the branches.
The last two varietals are highly prized in the specialty gourmet coffee market. These are the Maragogype and the Blue Mountain. A natural mutation of the typica plant, the maragogype produces a very large bean, to which it credits its name - the "elephant bean." It was first discovered in in the early 1990's. Blue Mountain is a famous varietal that thrives at very high altitudes and is very disease resistant. It produces a bean with a very high flavor profile, and was first grown in Jamaica. It has now adapted to grow well in Kona, Hawaii, but cannot adapt to most growing areas and produce the high quality bean for which it is known.
For more information, check out Wikipedia or CoffeeResearch.org
