Coffee Beans Articles | coffee

By: Andrew Mills

 Considering it is grown in well over seventy different countries around the world from Indonesia to Brazil, it's very interesting just how perfect the conditions have to be in order to produce quality coffee beans and just how small the total yield is.

Coffee beans are not really beans they are actually seeds, and the thing that actually gets roasted and ground up to make the coffee isn't really a bean at all, it's a seed. So in essence it is a coffee seed.

Actually, The coffee bean is the seed of a fruit that grows on trees that can grow in some cases to twenty feet or more. There are some wild varieties that grow to over 45 feet or 15 meters. Most coffee seeds come in pairs, but there is a variety that produces only one seed (the peaberry). The berry looks much like a cranberry, with a sweet pulp which is covered by a membrane called a silverskin.

The vast majority of the world's coffee output comes from regions around the equator from approximately 25 degrees north or south. The ideal climate for growing coffee beans is one with temperatures of between 60F (15C) and 70F (21C) and rainfall of six inches per month or more.

There are other requirements for growing good coffee beans such as good draining soil and high levels of humidity is also very important. Coffee beans thrive and grow well in areas with lots of mist and cloud at high altitudes such as ones over 3000 ft (915meters). At high elevations such as this the oxygen concentration is much lower, so the trees take longer to mature.

The robusta, or coffea canephora, is used in making the vast majority of coffee mainly because it can be grown at low altitudes and is much more disease resistant. But the high altitude coffea arabica is what forms the base of a gourmet cup of coffee.

Once a coffee tree is planted, it takes about five years to mature to the point of producing first crop and even then a single coffee tree can only make roughtly enough for about two pounds or 1 kilogram of coffee.

Those two pounds of coffee are equal to about 2,000 beans, these beans are usually picked by hand by manual laborers. Coffee bean harvesting is truly a skill and is developed over time, where the coffee picker learns to select only good beans and discard the bad ones.

Coffee trees have broad and dark green leaves that produce a flower which closely resembles Jasmine. Some coffee trees in Brazil and Mexico, will blossom for over a six to eight week period. In certain countries that lie along the equator such as Kenya and Colombia for example, a coffee tree can have mature berries growing beside ripening ones. This is partly why coffee bean picking is such a specialty and is learned over time.

The complete cycle from blossom to harvest can extend over a time period of up to nine months depending on several factors such as the weather and other factors and the cycle will be carried out for the life of the coffee tree which is about 20 to 25 years. With the current modern harvesting technology, a good coffee bean harvest will yield between 6,600 lbs (3,000 kg) and 8,800 lbs (4,000 kg) per hectare.

So, the next time you are enjoying a nice cup of Java, give a thought to the hard work put in by so many to get it to your coffee maker and cup. It just might make that high purchase price seem okay.