Coffee beans are seasoned travellers.
The word 'beans' is purposely in single-quote marks, since the thing that gets roasted and ground to make the drink isn't actually a bean at all, it is a seed. Especially , it is the seed of a fruit that grows on trees that will simply reach twenty feet or more. Some wild varieties grow to over forty five feet or 15m.
The majority of those seeds come in a pair, though there's a selection that produces only one ( the peaberry ). The berry resembles a cranberry, with a sweet pulp covered by a surface called a silverskin. In a band round the equator from roughly twenty-five degrees north or south, comes the overpowering majority of the Earth's coffee output. Temperatures of between 60F ( 15C ) and 70F ( 21C ) are best as is rainfall of 6 inches each month or more. Loamy, good-draining soil is required and also useful is high humidity - lots of mist and cloud at the high elevations, over 3000 ft ( 915m ) for the good stuff.
At these elevations the oxygen content is lower, so that the trees take longer to grown up. The robusta, or coffea canephora, goes into making the bulk of coffee as it can be grown at lower altitudes and is more illness resistant. But it is the high-altitude coffea arabica that forms the base of a gourmet cup. Diffuse light and moderate winds are beneficial, both of which are occasionally produced by purposely growing in the shelter and shade. Against this, wine grapes like hot sun and plenty of it. Once planted, the tree takes about five years to grown up to first crop and even then a single tree will only make plenty for about 2 pounds ( one kilogram ) of coffee.
Those 2 pounds equal about two thousand coffee beans, ( correct or not, it is the standard term ), typically hand-picked by manual workers. Manual they could be, but ignorant they aren't. Coffee bean cropping is a talent developed over time, where the picker learns to select good beans and drop the bad. The trees have broad, dark green leaves and produce a flower that resembles Jasmine. Some - in Brazil and Mexico, as an example, - blossom over a 6 to 8 week period. In nations that lie along the equator like Kenya and Colombia, though, a tree can have grown up berries growing alongside still ripening ones.
That is part of what makes picking such a specialty. Blossom to crop may cover a period of nearly 9 months depending on the weather and other factors and the cycle will be carried out for the life of the tree - about 20-25 years. With the best cultivation technology, a good crop will be between 6,600 lbs ( three thousand kg ) and 8,800 lbs ( four thousand kg ) per hectare. So, the next time you savor that brew, think about the long trip these coffee beans journeyed to reach your cup. It would make that high price appear less steep.
