Coffee in nature
The coffee plant grows and bears fruit only in tropical or equatorial climatic conditions characterized by humid temperatures and sufficient rainfall.
The plantation’s location, altitude, determine the type of single origin.
Robusta, with its strong and bold aroma, high caffeine content, and full-bodied taste with hints of chocolate, earth, and wood, takes about 7 months to gestate (from flowering to ripening). It thrives in very warm temperatures, in flat or hilly areas.
Arabica, on the other hand, a delicate single origin with a fruity, sweet character but a distinct acidity, takes 9 months. Arabica plantations will be found at much higher altitudes, up to 2000 meters.
The choice of the plantation and expertise in harvesting are crucial factors for the final coffee performance.
THE ORIGINS OF THE RAW MATERIAL
Choosing based
on origins
Knowing where to look makes finding easier, as the adage goes.
Therefore, selecting based on origins means understanding the generative humus of the cultivation soil in relation to the geographic locations of the plantations.
How do we want our coffee? Do we desire notes of jasmine, citrus, and fruit? Sweet and light with more acidic undertones?
Aromatic and full-bodied? With hints of chocolate and toasted bread? Tart or smooth?
The plateaus, valleys, hilly areas, and the expert touch of indigenous hands hide the answers to these poetic questions.
Guatemala
Guatemalan coffee has highly appealing characteristics due to the volcanic cultivation soil: its taste is velvety, smooth, spicy, and full, with distinct notes of cocoa and almonds.
Costa Rica
Coffee produced in Costa Rica is a gourmet bean with a persistent aroma of cocoa and nuts, aristocratic flavor, full-bodied, sweet, with medium-high acidity and a prolonged taste of chocolate and spices.
Colombia
The espresso born from Colombian coffee possesses a creamy, smooth, and substantial texture with hints of hazelnut, rose, and berries. The refined, balanced, and elegant acidity counterbalances the full and round taste typical of this origin.
Brazil
Coffee from Brazil is full-bodied, slightly sweet with a pleasant acidity; its aroma enhances notes of dried fruit, caramel, and earth.
Ethiopia
Ethiopia is the country that provides the most floral coffee; neroli, lemon blossom, rose, a dream in a cup that reveals a bouquet with refined and distinctive notes that include hints of citrus and low body.
New Mexico
A coffee with a delicate profile featuring caramel sweetness, brown sugar, nutty aromas, and chocolate. It has a full body with a lingering and clean aftertaste.
Uganda
In Uganda, the cultivation system is agroforestry: plantations of fruit and shade trees alternate with coffee plantations, offering this region a fruity raw material with a round, full taste, featuring notes of cherry, black currant, chocolate, and earth.
Kenya
KENYA Coffee cultivated in Kenya is fruity, with pronounced hints of citrus, lime, mandarin, and a typical intense and aromatic sweetness of berries such as blackberry and currant.
REFINEMENTS OF COFFEE FRUITS
The twins, the pearl
and the parchment
The coffee fruit, in botany, is called a drupe: a fleshy and pulpy formation enclosed in an outer skin, containing a seed inside.
The coffee drupe usually contains two twin seeds, specular, coinciding in their flat surface. Occasionally, these two beans are united in a single oval berry called Coffee Pearl or Caracolito.
This extraordinary, small defect of nature generates a decidedly fuller coffee due to more uniform roasting, a full and intense aroma, and a fresher, more tangy, and elegant distinctive character that makes it rare and valuable. This bean is found at the tips of older coffee plant branches.
Among the intricacies, further attention is given to parchment: the two coffee seeds are wrapped in a gelatinous and whitish membrane called parchment.
There’s a difference in coffee processing: one method removes the seeds from this membrane immediately after drying, while the other, which produces the so-called “in parchment” coffee, removes this membrane just before roasting, ensuring that all the organoleptic properties of the bean are protected until roasting.
The Honey Process method generally produces high sweetness and balanced acidity, as during the drying process, the sugars present in the parchment concentrate, managing to be fully absorbed by the bean.