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Tuesday 26 November 2013

Coffee Processing Facts - What Could Interest You

By Debrah Elliot


If you are holding a cup of coffee today, why don't you sit and learn about the interesting facts on what you are drinking. Did you know, for instance, that you and other coffee drinkers are contributing to the average 400 billion cups of coffee consumed in a year? Imagine how many coffee drinkers that can be all over the world! Records show that in 1998 the coffee expenditure in fact exceeded that of tea in Great Britain, which is quite surprising given that country's reputation as a nation of tea drinkers.

Coffee is actually from the coffee plant which is a tropical evergreen which belongs to the genus "Coffea" under the family of "Rubiaceae." There are around 60 plants in this particular genus however there are but three being harvested commercially namely Arabica, Robusta and Libeca. Finding your coffee plant is all too easy - that is if you live in places like the Latin America, Asia and Africa. Your commercially produced coffee is being cultivated and grown between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn. Hawaii is the sole place that grows coffee in the United States.

Why people use the term "coffee beans" is a fact bound to be uncovered when you see the fruit of the coffee plant consisting of two bean-looking seeds joined by pulp and skin when you break it open. It's not a bean, however, but a berry. There is much labor put into harvesting these coffee berries. As these berries ripen at different times and they don't become come ideal for picking until they ripen just right, they are mostly hand-picked. Even with the existence of mechanical pickers, hand-picking is still preferred by many because machines don't give as reliable and efficient results as people.

In extracting the coffee beans from the berry, one may use either of the two methods - dry processing or the wet method. The dry method as its name suggests calls for drying the berries under the sun which is rather lengthy because you will have to wait until it is hard and brown and that could mean several weeks of drying. The latter method requires soaking the berries in water for several days before letting them dry under the sun or in a drying machine if you have one. Most often, the dry method for processing is being opted over the wet method when extracting the beans because this is easier and cheaper.

The process does not end there of course as there is still that one important part - the one which determines the flavors of your coffee, the roasting! From its green state, the coffee beans are roasted and coffee is often classified according to how dark it is roasted. The light roasts are highly popular in the United States. Exported green coffee beans ensure fresher product as its roasting takes place in the very place it is roasted, ground and sold as coffee.

If you reside in the Los Angeles area, one Culver City coffee shop produces some of the best coffee drinks in the area. At Island Monarch Coffee, the coffee is only the finest imported coffee beans from South America and Kona, Hawaii. Coffee drinkers will delight in the fact that each cup comes fresh because the grinding of the coffee beans take place in their shop itself after placing one's order for a cup. Water is guaranteed purified through the process of reverse osmosis as well. Not only are the beans freshly ground, they aren't roasted until just a few days before you drink your coffee, so it is truly the freshest cup of coffee in the area.




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