They’re an organic product, and safe for most to eat – the only thing you want to watch out for is that the really hard ones may be tough on your teeth.  Also, the beans, like coffee, contain caffeine, so as addictive as those tasty chocolate covered coffee beans can be, you may not want to overdo it if caffeine is an issue.

One cup of coffee contains around 25 coffee beans, and you’re not getting the full coffee bean in coffee, so the caffeine can add up if you eat a lot.  

Did you know?

It is an old Italian tradition to serve the drink Sambuca with several whole coffee beans in it.  Sambuca is an anise-flavored liquor and is sometimes added to coffee for flavor.

It is also believed that monks would eat coffee beans before long prayer sessions.

Coffee Beans

Get the best flavor out of your coffee beans by properly storing them.

Green Coffee Beans Are Best for Storage

Green coffee beans, or the coffee beans that have not been roasted yet, are the best type of coffee bean for storage.  Green coffee beans can stay good for quite a long time, even years, it is only when a coffee bean has been roasted that it should be used as soon as possible.

For maximum freshness, store green coffee beans in a cool, dry place.  It also helps to store them in an air-tight container.

While green coffee beans store the best, it’s not always practical because many coffee drinkers don’t have their own coffee roaster and even if you do have one, you may find it tedious to roast all of your coffee beans.

So now let’s talk about storing roasted coffee beans.

Storing Roasted Coffee Beans

When a coffee bean is roasted, coffee oils are brought to the surface of the beans and these oils can get rancid after several weeks, which is why roasted coffee beans should be used within two weeks of roasting.

If you keep the beans at room temperature, they will last only one to two weeks before losing freshness.  However, if you freeze the coffee beans (don’t rely on refrigeration, it is not cold enough to keep them fresh), they will stay fresh for up to one month.

As far as the best container to keep them in, they should be kept in an air-tight container.   Containers that do not allow light in are best.  Also, using a metal or plastic container can affect the taste of the coffee – I find that using one of my ceramic flour/sugar containers works best because it doesn’t let light in, is air-tight, and does not affect the flavor of the coffee beans.

Coffee at its Best

For the best coffee flavor, it is best to grind and brew your coffee beans within 48 hours of roasting them, while they are at their peak of freshness.

As for grinding the beans, the coffee should be brewed as quickly as possible after grinding them, as ground coffee loses flavor and freshness very quickly.

Tips for Coffee Shopping

When shopping for coffee, ask the coffee shop owner when the coffee beans were roasted and try to get the freshest coffee beans available.

Also, it’s best to buy only one to two weeks worth of coffee at a time for maximum flavor, that way you won’t end up storing coffee for longer than it can stay fresh.

And lastly, look for coffee beans which are sold in air-tight containers.  If the beans were stored well on the shelf, they will be fresher when you bring them home.

So don’t waste your tasty coffee beans by letting them lie around too long – enjoy them as soon as you can!

Coffee Berries

You may know about which coffee beans taste best and maybe even about roasting and grinding beans, but here are ten coffee beans facts, some of which you may have never heard before!

1. Making the Grade – Coffee beans are graded in various ways.  Columbian beans are graded from highest to lowest as: ”Supremo” “Excelso”, “Extra” and “Pasilla”.  Kenyan beans are graded with letter grades AA, AB, PB, C, E, TT, and T and the grades simply refer to the size, shape, and density of the coffee bean.  For coffee beans, size does matter because larger coffee beans contain more of the oil that makes coffee so tasty.  Costa Rican coffee beans are graded as Strictly Hard Bean, Good Hard Bean, Hard Bean, Medium Hard Bean, High Grown Atlantic, Medium Grown Atlantic, and Low Grown Atlantic, from highest to lowest, respectively, and these grades refer to the heights at which the beans were grown - Strictly Hard Bean, accounting for nearly 40 percent of the Costa Rica coffee crop is the top grade grown above 3,900 feet.
2. Coffee Bean Not a Native of Costa Rica - The Spanish traveller, Navarro, introduced Cuban coffee to Costa Rica in 1779. 
3. Colossal Coffee Beans – The largest coffee bean is the Nicaragua Maragogipe, a variety of the Arabica species.
4. Good Things Come to Those Who Wait – With just the right amount of shade, sun, rain, and the right climate, coffee plants will begin producing coffee berries containing the “beans.”
5. 

   Coffee Beans

   Not Really “Beans” - Believe it or not, coffee beans are not really beans at all.  They are not in the legume family, but rather they are the pits found inside of the coffee berries.

6. Hand-Picked – Even to this day, most coffee is still picked by hand, and a coffee worker can pick from 100 to 200 pounds of coffee berries a day!
7. An Acre of Coffee – How much coffee would you guess to get out of an acre of coffee plants?  One acre typically yields about 10,000 pounds of coffee fruits or coffee cherries – which comes to around 2,000 pounds of coffee beans.
8. Imported Coffee – As much as Americans adore coffee, no coffee is grown in the Continental U.S.; the only American places that produce coffee are Hawaii and Puerto Rico.  
9. The Most Expensive Coffee – The most expensive coffee in the world is Kopi Luwak, selling for between $100 and $600 USD per pound (2009)
10. Also the Most Unusual Coffee – The most expensive coffee is also quite possibly the most unusual coffee in the world – since the coffee berries go through the digestive tract of the Kopi Luwak (a small cat-sized Indonesian animal), are then harvested from the animal’s waste, and then the beans removed, cleaned (hopefully!), roasted, and sold.

That’s right, believe it or not, it takes 3-5 years for a coffee plant to produce coffee, and only if the conditions are perfect; coffee beans aren’t really beans at all; and the most expensive coffee comes from digested coffee gathered from animal feces!

-Jennifer Hall

Sumatran Kopi Luwak farmer, small-scale producer, showing his product prior to cleaning and roasting.

One of the most exotic coffee beans available on the market today is Ethiopian Yirgacheffe. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee.  Blue Mountain coffee beans are grown in the Blue Mountains of Jamaica which reach heights of 7,500 feet, and the coffee is loved for its lack of bitterness and mild flavor.  This high quality coffee beans typically runs for around $30 a pound.

Another exotic, high quality coffee bean is Ethiopian Yirgacheffe.  This coffee is lauded for its flowery aroma, light bodied flavor, and caramel tones.  And while it is considered one of the finest coffees in the world, it’s usually less than half the price of Jamaican Blue.

But the most exotic coffee bean of all has to be Kopi Luwak, or Civet coffee.  It’s called Civet coffee because it actually passes through the Asian Palm Civet, a cat-sized animal native to Southeast Asia and Southern China.

That’s right, it passes through the digestive tract of the animal and is then harvested from the forest floor.  The animal eats the coffee berries, but the coffee beans (the pits inside the berries) pass through the Civet undigested.

Kopi Luwak is actually the most expensive coffee in the world, selling for between $100 and $600 USD per pound (2009). It is sold by the pound in the U.S. and Japan, and by the cup in Southeast Asia, and is increasingly becoming available elsewhere, though currently only 1,000 pounds at most make it into the world market each year.

Answer: it is a pit inside the coffee fruit.

The coffee bean is not technically a legume, because a legume is a plant in the family Fabaceae (or Leguminosae), or a fruit of these plants, and the coffee plant is not a member of the Fabaceae family.

The coffee “bean” is actually the seed of the coffee plant, the pit inside of the coffee fruit (AKA coffee berries and coffee cherries).

Structure of coffee berry and beans: 1: center cut 2:bean (endosperm) 3: silver skin (testa, epidermis), 4: parchment (hull, endocarp) 5: pectin layer 6: pulp (mesocarp) 7: outer skin (pericarp, exocarp) Source: Wikipedia, GNU license

Green coffee beans & roasted coffee beans

Green coffee beans are simply unroasted coffee beans. Naturally, the quality of green coffee beans determines the flavor, aroma and body of the resulting roasted coffee it can yield. Hence, it is important to know the possible defects that green coffee beans can have, so that you can watch out for them. The following are some of them.

Green coffee beans can be over-fermented and when this happens, they develop a soiled-looking appearance and have a brownish tobacco color. Over-fermented beans yield roasted coffee which is sour and somewhat pulpy. It is also somewhat dirty and, worse, it gives off an odor akin to rotting flesh or a cowshed. Even mildly over-fermented coffee beans will yield coffee which has a sour and onion-like taste.

Coffee beans may also be afflicted by insects, such as berry moths, which tend to punch black holes into the beans while laying their eggs. Another insect would be the antestia bug, which leaves black or yellow spots that resemble bruises on the coffee beans. These insect-damaged green coffee beans will give you a predominantly musty coffee which can also be musty and alkaline.

Diseased green coffee beans are those which have been afflicted by diseases such as Leaf Rust and Coffee Berry Disease (CBD). The usual manifestation of a diseased coffee plant is premature beans, which are small, brownish and often with a chipped portion which is ragged and flaky. Nonetheless, they can still be reaped and mixed with normal coffee beans, and even sold to make regular roasted coffee.

Under-ripe coffee beans are those which were picked from the plant while still immature. These green coffee beans are rough and greenish with a tinge of silver. They yield roasted coffee which has no acidity, with a heavy body and flavor which has been described as grassy.

Amber coffee beans, which have a gold color, are the result of a lack of certain minerals, such as iron, in the soil on which the coffee plant was cultivated. Amber coffee beans, when roasted, will give you coffee which is bitter, flat, dull-colored and lacks acidity.

Foxy beans, which get their name from their rust red hue like that of a fox, are generally overripe coffee beans. When roasted, they produce coffee that tastes nutty, fermented or fruity.

Stinker coffee beans are yellowish, and are the result of coffee beans being overripe or over-fermented. By the name itself, you can guess that they give off quite an unpleasant odor. Even one or two of these flawed green coffee beans can lend a foul-smelling and bad-tasting cup of coffee, and you naturally would want to steer clear of them, such as: faded coffee beans, which get their faded quality from being dried too much or being exposed to too much moisture. Also, those which are pale to whitish brown in color; they give you a dull roast and consequently, coffee which has a woody and musty flavor.