Coffea Arabica

Coffea arabica is coffee grown from Ethiopia and Yemen. It is commonly called the "coffee shrub of Arabia", "mountain coffee" or "arabica coffee". This type is thought to be the first species of coffee to ever be cultivated. Grown in southwest Arabia for well over 1,000 years, discovered by an Arab whose sheep would have more energy when eating the shrubs berries.

He decided to boil some and drink it which is thought to be the first ever cup of coffee. Coffea arabica is considered to produce better coffee than the other coffee species, Coffea canephora (robusta). Arabica contains much less caffeine that any other commercially cultivated species of coffee. Wild plants grow tall, and have an open branching system; the leaves are opposite, simple elliptic-ovate to oblong, glossy dark green. The flowers are white, and grow in auxiliary clusters. The fruit is a drupe, maturing bright red to purple and typically contain two seeds (the coffee 'bean').

Coffea Arabica Takes 7 Years to Mature

Coffea arabica takes about seven years to mature fully and does best with about 40-59 inches of rain, evenly distributed throughout the year. It is usually cultivated at an altitude of around 3000 feet. The plant can tolerate low temperatures, but no frost, and it does best when the temperature is around (68 °F). Unlike Coffea canephora, Coffea arabica prefers to be grown in light shade.

Coffea arabica produces small white and highly fragrant flowers anywhere from 2 to 4 years after planting. The flowers produce a sweet fragrance that resembles the smell of jasmine flowers. Lots of sunny days produce lots of flowers, the results is more berries. This is not a good thing, because it can be a curse. The coffee plants tend to produce too many berries, this can lead to a low grade harvest and even damage the crop in the following years. The reason for this is, as the plant will favor the ripening of berries to the detriment of its own health. On well kept plantations this is prevented by pruning the trees.

The flowers only last a few days leaving behind only the thick dark green leaves. As the berries then begin to appear they are as dark green as the foliage. When they begin to ripen, at first to yellow and then light red and finally darkening to a glossy deep red. Ready for picking at this point they are called 'cherries'.

Low grade coffee results from picking them too early or too late, so many are picked by hand to be able to better select them. The reason for this is, they do not all ripen at the same time. They are sometimes shaken off the tree onto mats, which means that ripe and unripe berries are collected together.

The big values of the prize in this cash crop are the beans inside the berries. Each berry contains two lobules containing the beans. The coffee beans are actually two seeds within the fruit; there is sometimes a third seed or one seed, a pea-berry in the fruits at tips of the branches. These seeds are covered in two membranes, the outer one is called the 'parchment' and the inner one is called the 'silver skin'.

A Brief Coffee History

Coffee Bean Roaster

Did you know that the more bitter the taste of the coffee, the longer ago the beans from which the coffee was made had been roasted? Rather than drink burnt-tasting coffee, you can save both money and time by roasting your own. The beauty of roasting your own coffee beans using a coffee bean roaster is that you can control the amount of roast that you apply to your beans and thereby affect the taste of the coffee you brew.

As soon as 24 hours after roasting, even the most expensive coffee beans begin to lose their robust flavor and aroma.  So the next time you visit a gourmet market to purchase your whole coffee beans, ask yourself whether the price is worth it,  considering that the beans have been sitting out there in those cutesy burlap bags exposed to the air.  Unless you know for sure that the beans were just roasted and you can get them packaged in specially designed coffee bags, it may not be worth your hard-earned money.

Why not Roast Your Own?

As a coffee enthusiast, you'll be pleased to know how quick and easy it is to roast your own coffee beans at home. There's a favorite expression among coffee lovers, that life's too short for bad coffee.  Truer words were never spoken, especially after you've experienced the flavor of coffee prepared from freshly roasted gourmet coffee beans.

Home Coffee Roasting Machine

While you can certainly roast coffee beans using just an old fashioned crank style popcorn popper, it can take a while and produce uneven roasting. A faster and better option is using a home coffee roasting machine.  The two most popular types for home use are the fluid bed roaster and radiant heat drum cofee bean roaster.

The Fluid Bed Roaster

Most people will be happy to start off with the fluid bed roaster.  These are easy to use and clean and work somewhat like a hot air popcorn popper.  Using heated air, the coffee beans are circulated within a roasting chamber for even and quick roasting.  Most fluid bed coffee bean roasters have a glass roasting chamber that you can see the beans as they roast and check to see if they are roasted to your liking.

The Radiant Drum Roaster

For more die-hard coffee lovers, the radiant heat drum roaster is more like what professional coffee roasters use. One drawback is that these can produce quite a bit of smoke and get quite hot.  However, the quality of the roasted beans is excellent, rivaling that of professional, master roasters.

Coffee bean roasters range in size from industrial down to personal and have parallel price points, so it's best to shop around for your perfect coffee bean roaster before you decide. You can find coffee bean roasters in retail shops all around the country as well as online.

It is hard to believe that the espresso has been in existence for almost 100 years. Espresso is better defined as coffee that is brewed by forcing hot water through ground roasted coffee beans. The coffee espresso machine seems like a simple contraption originated to produce a foam based or "creama" coffee. No one thinks about all the strenuous labor and years of preparation that came into perfecting this wonderful timesaver.

A common misconception is that the first machine was invented in Italy. This is not the case, rather, in 1822, a French entrepreneur named Louis Bernard Rabaut first developed a fast coffee machine. This machine passed pressurized steam and water through a filter lined with coffee beans. In 1855, Mr. Edward Loy Sel de Santias took his newly developed full-size espresso machine to a Paris Exposition. While at the event he brewed "fast coffee" at a rate of 2,000 cups per hour.

Mr. Luigi Bezzera, an Italian, received a patent for his coffee machine in 1901. The machine used the same principle as Louis Rabaut's in the early 1800s. The machine was supposed to enable people to make fast foam coffee without the need of waiting 10 minutes for a cup of hot Joe.

The patent was later purchased by a gentleman of the name of Desiderio Pavoni in 1903.  By 1905 he was manufacturing this foam coffee out of his self named company. Pavoni introduced his remodeled invention to America in 1927. Americans loved how fast they could now brew their coffee, but they hated the taste of the burnt beans. The espresso machine evolved even further with the introduction of a piston pump that could force hot water through the coffee then boil it. This advancement was the much needed icing on the cake to make the coffee enjoyable to all those who partook in it.

M. Faema supplied the finishing element to the evolving espresso machine in 1961 by adding an electric pump which would change the way we drink coffee all together. With this advancement to the espresso machine the way was paved to have the machines introduced to households worldwide. In 1991, the first ever espresso machine was able to be purchased by ordinary households.

Before you enjoy that next sip of espresso or cappucino, think back to those pioneering inventors.  Inconsequential as a first cup of coffee may seem, it took their creativity and and vision to bring about an a marvel of ingenuity and still serves its purpose more than a hundred years later.

So much hard work and labor was put into such a deceptively simple contraption that so many take for granted. In this fast paced world that we live in it's great that we don't have to wait 10-15 minutes to get a hot cup of coffee. In fact we can enjoy the luxury of a cappuccino right from our own households. The machine does all the work for us, all we have to do is push a single button.