Category Archives: Gourmet Coffee Beans

What Makes a Gourmet Coffee?

Posted on January 25, 2013 by | Leave a comment

Gourmet Coffee

I have found some interesting articles on gourmet coffee that I thought you may enjoy. There are many ways to get your fill of gourmet coffee. You can go to a coffee shop or save money by brewing your own coffee at home. With many sites for gourmet coffee beans online, it makes our coffee world much more exciting than it was 15 years ago.

Enjoy the read….leave us a comment….thanks John

What Exactly Is Gourmet Coffee?

A cup of gourmet coffee is somewhat of a new idea. Gourmet coffee is usually only made from Arabica beans, which are usually the coffee beans with the fullest flavors. The general average jar of coffee which you buy in supermarkets is made using a mixture of beans using low grade Brazilian coffee beans and Robusta beans. They also add a small amount of the Arabica coffee beans to ensure a nicer flavor than using just the low grade beans. Also the lower grade beans contain more caffeine than the others.
Starbucks gourmet coffee

Usually, gourmet coffee beans are roasted at the plant and make it into the consumer’s hands within a week. You can buy pre-ground gourmet coffee, but the preferred way to buy coffee is while it is still in its bean form. The beans can usually be ground at the store you buy them from.

Commercial coffee is pre-ground before it is packaged. It is usually not as fresh because after packaging it can take several weeks to actually make it to a grocery store. Usually, the longer pre-ground commercial coffee sits on a shelf waiting to be purchased, the staler and bitter it will become. Generally, the biggest advantage of commercial coffee is that it is cheap compared to some types of gourmet coffee….Read More at Apply Deals – Are You A Gourmet Coffee Drinker? | Apply Deals

More Reading:                                                                                                                    What Is Exciting About Gourmet Coffee? | Coffee Bean Community

 

Simple Trick for Better Tasting Gourmet Coffee

Want to transform your bland cup of Folgers into delicious gourmet coffee? Maybe you don’t need better beans—just different dishware. The color of your cup may impact the way you perceive the taste and smell of your drink, says new research in the Journal of Sensory Studies.…Read More at The Sneaky Trick for Better-Tasting Coffee – Men’s Health News
More Reading:

Improve Your Gourmet Coffee With One Of These Tips

The condition of your coffee producing kitchen appliances may have a significant influence on the taste of the caffeine. Should your espresso is flavored, a little bit off these days, try out cleaning your coffee machine. The remains to be of aged makes remaining in it can depart your caffeine flavorful foul.

Acquire new coffee beans every 14 days. When you open coffee legumes, they usually don’t possess a set expiry time. It is possible to seal them in airtight storage containers to keep them fresh lengthier. You will, even so, most likely realize that the grade of the taste actually starts to fade somewhat after fourteen days….Read More at Improve Your Gourmet coffee Activities With One Of These Tips

Coffe grinder for gourmet coffee

Image by storebukkebruse via Flickr

Web Master Summary:

Hopefully you enjoyed thess articles on gourmet coffee. Making good coffee takes some patience because it is considered a art when brewing a good cup of coffee. That is why we have a label for the artist and that is a Barista.

 

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The Types of Coffee Beans

Posted on February 25, 2012 by | Leave a comment

types of coffee beans

Different Types of Coffee Beans

Looking at the types of coffee beans isn’t that difficult because there are two basic coffee varieties. Coffee beans are divided into two overall coffee varieties: Coffee Arabica and Coffee Robusta.

Robusta Types of Coffee Beans

The Robusta beans have less flavor of the two varieties. The average coffee drinker believes the Robusta bean to be just as flavorful. These beans are cheaper to grow and produce a higher yield. Robusta is known to have double the caffeine of Arabica and produces a nice layer of crema as espresso beans. With the Robusta having double the caffeine over Arabica is probably where the notion came from that espresso has a lot more caffeine per shot than coffee. It is the bean used and not the espresso process.

Because of the cheaper cost and higher yield, the Robusta bean has become popular as filler in commercial ground brands. The most coffee drinkers never notice the difference in the blended coffee.

 

Arabica Types of Coffee Beans

Arabica coffee beans are considered higher in quality. Most experts and die hard gourmet coffee drinkers choose to buy a specific region or country they prefer.

When you discuss coffee varieties you must realize that though it might be the same basic bean they can taste different. This comes about because of the use of selective breeding or the natural selection of particular coffee plants. Also coffee beans from different coffee producing countries or regions may have distinctive characteristics such as flavor, caffeine content, body, and acidity level. These types of coffee beans can reflect the local environment where grown, their method of either the wet-dry process, and the genetic subspecies or breeding. Coffee in general can be considered similar to wine grapes, which also demonstrate clear regional variations.

Coffee Types and Connoisseurs

With only two types of coffee beans it should be pretty easy to pick out which coffee types you like, right? Don’t mention that statement to coffee connoisseurs.

Connoisseurs who prefer the popular Arabica beans will start to talk about the aromatic Colombian bean or the very popular Jamaican Blue Mountain bean, and the rich Kona types of coffee beans. To them there are distinct differences in these coffee types.

Robusta isn’t usually categorized into specific types of coffee beans, just Robusta. It is used as a filler to keep the price down and the average early morning coffee drinker wouldn’t know a Robusta from the more popular Arabica – and that is okay! If you are enjoy the coffee types you drink, then why change it?

Still, it is good to know the other options  exist, just encase you don’t like what you are drinking now.

Don’t feel intimidated by the endless options out there. Everybody has their own preferences and opinions when it comes to the types of coffe beans. The best way for you to find out what you like or dislike is to experiment.

Most types of coffee beans sold at the store are a blend of both – someplace around a 70% Arabica and 30% Robusta blend. I have notice that every coffee drinker has a different opinion about which coffee bean varieties are the best types of coffee beans, but in the end, it usually comes down to the freshness of the beans that can effect the flavor.

Price of the Different Types of Coffee Beans

Arabica coffee beans are much more difficult to cultivate than Robusta and the prices can run extremely high for exotic or hard to produce coffee varieties, like Jamaican Blue Mountain or Panama or Kona.

So, all said there are major differences between the two types of coffee beans and the plants that grow them. But both types of coffee beans have very important uses in the coffee world. At the end of this article, it doesn’t really matter if your blend contains Robusta or Arabica coffee beans. What really matters is if you enjoy the brew or not!

Oh, by the way the freshest and cheapest coffee beans are Green Coffee Beans. Problem is you need to roast the beans at home but you can save a lot of money.

 

2011 Copyright | Coffee Bean Coffee and Types of Coffee Beans

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Coffee Processing

Posted on July 19, 2011 by | Leave a comment

coffee processing
Coffee Processing – Bean or Seed?

Why do we call them coffee beans if they are not beans at all? Your guess is good as mine. Coffee beans comes from a small tree and the seed we call a bean is the seed of the tree’s fruit.

I think I could of gotten use to the term coffee seeds.  Must have come from some marketing guru way back when.

Coffee berries and the coffee seeds undergo coffee processing before they become the familiar roasted coffee bean we see.

Coffee Processing

Picking:
Coffee berries can be traditionally selectively picked by hand; a labor intensive method. This method involves the selection of only the coffee berries at the peak of ripeness.This coffee processing method takes multiple pickings and is used for gourmet coffee.

More commonly, commercial crops are strip picked, where all coffee berries are harvested simultaneously regardless of ripeness by person or machine.

Processed
After picking is complete, the green coffee is further subjected to more coffee processing by one of two methods.

Either the dry coffee processing method, which is simpler and less labor intensive as the berries can be strip picked or the wet process method, which incorporates fermentation into the process and yields a mild coffee.

Sorted
The coffee beans are sorted by ripeness and color. The flesh of the berry is then removed. This is usually done by machine, and the seeds, which are called coffee beans are then fermented to remove the slimy layer of mucilage still present on the coffee bean.

When the fermentation coffee processing is finished, the beans are washed with large quantities of fresh water to remove the fermentation residue. This method generates massive amounts of coffee wastewater.

Dried
The coffee seeds are then dried as part of the coffee processing. The best  method of drying coffee is using drying tables. The pulped and fermented coffee beans are spread thinly on raised beds, which allows the air to pass on all sides of the coffee.

This coffee mixture is mixed and rotated by hand. In this method the drying that takes place is more uniform, and fermentation is less likely to restart. Most African coffee is dried in this manner and more coffee farms around the world are starting to use this old traditional method.

Another way to dry coffee beans is to spread them out on a concrete patio and rake over them in the sunlight.

Sorted Once dry and cleaned the green coffee bean goes through coffee processing of sorting in which the beans are sorted by size, labeled as green coffee and sold as ready to roast.

Want to learn about coffee bean storage click here

See the Wet-Dry Process for coffee fruit.

2011 Copyright | Coffee Bean Coffee and Coffee Processing

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