6 coffee facts you might not have known
Here are a few of the lesser known coffee facts we thought you might like.
Aged to perfection The coffee you’re drinking could be 100 years old. Coffee plants, if taken care of, can easily live to over a hundred years.
Complexity grows higher up Coffee grown at 600 metres tastes completely different from coffee grown at 1500 metres. The higher coffee is grown, the more complex the flavours become!
There is such a thing as coffee soldiers... Sprouting coffee plants are called coffee soldiers. It takes about 180 days for the coffee plant to sprout from the day it’s planted.
...and such a thing as Peaberries Usually, there are 2 coffee seeds within a single cherry. Sometimes you get 1, which is called a ‘peaberry’. But on a really rare occasion, you can get up to 3 coffee seeds in a single cherry… or none at all!
Coffee has a sweet spot The amount of sugar in a coffee cherry is measured using a system called ‘Brix’. The system’s also applied to grapes used in wine-making.
There's no waste Coffee is one of the world’s most sustainable products because there’s no waste. Parchment is used as energy to fuel coffee dryers, the skin or ‘cascara’ is used as a fertiliser, flower for baking or tea infusions and coffee beans that don’t make export are consumed locally. Even the grounds of roasted coffee are used to make fuel. Every part is used unless of course, you don’t finish your coffee!